Entertainment Weekly (EW) published its first print magazine in February of 1990. Today, EW boasts over 22 million consumers of its digital media, more than double the 9 million print consumers. EW covers topics such as movies, music, television, Broadway theater, books, and pop culture. Its digital audience is mainly Generation X and Millennials, including those who are somewhat tech savvy and who tend to be budget conscious and environmentally aware.
While the EW print magazine is among the most popular magazines in the United States, the publication’s digital media (mainly its website) offers many features that cannot be found in the hard copy itself, including breaking news and exclusive content.
Although EW is published weekly, we, as entertainment consumers, don’t always want to wait around that long for a story. So being able to break a story in real-time on the EW website is invaluable. For example, the Oscars will be handed out this upcoming Sunday evening. Who would want to wait a week or two to find out who wins in this day and age? I personally won’t be able to watch the Oscars, but you can bet that I’ll be checking the EW website for up to the minute results and behind the scenes coverage throughout the evening.
Besides breaking news, the EW website is able to offer consumers exclusive content that is not in their print edition. With virtually unlimited space in the digital arena, EW offers readers many more photos, including behind the scenes photos of movies and tv shows, more interview, photo shoot, and candid photos of celebrities and their lives and work. Videos are, of course, impossible in print media, so being able to share movie trailers, outtakes, acceptance speeches and other content in video format via the EW website is an important expansion beyond print editions.
The EW website is able to personalize the reader’s experience in ways that print never could. Readers are invited to sign up for daily emails in different categories of their choosing. They can pick from emails regarding movies, television, books, and more. At the end of each article, EW gives recommendations on other content that a person might be interested in, based on the article they just finished. Also, everyone gets an opportunity to pick a response emoji to show how they feel about the article (similar to facebook’s choices on posts). Further, readers can give their input on each story via the comments section found at the bottom of each article.
EW website consumers tend to be just slightly younger than EW print consumers. The millennials are more accustomed to getting most, if not all, of their news and information from the internet since that’s how they’ve done their schoolwork since they were young. However, older consumers often prefer to hold a physical magazine in their hands, since that’s more what they’re used to doing.
Eventually, Entertainment Weekly will have to stop producing its print magazines. As most things do, ultimately, that decision will boil down to money. As the earth’s environment is depleted of its resources, trees will become scarce. This will drive up the price of paper, and, with increasing prices and more and more people turning to digital media, it will not be cost-effective to print EW magazine, or most other magazines that are not highly specialized or play a critical role for society in general. Until then, enjoy your Entertainment Weekly magazine using whichever method you feel most comfortable with, print or digital.
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