The principle exceptions to this were the strips based on Doctor Who, which had previously been published in Polystyle's long-established title TV Comic, the Anderson's new live-action series UFO, and (from issue 35) the Roger Moore/Tony Curtis vehicle The Persuaders!.

The relaunch saw a gradual shift in emphasis away from Gerry Anderson content, with an increased focus on comic strip stories based on popular crime and adventure TV series of the era such as Hawaii Five-O, The Protectors and Alias Smith and Jones.

In conceiving of the new comic, and with Anderson's UFO set to debut on television in autumn of 1970, an opportunity arose to create a new, Anderson-based publication.

During this period, it had been natural for them to make regular visits to the parent company, Century 21 Productions (whose film studios were to the west of Greater London, near Windsor).

At the beginning of 1969, Century 21 Productions disbanded their three warehouse-sized film studios on the Slough Trading Estate, when Lew Grade took the decision to cease production of the Supermarionation shows and transfer to live action filming at ATV Elstree for the latest show, Anderson's UFO; in consequence, as of June 1969 the entire staff of Century 21 Publishing were given a month's notice.

[2] All this being so, it was a simple matter for Polystyle to get Lew Grade's blessing and secure the appropriate franchising licenses on the discontinued puppet shows which TV-21 had recently discarded.

The expense of the high-quality paper and photogravure quality printing needed for the colour pages and photo features, however, meant a high cover price of 5p (one shilling) compared to 6d and 7d for competing IPC Magazines titles such as Valiant, Lion, and Smash!, making Countdown almost twice as expensive as any other boys' comic on the market (a fact which was addressed by the editorial in issue #1).

From issue #100, the publication's title became simply TV Action, and the roster of strips expanded to include the Gerry Anderson-produced The Protectors.

In addition, it carried a totally original strip, Countdown, drawn by John M. Burns and including spacecraft designs from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[citation needed] Countdown was distinctive for its highly detailed nonfiction articles — five or six pages in a 24-page issue — with an emphasis on space exploration.

Art editor Roger Perry was often present at filmings of Doctor Who, and finding a suitable picture from the files to go with a feature written about the recording was easy, and also gave the magazine a feeling of greater flexibility.

Additional "filler pages" typically took the form of a competition (giving away items such as Airfix construction kits), or something quick and easy to write such as a hastily penned "profile" by Peter Levy.

Several months earlier, on a particularly blustery day in late March 1972, Perry had driven down to Pegwell Bay in East Kent, taking with him science writer Dan Lloyd, who from 1959 through to 1968 had been Eagle magazine's chief sub-editor.

"Hoverlloyd" had been very cautious, as earlier that same month – on 4 March 1972 – an SR.N6 traveling from Ryde, Isle of Wight, to Portsmouth had overturned in similar winds on the Solent, killing five of the 27 passengers.

Taking assistant art editor Bill Kidd along as staff photographer, Perry found he had enough material to create the first in a long line of The Man From TV Action features.

This five-week period allowed time for the typesetters to set the text copy, and for the planners to produce a visual "dummy" (an exact-size page-for-page mock-up of what the magazine will look like, having followed the designer's layouts).

Although matters improved after the first 26 weeks, initially the distribution of the new comic was patchy, with some issues failing to go on sale at all in some regions, as they could not be printed in sufficient quantities in time to reach the newsagents by the cover date, perhaps as a consequence of the production problems.

Undoubtedly the reduction in production costs by dropping the expensive lithographic printing and magazine-quality paper played some part in TV Action lasting for as long as it did.

Polystyle did achieve a long-running success with the concept in a slightly younger market, with its mostly-humour title TV Comic, aimed at five-to-ten-year-olds, which ran for more than 30 years.