Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly
Managing Editor Jess Cagle
Categories Entertainment
Frequency Weekly
First issue February 16, 1990
Company Time division of Time Warner
Country United States
Based in New York City, New York
Language English
Website ew.com
ISSN 1049-0434

Entertainment Weekly (sometimes abbreviated as EW) is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books and popular culture. Unlike celebrity-focused publications Us Weekly, People, and In Touch Weekly, EW's primary concentration is on entertainment media and critical reviews. Unlike Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, which are aimed at industry insiders, EW targets a more-general audience.

Contents

History

The magazine's original television advertising soliciting pre-publication subscribers portrayed it as a consumer guide to popular culture,including movies,music,and book reviews,sometimes with video game and stage reviews, too. ("the post-modern Farmers' Almanac").

The first issue was published on February 16, 1990 and featured singer k.d. lang on its cover. The title word "entertainment" was not capitalized on the cover until mid-1992 and has remained so since. By 2003, the magazine's weekly circulation averaged 1.7 million copies per week. In March 2006, managing editor Rick Tetzeli oversaw an overhaul of EW's graphics and layout to reflect a more-modern look.

Cover of Entertainment Weekly issue Volume 1, Number 1, dated February 16, 1990. Featured on the cover is the singer k.d. lang.

Typical content and frequency

The magazine features celebrities on the cover and addresses topics such as television ratings, movie grosses, production costs, concert ticket sales, ad budgets, and in-depth articles about scheduling, producers, showrunners, etc.

It publishes several "double issues" each year (usually in January, May, June and/or August) that are available on newsstands for two weeks; because the magazine numbers its issues sequentially, it counts each double issue as "two" issues so that it can fulfil its marketing claim of 52 issues per year for subscribers.

Layout

Entertainment Weekly follows a typical magazine format by featuring a letters to the editor and table of contents in the first few pages, while also featuring advertisements. While many advertisements are unrelated to the entertainment industry, the majority of ads are typically related to up-and-coming television, film or music events.

News and Notes

These beginning articles open the magazine and as a rule focus on current events in pop culture. The whole section typically runs eight to ten pages long, and features short news articles, as well as several specific recurring sections:

  • "The Pop of King" is Stephen King's column, where he discusses various aspects of popular culture, including movie or book recommendations among other things.
  • "The Final Cut" is written by former executive editor and author Mark Harris. Harris' column focuses on analyzing current popular-culture events, and is generally the most serious of the columns. Harris has written about the writer's strike and the 2008 presidential election, among other topics.
  • "Binge Thinking" is written by screenwriter Diablo Cody. After several profiles of Cody in the months leading up to and following the release of her debut film, Juno (2007), she was hired to write a column detailing her unique view of the entertainment business.

Feature articles

There are typically four to six major articles (one to two pages each) within the middle pages of the magazine. These articles are most commonly interviews, but there are also narrative articles as well as lists. Feature articles tend to focus mostly on movies and television and less on books and the theatre. In the magazine's history, there have only been a few cover stories (e.g., John Grisham, Stephen King) devoted to authors; there has never been a cover solely devoted to the theater.

Reviews

There are seven sections of reviews in the back pages of each issue (together encompassing up to one half of the magazine's pages). In addition to reviews, each reviews section has a top-sellers list, as well as numerous sidebars with interviews or small features. Unlike a number of European magazines that give their ratings with a number of stars (with normally 4 or 5 stars for the best review), EW grades the reviews academic-style, so that the highest reviews will get a letter grade of "A" and the lowest reviews get an "F", with plus or minus graduations in between assigned to each letter except "F".

The sections are:

* Not in every issue.

The Bullseye

This section occupies the back page of the magazine, rating the "hits" and "misses" from the past week's events in popular culture on a bullseye graphic. For example, the May 22, 2009, edition featured Justin Timberlake hosting Saturday Night Live in the center, while the then-drama between Eminem and Mariah Carey missed the target completely for being "very 2002". At the time when this was printed on a small part of a page, events that were greatly disliked were shown several pages away.

Specialty issues

Every year the magazine publishes several specialty issues. These issues are often published as double issues (issues given two consecutive weeks as its date). Many times, these features will be so big in length that they replace all other feature articles.

Common specialty issues include:

The complete list of the annual "Entertainer of the Year" winners:

1,000th issue and redesign

The 1,000th issue was released July 4, 2008, and included the magazine's top-100 list for movies, television shows, music videos, songs, Broadway shows, and technology of the past twenty-five years (1983–2008).

As of its 1,001st issue, EW drastically revamped the look, feel and content of the publication — increasing font and picture sizes and making all columns' word count shorter.

Website

The magazine's website EW.com, under managing editor Cyndi Stivers (creator of TimeOut New York)[1], provides users with daily content, breaking news, blogs, original video programming, entertainment exclusives and serves as an archive for past magazine interviews, columns and photos.

See also

  • Ewwy Award
  • Entertainment Weekly Academy Awards Nominations Predictions

References

  1. ↑ Stableford, Dylan (May 16, 2008)."Stivers Named Managing Editor of EW.com — Industry veteran joins Entertainment Weekly at a pivotal time for the brand."Stivers Named Managing Editor of EW.com Folio. Accessed August 10, 2009.

External links

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