Then AND NOW - Time Inc.'s Entertainment Weekly - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

A selection from the December 1990 FOLIO:, plus an update

The reports of my death... Entertainment Weekly, which allegedly is posting losses as high as 40 percent over Time Warner Inc. projections, is being repackaged. Again.

"We want to make the book less cluttered and more accessible," says James Seymore Jr., managing editor. The eight-month-old start-up is thought to be one of the most expensive launches ever.

Entertainment Weekly could run a 1990 deficit as high as $50 million, some $20 million over internal estimates. "If [co-chairman Steven] Ross could find a way to fold it without having the company look foolish, he might do it," suggests Martin Walker, president of Periodical Studies Service.

"Entertainment Weekly is becoming another People. And who needs two celebrity weeklies?"

Apparently, America does. Entertainment Weekly ranked No. 21 on the Folio: 500 with 1999 revenues of approximately $222 million, and circulation is approaching 1.5 million. EW has seen 13 ratebase increases in 10 years. While People is still the giant in the category, its fellow Time Inc. publication is doing quite well and has managed to create its own identity.

"We never set out to be another People," says Entertainment Weekly publisher Dave Morris. "The difference is simple. When People does a story, it goes to the home of the celebrity. When we do one, we go to the studio where they work. It's about home fife versus work life."

Morris, who joined EW as New York sales manager in 1991, recalls that senior management had some hard conversations at the time over how much more money the title would need to stay afloat. But EW turned the corner with a profit in 1996. "Our goal was to become the fourth legitimate weekly of Time Inc.," Morris says. Joining Time, Sports Illustrated and People, it's done just that.

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