Entertainment Weekly Gets Weaker as the Weeks Go By

The internet has taken the media world by storm. Publications that solely relied on selling prints have slowly been moving towards releasing stories online. Despite this new approach, some magazines and newspapers have managed to hold onto their physical sales as well as publishing stories on their own website. One company that has failed to fo that is Entertainment Weekly, which stopped printing in 2022, now only releasing online.

Entertainment Weekly is an American entertainment magazine that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and everything popular culture. It debuted in 1990 and published weekly until 2019, when they began releasing monthly.

I recently acquired a printed issue from November 14, 1997 (because it featured Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Love Hewitt on the cover and I really liked them in I Know What You Did Last Summer). When looking through this and then looking through the website, it's almost like night and day.

A scanned version of the magazine publication: https://archive.org/details/entertainment-weekly-405-1997-11-14-jennifer-love-hewitt-c/mode/2up

For one thing, the online version now only has narrative articles, but the printed magazines had interesting graphics to make it more fun to read, like this table listing out teen stars of the time.

There are plenty of advertisements filling the magazine. In fact, half the pages are just large advertisements. There's promotional posters for different movies, perfume ads, electronics, and for some reason a full page ad for a watch that has Tyra Banks nude modeling and screaming on the side. What that has to do with a watch? I don't think they cared that much to explain.

The first difference I noticed between the print publication and the online publication is the lack of interesting graphics or ads, but then again my computer has an ad blocker so that might be a reason for that. It was more unique before because they got up close and personal with the celebrities and actors, but now they seem like any other news group. On page 26 of the 1997 publication, the writer gives some of their own insight on the teen scene, whereas now they have excruciatingly long articles that kind of drag on just so that you stay on the page longer (that gives them a little revenue).

The target audience for the 1997 publication was most likely the teens interested in movies and TV. I can tell because they use the word "teen" about a million times. The new articles published are targeted toward an older audience that still watches cable TV. I can tell because they talk about shows that I don't ever hear people my age talk about. They don't seem to actively leave out or offend anyone though, so I assume anyone that watches those shows could find the articles interesting, it just depends on the shows audience.

Here's a recent article talking about a TV show I've never watched: https://ew.com/the-white-lotus-leslie-bibb-carrie-coon-react-trump-conversation-episode-3-11688907

Overall the print version is more fun to read and look at. Careful precision was put into the layouts. The online version has a simply layout that isn't very fun to look at. However, the online version is also free and is actually full of stories instead of being half advertisements.

Simple article (online) vs. 2 page ad about audio equipment (print)

I believe that they both serve the audience in unique ways. The online version is more accessible, but the print version is more interesting. They both have their strengths and weaknesses and I'm sure if I had ever been a subscriber to the magazine, my opinion would be a whole lot different.

Entertainment Weekly advertises their articles on Instagram and releases clips from interviews. They have 2.5 million followers but usually only get around roughly 1.5 thousand likes each post depending on the content.

In the end, I've discovered that there are actually a lot more upsides to the online publication, but considering that I've never really enjoyed reading, it's hard for me to stay interested while reading black letters against a white screen with one picture. I'm interested what people who were subscribed for years thought when it switched to online, or even when it switched to monthly.