| Wikipedia: Entertainment Weekly |
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| Categories | Entertainment |
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| Frequency | Weekly |
| Publisher | Time Inc. |
| First issue | 1990 |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | ew.com |
| ISSN | 1049-0434 |
Entertainment Weekly (sometimes abbreviated as EW) is a magazine published by Time Inc. in the United States which covers movies, television, music, Broadway stage productions, 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. Also, unlike Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, which are aimed at industry insiders, EW targets a more general audience. Its original TV advertising soliciting pre-publication subscribers portrayed it as a consumer guide to popular culture ("the post-modern Farmer's Almanac"). The magazine features celebrities on the cover and addresses topics such as TV ratings, movie grosses, production costs, concert ticket sales, ad budgets, and in-depth articles about scheduling, producers, showrunners, etc. The magazine publishes several "double issues" each year (usually in January, May, June and/or August) which 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 fulfill its marketing claim of 52 issues per year for subscribers.
The first edition of Entertainment Weekly was published in 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 1,700,000 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.[citation needed] The 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.
Contents |
Typical content
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 ads 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 8 to 10 pages long, and features short news articles, as well as several specific recurring sections:
The Must List
This is a two-page spread highlighting ten things (books, movies, songs, etc.) that the staff loves from the week, it usually features one pick from EW readers.
First Look
subtitled 'An early peak at some of Hollywood's coolest projects,' is a two-age spread with behind-the-scenes or publicity stills of upcoming movies, TV episodes or music events.
The Shaw Report
is a small sidebar feature, written by Jessica Shaw that rates several trios of related trends: one that is "in"; one that is "five minutes ago" (recently fashionable but no longer so); and one that is "out."
The Hit List
written each week by critic Scott Brown, highlights ten major events, with short comedic commentaries by Brown. Typically, there will be some continuity to the commentaries. This column was originally written by Jim Mullen and featured 20 events each week, and Dalton Ross later wrote an abbreviated version.
The Hollywood Insider
is a one-page section that reports breaking news in entertainment. It gives details, in the separate columns, on the most current in television, movie, and music news.
The Style Report
is a full page devoted to celebrity style. Because its focus is on celebrity fashion or lifestyle, it is graphically rich in nature, featuring many photographs or other images. Recently, the page converted to a new format: five pictures of celebrity fashions for the week, graded on the magazine's normal A to F scale. A spin-off section, called "Style Hunter," which finds reader-requested articles of clothing or accessories that have appeared in pop culture recently, appears frequently.
The Monitor
is a two-page spread devoted to major events in celebrity lives. It is very tabloid-like in nature, highlighting events like weddings, illnesses, arrestes, court appearances, and deaths. Deaths of major celebrities are typically detailed in a full page obituary titled Legacy. This feature is nearly identical to sister publication People Magazine's "Passages" feature.
The celebrity column
The final section of News and Notes is devoted to a different column each week, written by three of the magazine's more prominent writers:
The Pop of King
is Stephen King's column, where he discusses various aspects of pop 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, 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 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 stage. In the magazine's history, there have only been a few cover stories (John Grisham, Stephen King) devoted to authors. There has never been an EW cover solely devoted to theater.
Reviews
There are seven sections of reviews in the back pages of each issue (together encompass 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:
Movies
color-coded in red, will typically feature all of the major releases for that weekend, as well as several independent and foreign films that have also been released. Lisa Schwarzbaum and Owen Gleiberman are the two primary movie critics, with occasional reviews by Scott Brown and Gregory Kirschling. This EW section also includes "Critical Mass" - a round up of the grades that have also been given by a number of noted movie reviewers in the American press (such as Ty Burr from the Boston Globe and Todd McCarthy from Variety and Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times). Additionally, this section includes the box-office figures from the previous weekend and some sort of infographic. The only new film that has ever been given an A+ rating by EW is My Left Foot in one of the magazine's first issues. DVDs are now profiled in the one-page Movies on DVD section that follows.
Television
Chief critic Ken Tucker, color-coded in green, reviews made-for-TV movies and new series, as well as some television specials. There is also a section of sound bites featuring quotes from various television shows. The section also includes the Nielsen ratings for the previous week. On the following page is typically a TV on DVD section, profiling releases of TV movies and specials or complete seasons of television shows.
What to Watch
Currently written by Jessica Shaw, features brief one or two sentence reviews of several TV shows on each night of the week, as well as one slightly longer review, usually written by someone else, with a letter grade.
