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Entertainment Weekly
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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, EWs 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.
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Encyclopedia
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, EWs 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 EWs graphics and layout to reflect a more modern look. The website (), under managing editor Cyndi Stivers (creator of TimeOut New York), 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.
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 several specific recurring sections:
The Scene
a recently added section, is a two-page spread of photographs documenting “7 Days in Entertainment.” These may include anything from film sets, festivals, film stills, or celebrities. Two constant features of “The Scene” are the “Web Obsession of the Week,” which showcases a favorite online video of the EW staff, and the “Shaw Report.” The feature was recently renamed "First Look," and features photos exclusive to EW.
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 Bullseye
also a new element to the magazine, is a small boxed-in graphic of a bull's eye. The staff of the magazine rate the "hits" and "misses" from the past week's events in pop culture. For example, in the February 29, 2008 issue, the new Indiana Jones trailer was featured in the center, while Martha Stewart Living's purchase of Emeril Lagasse's franchise was placed as a "miss." Sometimes, events are deemed as a such a "miss" that they are placed up to several pages away from the actual target graphic.
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 the magazine's new 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 Spotlight
usually focuses on a specific celebrity--an actor, actress, musician, or writer--who has been featured in the news recently for a particular project, event, or political, endeavor. The interviews focus on the celebrity's particular project rather than with biographical information.
The Deal Report
written by Michelle Kung, highlights business deal and signings that have recently taken place. The section is separated by medium, but within each section separate events are separated only by ellipses. There are also typically a number of headshots of persons under discussion, as well as one full body shot. This feature appears to have been discontinued.
The Fever Chart
is a small infographic showing six events, ranked on their impact by temperature. This feature is rarely seen as of late.
The Style Sheet
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.
The Monitor
is a single page 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.
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.
The Must List
This is a one-page section highlighting ten things (books, movies, songs, etc.) that the staff loves from the week, it usually features one pick from EW readers.
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.
Review sections focused on Kids (children's entertainment) and Internet (websites, software, and video gaming), each color-coded in yellow, have been retired.
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 an "Ask the Critic" sidebar featuring the critics' answers to readers' questions about film criticism. 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.
DVD & Video
color-coded in blue, rates recently released DVDs on both the quality of the film, and of the DVD extras. Generally, the critics avoid rating the films themselves, unless it is something that was not recently in theaters. A chart is also given that displays the sales of DVDs and the amount of video rentals for the previous week.
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.
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.
The back page
The final (non-cover) page of the magazine is devoted to a different column each week, written by four of the magazine's more prominent writers:
The Pop of King
featured in the color blue, is Stephen King's column, where he discusses various aspects of pop culture, including movie or book recommendations among other things.
The Glutton
featured in orange, is the column by Dalton Ross (who briefly wrote the Hit List) dealing with a random aspect of popular culture. This feature is expanded on EW.com/glutton, and includes a random top 5 list at the bottom of the page.
The Final Cut
colored red, 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 back page columns. Harris has written about the writer's strike and the 2008 presidential election, among other topics.
Binge Thinking
the most recent addition to the back page and featured in pink, 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The last issue of each year. On each cover is the Entertainer of the Year, which is chosen by readers at EWs 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 Weeklys 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:
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.
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