Variety (magazine)


Variety is an American trade magazine owned by Penske Media Corporation. It was founded by Sime Silverman in New York City in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville. In 1933, Daily Variety was launched, based in Los Angeles, to cover the motion-picture industry. Variety website features entertainment news, reviews, box office results, plus a credits database, production charts and film calendar.

History

Founding

Variety has been published since December 16, 1905, when it was launched by Sime Silverman as a weekly periodical covering theater and vaudeville, with its headquarters in New York City. Silverman had been fired by The Morning Telegraph in 1905 for panning an act which had taken out an advert for $50. He subsequently decided to start his own publication that, he said, would "not be influenced by advertising." With a loan of $1,500 from his father-in-law, he launched Variety as publisher and editor. In addition to The Morning Telegraph, other major competitors at the time of the company's launch were The New York Clipper and the New York Dramatic Mirror.
The original logo, which is very similar to the current design, was sketched by Edgar M. Miller, a scenic painter, who refused payment. The front cover contained pictures of the original editorial staff: Alfred Greason, Epes W. Sargeant, Joshua Lowe, and Silverman. The first issue contained a review by Silverman's son Sidne, also known as Skigie who was claimed to be the youngest critic in the world at seven years old.

20th century

In 1922, Silverman acquired The New York Clipper which had been reporting on the stage and other entertainment since 1853, in an attempt to attract advertising revenue away from Billboard, following a dispute with William Donaldson, the owner of Billboard. Silverman folded it two years later after spending $100,000, merging some of its features into Variety. The same year, he launched the Times Square Daily, which he referred to as "the world's worst daily" and soon scrapped. During that period, Variety staffers worked on all three papers.
After the launch of The Hollywood Reporter in 1930, Silverman launched the Hollywood-based Daily Variety in 1933 with Arthur Ungar as the editor. It replaced the Variety Bulletin issued in Hollywood on Fridays as a four-page wraparound to the Weekly. Daily Variety was initially published every day other than Sunday but mostly on Monday to Friday. The Daily and the Weekly were initially run as virtually independent newspapers, with the Daily concentrating mostly on Hollywood news and the Weekly on U.S. and international coverage.
Silverman passed on the editorship of the Weekly Variety to Abel Green as his replacement in 1933. He remained as publisher until his death later that year, soon after launching Daily Variety. Silverman's son Sidne succeeded him as publisher of both publications but upon contracting tuberculosis in 1936 he could no longer take a day-to-day role at the paper. Green, the editor, and Harold Erichs, the treasurer and chief financial officer, ran the paper during his illness. Following Sidne's death in 1950, his only son Syd Silverman, was the sole heir to what was then Variety Inc. Young Syd's legal guardian Erichs, who had started at Variety as an office boy, assumed the presidency.
Ungar remained editor of Daily Variety until his death in 1950.
He was followed by Joe Schoenfeld.
In 1953, Army Archerd took over the "Just for Variety" column on page two of Daily Variety and swiftly became popular in Hollywood. Archerd broke countless exclusive stories, reporting from film sets, announcing pending deals, and giving news of star-related hospitalizations, marriages, and births. The column appeared daily for 52 years until September 1, 2005.
Erichs continued to oversee Variety until 1956. After that date, Syd Silverman managed the company as publisher of both the Weekly Variety in New York and the Daily Variety in Hollywood.
Thomas M. Pryor, former Hollywood bureau chief of The New York Times, became editor of Daily Variety in 1959. Under Pryor, Daily Variety expanded from 8 pages to 32 pages and also saw circulation increase from 8,000 to 22,000.
Green remained editor of Variety until he died in 1973, with Syd taking over.
In 1987, Variety was sold to Cahners Publishing for $64 million. In December 1987, Syd handed over editorship of Variety to Roger Watkins. After 29 years as editor of Daily Variety, Tom Pryor handed over to his son Pete in June 1988.
On December 7, 1988, Watkins proposed and oversaw the transition to four-color print. Upon its launch, the new-look Variety measured one inch shorter with a washed-out color on the front. The old front-page box advertisement was replaced by a strip advertisement, along with the first photos published in Variety since Sime gave up using them in the old format in 1920: they depicted Sime, Abel, and Syd.
For 20 years from 1989, Varietys editor-in-chief was Peter Bart, originally only of the weekly New York edition, with Michael Silverman running the Daily in Hollywood. Bart had worked previously at Paramount Pictures and The New York Times.
Syd remained as publisher until 1990 when he was succeeded on Weekly Variety by Gerard A. Byrne and on Daily Variety by Sime Silverman's great-grandson, Michael Silverman. Syd became chairman of both publications.

