Entertainment Weekly is Going Monthly

Entertainment Weekly, the long-running magazine that brought the world of Hollywood trade [...]

By Russ Burlingame

Entertainment Weekly, the long-running magazine that brought the world of Hollywood trade publications to the casual reader, will become a monthly magazine this summer. While the magazine -- which has gone by EW on the internet for a while now -- will not completely rebrand and will retain the Entertainment Weekly name for print, it will publish its final weekly issue on July 5. Print magazines have a had a difficult time keeping up with the internet in recent years, since most of the content they produce will have been posted online in the time between when they learn of it and when the magazine streets.

Monthly and quarterly entertainment publications are also struggling, but have different advantages. Often, such publications' long lead time can allow them broader access to stories, to write longer and more thought-provoking pieces which then create trickle-down traffic to the magazine's own website when other outlets link back to them. It also, somewhat more obviously, keeps costs lower since even a larger monthly magazine will be able to reduce postage and labor costs. JD Heyman, who has been working at People, will take over as the editor of the "reimagined" Entertainment Weekly, and he told AdWeek the logic behind keeping the name intact.

"I just happen to believe that you have to own your legacy and what people love about the brand and what's attached to it. I don't want to walk away from a name that's loved or an audience that loves it," Heyman said. He described the change as being "evolutionary" in nature and responding to the needs of the audience.

The AdWeek story says that Entertainment Weekly will continue to focus on their online and multimedia presence. They will also presumably continue to sponsor events like their annual Comic Con party, since the first monthly issue of the magazine will be an issue cover-dated August 2019 and themed around Comic Con International in San Diego. Following a pattern that has worked well for Life and People (amongst others), the brand will reportedly also continue producing special print issues themed around big events in the entertainment space. Previous "topical" Entertainment Weekly publications that have done well centered on properties like Harry Potter and Star Wars, so it would not be difficult to picture a Marvel Phase Four special or something timed to coincide with the launch of the new Avatar sequels.

The print magazine had about 1.5 million paid subscribers, which is less than 10% of the monthly traffic generated by EW's website, according to print numbers from December and a ComScore rating for the website from April. Event coverage, its Sirius channel, and other ways of reaching a broader audience outside of the print space will either be unchanged or expanded as a result of the change to print.

Current EW editor in chief Henry Goldblatt, who has been with the company for more than 15 years, is leaving the company, and it sounds like layoffs are likely. While Heyman declined to comment on the possibility specifically in the AdWeek interview, he did say "there will be changes, there are always changes. And change is hard. I would stress that this is an evolution, not a revolution in terms of what we're doing."

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