KLONDIKE, CP Army Headquarters – Welcome to another edition of “Army Archives,” where we remind ourselves of army history! This week, we will look at the Small-Medium Army Central and Small-Medium Army Press merger.
I. Reasons for the Merger
Six years ago, on January 22, one of the most significant media organization mergers took place. While most people know about the Club Penguin Army League and Club Penguin Army Media merger into Club Penguin Army Hub, very few know about the Small-Medium Army Central/Small-Medium Army Press merger. Before this merger, SMAC and SMAP were separate army media organizations, each reporting separately. Their function is similar to the current CP Army Headquarters and CP Army Network. However, various reasons existed for the initial split of CPAHQ/CPAN and SMAC/SMAP.
SMAC had been struggling in late 2013, according to Bluesockwa1’s post titled “Beginning of a New Era: The SMAC-SMAP Merger,” so the community decided to forme a new media organization. The start of SMAP saw the existence of “CPA World Media” to fund CP Army Central and SMAP and administrate both. Unfortunately, the main goal of CPA World Media was to unite all media operations in the community. That was impossible, as SMAP(previously named CP Army Express) and SMAC had an untamed rivalry. Neither the CPAWM nor the SMAC administrations could successfully convince the other to any merger deals.
As six years passed since the founding of SMAP, both SMAC admins and CPAWM admins started to rethink this divide. While both sites might have succeeded independently, it wouldn’t compare to a single news organization serving the whole army community. Additionally, both administrations wanted to revise beliefs passed down by their predecessors. As a result, SM Army Press and SM Army Central brokered a deal, beginning a long merge process. The two organizations combined to form “Small-Medium Army Central,” a more glorious version of both. From then, both organizations worked together until later that same year. October saw a new merger, one between CPAC and SMAC, to achieve unity in reporting fully.
II. Statements about the Merger
To achieve a clearer view on this incident, I asked two veterans from the era, DMT, and Superhero123, for a statement on this merge:
SMAC’s quality was never top but by 2016 it had become pretty bad. At the same time, the creator of SMAP, Superoo, retired from armies completely and couldnt oversee the project anymore. From this point on I am merely speculating since I wasn’t involved with SMAC or SMAP but perhaps Superoo didn’t find anyone capable to carry on with SMAP. From what I remember he didn’t like SMAC at all. He probably wanted people to just move to only reading CPAC, but many SMAP staff wanted the merge into SMAC. Another reason is that in 2016 the community began to really shrink. S/M news got less of a point as well because there weren’t really many armies left. This led to standards for S/M armies being changed. Smart Penguins, for example, got 5th on the CPAC Top Ten while maxing under 20 by abusing the AUSIA curve on summer 2016. When you have CPAC reporting on armies with sizes even lower than 15, what’s the point of having one S/M news website? Let alone two.
~ Superhero123, Army Legend and Former Smart Penguins Leader
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The SMAC-SMAP merger was pretty helpful in my opinion. At this point in time in the community, the S/M community was kind of dwindling and it was really redundant having two S/M websites. Once SMAP was originally founded, it was far and away better than SMAC. But, after the people who were apart of SMAPs foundation moved on, it started to regress to the point where the only difference between SMAP and SMAC was that SMAP had a partnership with CPAC. So the merger helped to consolidate all of the media talent in the community as CPA went into its final full year (2016). I also view it as a sort of ‘burying the hatchet’ moment, because from my memory, CPAC only created SMAP because they had an argument with the SMAC high brass. So it was really nice to see people let bygones be bygones for the betterment of the community.
~ DMT, Army Legend and CPAHQ Director-in-Chief
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III. Conclusion
According to both veterans and posts regarding the incident, the merge was an excellent idea. While Superhero123 saw the merger as a step taken to slow down losses, both veterans responded positively to the merger. The initial split, in my opinion, was not a good idea, but there was still a reconciliation after many administrations. After the merge, Jodie and Atticus took charge of the organization as CEOs. The CEOs of the former SMAP instead became the Division Oversights of SMAC. Unfortunately, as the community did wind down, SMAC merged into CPAC.
Eventually, the entire organization took a fall with Club Penguin’s shutdown. It is unfortunate because CPAC could’ve kept the community united countless times. However, that does not change the present, and it is up to us to change our beliefs based on current events and our predecessors’ beliefs. Fortunately, we changed our path forward as past administrations wanted to unite the media organizations. Whether these efforts prove fruitful or not, we must keep trying to keep the community’s status quo in all of our best interests.