21st century

In April 2009, Bart moved to the position of "vice president and editorial director", characterized online as "Boffo No More: Bart Up and Out at Variety". From mid-2009 to 2013, Timothy M. Gray oversaw the publication as Editor-in-Chief, after over 30 years of various reporter and editor positions in the newsroom.

Acquisition by Penske Media Corporation

In October 2012, Reed Business Information, the periodical's owner, sold the publication to Penske Media Corporation. PMC is the owner of Deadline Hollywood, which since the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike has been considered Variety's largest competitor in online showbiz news. In October 2012, Jay Penske, chairman and CEO of PMC, announced that the website's paywall would come down, the print publication would stay, and he would invest more into Varietys digital platform in a townhall.
In March 2013, owner Penske appointed three co-editors to oversee different parts of the publication's industry coverage; Claudia Eller as Editor, Film; Cynthia Littleton as Editor, TV; and Andrew Wallenstein as Editor, Digital. The decision was also made to stop printing Daily Variety with the last printed edition published on March 19, 2013, with the headline "Variety Ankles Daily Pub Hubbub". A significant portion of the publication's advertising revenue comes during the film-award season leading up to the Academy Awards. During this "Awards Season", large numbers of colorful, full-page "For Your Consideration" advertisements inflate the size of Variety to double or triple its usual page count.
In June 2014, Variety launched a high-end real-estate breaking news site, Dirt, under the direction of self-proclaimed "Real Estalker" Mark David, which later expanded to its own stand-alone site in 2019. October 2014 Eller and Wallenstein were upped to Co-Editors in Chief, with Littleton continuing to oversee the trade's television coverage. In June 2014, Penske Media Corporation entered into an agreement with Reuters to syndicate news from Variety and Variety Latino-Powered by Univision to distribute leading entertainment news to the international news agency's global readership. This dissemination comes in the form of columns, news stories, images, video, and data-focused products. In July 2015, Variety was awarded a Los Angeles Area Emmy Award by the Television Academy in the Best Entertainment Program category for Variety Studio: Actors on Actors, a series of one-hour specials that take viewers inside Hollywood films and television programs through conversations with acclaimed actors. A second Los Angeles Area Emmy Award was awarded in 2016.
In June 2019, Variety shut down its Gaming section.

Editions

  • Variety is a weekly entertainment publication with a broad coverage of movies, television, theater, music and technology, written for entertainment executives. It is the only remaining Variety print publication and is published weekly and delivered internationally.
  • Daily Variety was the Los Angeles–based Hollywood and Broadway daily edition. The Daily Variety brand was revived in 2019 as a Mon–Fri email newsletter presenting the top stories of the last 24 hours. Top stories are also posted on the Daily Variety page of Variety.com. Daily Variety Gotham, was the name of the New York City–based edition which gave a priority focus to East Coast show-business news and was produced earlier in the evening than the Los Angeles edition so it could be delivered to New York the following morning.
  • Variety.com is the Internet version of Variety. It was one of the first online newspapers to charge for access when it launched. In June 2010, all content on the website became paywalled. The paywall was removed in April 2013, but access to additional content, such as the archives, requires subscription. Variety is also available as a mobile app as Variety On-The-Go.
  • Variety Hitmakers is the publication's first music franchise. The annual list recognizes the writers, producers, publishers, and other key personnel behind the scenes "who helped make―and break―the most consumed songs of the year as compiled by BuzzAngle Music". Kendrick Lamar, DJ Khaled, and Scooter Braun featured on three individual covers of the premiere print issues, with Lamar named Hitmaker of the Year. He, along with Khaled and Hailee Steinfeld, was honored at the inaugural Hitmakers awards ceremony held later that same month—the event has continued annually since. Other honorees have included Dua Lipa and Bebe Rexha as 2018's Breakthrough Artist and Songwriter of the Year respectively, BTS, and Harry Styles.
On December 15, 1906, Variety published its first anniversary number that contained 64 pages, double the size of a regular edition. It published regular bumper anniversary editions each year, most often at the beginning of January, normally with a review of the year and other charts and data, including, from 1938 onwards, lists of the top performing films of the year and, from 1949, the annually updated all-time rental chart. The editions also contained many advertisements from show business personalities and companies. The 100th anniversary edition was published in October 2005 listing Variety icons of the century. Along with the large anniversary editions, Variety also published special editions containing lots of additional information, charts and data for three film festivals: Cannes Film Festival, MIFED Film Market, and American Film Market Daily Variety also published an anniversary issue each October. This regularly contained a day-by-day review of the year in show business and in the 1970s started to contain republication of the film reviews published during the year.
Older back issues of Variety are available on microfilm. In 2010, Variety.com allowed access to digitized versions of all issues of Variety and Daily Variety with a subscription. Certain articles and reviews prior to 1998 have been republished on Variety.com. The Media History Digital Library has scans of the archive of Variety from 1905 to 1963 available online.