Music
Color-coded in blue, reviews major album releases for the week, divided by genre. There is also typically at least one interview or feature, as well as a section called "Download This," highlighting several singles available for download on the Internet. A chart displaying record sales and airplay for the previous week is also included.
Books
color-coded in purple, features reviews of books released during the week. Sometimes, authors will write guest reviews of other works. There is also typically one interview or spotlight feature in this section per issue. Bestseller lists appear at the end of this section.
Theater
color-coded in orange, (not in every issue) reviews shows currently playing, divided by the city where they are running.
Games
color-coded in orange, (not in every issue) reviews current video game releases.
Tech
color-coded in teal, (not in every issue) reviews new websites and products, and profiles current internet or technology phenomena.
The Bullseye
occupies the back page of the magazine, rating the "hits" and "misses" from the past week's events in pop culture on a bull's eye graphic. For example, the May 22, 2009 edition feature Justin Timberlake hosting Saturday Night Live in the center, while drama between Eminem and Mariah Carey missed the target completely for being 'very 2002.'
Specialty issues
Every year, Entertainment Weekly publishes a number of 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:
- Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter Preview
- Generally, each quarter, the magazine covers upcoming releases in movies, music, television, live shows, and books. Generally, the summer issue's focus will be on upcoming movies only unless major TV series or events, music releases, or book releases are occurring then.
- The Photo Issue
- Once a year, EW dedicates an issue to featuring (aside from the normal reviews and news content) only photos of celebrities. Unlike tabloid issues, these are photos done with the celebrities' cooperation, and often they use some form of artistic expression. A wide variety of celebrities are used, including Green Day, Reese Witherspoon, Morrissey, the cast of the show Arrested Development, Tobey Maguire, and Cameron Diaz. Generally, the photos will contain some descriptive text, sometimes about the person or sometimes a commentary from the photographers who photographed them for a story.
- Academy Awards issues
- In the past the magazine devoted at least four cover stories per year to the Oscars; "The Oscar Race Begins" issue in January predicts the nominees, the "nominees" issue in February profiles the recently-announced Oscar contenders, the "Oscar Odds" issue predicts the winners the week before the awards, and the after-awards issue covers the ceremony the week after it airs. Virtually every EW issue mentions the Oscars in some capacity, often on the cover, and a film or actor's Academy Awards chances are often noted in EW reviews. In comparison, music's Grammy Awards, television's Emmy Awards, and theater's Tony Awards are given relatively limited coverage.
- End-of-the-Year Issue
- The last issue of each year. On each cover is the Entertainer of the Year, which is chosen by readers at EW's official website. The issue consists of the 10 best items released in theater, film, TV, music, DVD, literature, and (as of last year) fashion that year. Music, TV, and Movies have two critics give their top 10; the others only have one. Each section also has a five-worst list (Movies is the only section in which both critics give the worst). Also in the issue are special sections devoted to (and logically titled) Entertainers of the Year, Great Performances, Breakout Stars, a timeline of infamous celebrity mishaps, and obituaries of stars who died (this used to be in a separate issue; it was combined with the EOTY issue in 2003). This is the only issue without any reviews.
- In 2007, J.K. Rowling was named Entertainment Weekly's Entertainer of the Year for her Harry Potter series. She is the first entertainer primarily known for writing to be so named.
The complete list of EW Entertainers of the year are:
- Bart Simpson (1990)
- Jodie Foster (1991)
- the cast of Saturday Night Live (1992)
- Steven Spielberg (1993)
- Tom Hanks (1994)
- the cast of Friends (1995)
- Rosie O'Donnell (1996)
- Ellen DeGeneres (1997)
- Leonardo DiCaprio (1998)
- Ricky Martin (1999)
- Russell Crowe (2000)
- Nicole Kidman (2001)
- Denzel Washington (2002)
- the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
- Jon Stewart (2004)
- the cast of Lost (2005)
- the cast of Grey's Anatomy (2006)
- J. K. Rowling (2007)
- Robert Downey Jr. (2008)
The issue released July 4, 2008 was the magazine's 1,000th issue which includes the Top 100 movies, TV shows, music videos, songs, Broadway shows, and technology of the past 25 years (1983-2008).
As of their 1001st issue, Entertainment Weekly drastically revamped the look, feel and content of the publication; increasing font and picture size, making all columns' word count shorter.
References
See Also
Entertainment Weekly Academy Awards Predictions
External links
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