Product Code Database
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 film industry. Variety website features entertainment news, reviews, box office results, plus a credits database, production charts and film calendar.
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 (Chicot or Chic), Joshua Lowe, and Silverman. The first issue contained a review by Silverman's son Sidne Silverman, also known as Skigie (based on the childish lisping of his name) who was claimed to be the youngest critic in the world at seven years old.
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 color printing. 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 (Syd's son) 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.
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 , 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.
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. Accessed March 12, 2018. Along with the large anniversary editions, Variety also published special editions containing lots of additional information, charts and data (and advertising) for three film festivals: Cannes Film Festival,554 pages MIFED Film Market,392 pages and American Film Market356 pages 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. Accessed March 9, 2018. 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.
Paid circulation for the weekly Variety magazine in 2023 was 85,300.BPA Audit Statement, 2023 Each copy of each Variety issue is read by an average of three people, with an estimated total readership of 255,900.Ipsos Subscriber Study, 2013 Variety.com has 32 million unique monthly visitors.Comscore, March 2023BPA Worldwide, September 2011
Such terms as "boffo", "payola", and "striptease" are attributed to the magazine. Accessed March 15, 2008.
In 1934, founder Sime Silverman headed a list in Time magazine of the "ten modern Americans who have done most to keep American jargon alive".
According to The Boston Globe, the Oxford English Dictionary cites Variety as the earliest source for about two dozen terms, including "show biz" (1945). In 2005, Welcome Books published The Hollywood Dictionary by Timothy M. Gray and J. C. Suares, which defines nearly 200 of these terms.
One of its popular headlines was during the Wall Street Crash of 1929: "Wall St. Lays An Egg". The most famous was "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" (the movie-prop version renders it as "Stix nix hix pix!" in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Michael Curtiz's musical film–biographical film about George M. Cohan starring James Cagney).
In 2012, Rizzoli Books published Variety: An Illustrated History of the World from the Most Important Magazine in Hollywood by Gray. The book covers Varietys coverage of hundreds of world events, from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, through Arab Spring in 2012, and argues that the entertainment industry needs to stay aware of changes in politics and tastes since those changes will affect their audiences. In a foreword to the book, Martin Scorsese calls Variety "the single most formidable trade publication ever" and says that the book's content "makes you feel not only like a witness to history, but part of it too."
In 2013, Variety staffers tallied more than 200 uses of weekly or Daily Variety in TV shows and films, ranging from I Love Lucy to Entourage.
In 2016, Variety endorsed Hillary Clinton for President of the United States, marking the first time the publication endorsed a candidate for elected office in its 111-year history.
In 1920, Sime Silverman purchased an old brownstone building around the corner at 154 West 46th Street in New York, which became the Variety headquarters until 1987, when the publication was purchased. Under the new management of Cahners Publishing, the New York headquarters of the Weekly Variety was relocated to the corner of 32nd Street and Park Avenue South. Five years later, it was downgraded to a section of one floor in a building housing other Cahner's publications on West 18th Street, until the majority of operations were moved to Los Angeles.
When Daily Variety started in 1933, its offices were in various buildings near Hollywood Blvd. and Sunset Blvd. In 1972, Syd Silverman purchased a building at 1400 North Cahuenga Blvd. which housed the Daily's offices until 1988, after which its new corporate owners and new publisher, Arthur Anderman, moved them to a building on the Miracle Mile on Wilshire Boulevard.
In late 2008, Variety moved its Los Angeles offices to 5900 Wilshire, a 31-story office building on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile area. The building was dubbed the Variety Building because a red, illuminated " Variety" sign graced the top of it.
In 2013, PMC, the parent company of Variety, announced plans to move Variety's offices to their new corporate headquarters at 11175 Santa Monica Blvd. in Westwood. There, Variety shares the 9-story building with parent company PMC, Variety Intelligence Platform, and PMC's other media brands, including Deadline.com, Rolling Stone, Vibe, Billboard, Robb Report and the West Coast offices of WWD and Footwear News.
In 1930 Variety also started publishing a summary of miniature reviews for the films reviewed that week and in 1951 the editors decided to position the capsules on top of the reviews, a tradition retained today.
In 1992, Variety published the Variety Movie Guide containing a collection of 5,000 abridged reviews edited by Derek Elley. The last edition was published in 2001 with 8,500 reviews. Many of the abridged reviews for films prior to 1998 are published on Variety.com unless they have later posted the original review.
The annual anniversary edition published in January would often contain a necrology of the entertainment people who had died that year.
As Multimedia expanded over the years, charts and data for other media such as TV ratings and music charts were published, especially in the anniversary editions that were regularly published each January.
During the 1930s, charts of the top performing films of the year were published and this tradition has been maintained annually since.
In 1946, a weekly National Box Office survey was published on page 3 indicating the performance of the week's hits and flops based on the box office results of 25 key U.S. cities. Later that year, a list of All-Time Top Grossers with a list of films that had achieved or gave promise of earning $4,000,000 or more in domestic (United States and Canada) rentals was published. An updated chart was published annually for over 50 years, normally in the anniversary edition each January.
In the late 1960s, Variety started to use an IBM 360 computer to collate the grosses from their weekly reports of 22 to 24 U.S. cities from January 1, 1968. The data came from up to 800 theatres which represented around 5% of the U.S. cinema population at the time but around one-third of the total U.S. box office grosses. In 1969, they started to publish the computerized box office compilation of the top 50 grossing films of the week based on this data. "The Love Bug" was the number one in the first chart published for the week ending April 16, 1969. The chart format was changed in 1989 to reduce the list to a top 40 and display a summary of the sample city theater grosses rather than publish the theater grosses separately. The sample chart was discontinued in 1990.
Arthur D. Murphy, who joined Variety in 1964 and worked there until 1993, was one of the first to organize and chart domestic box office gross information that became more available during the 1980s and report it in a meaningful form setting a standard for how film box office information is reported today. Murphy used the weekly sample reports to estimate the total US weekly box office compared with previous annual totals which was reported in Variety's US Box Office Report each week. The sample also allowed Murphy to estimate the Market Share percentage rankings of distributors.
In 1976, Variety Box Office Index (VBI) was launched where each month's actual key city box office tally, after seasonal adjustment, was simultaneously expressed as an index number, with 1970 as a whole being used as the base initially. The current month's VBI expressed the monthly box office performance as a percentage change from the base year. The index was published until 1991 giving a history of comparable monthly and annual box office performance for the past 20 years.
During the 1980s, Daily Variety started to publish a weekly chart of the domestic box office grosses of films as compared to the Top 50 chart in Variety which was based on a sample of key markets. Variety started to publish this weekend box office report together with the sample top 50 chart (later top 40) until they discontinued the sample chart in February 1990 with the weekend box office report being their main source of box office reporting.
In 2009, Variety launched a chart showcasing the top performing film trailers ahead of theatrical release in partnership with media measurement firm Visible Measures.
In 1981, Variety International Showbusiness Reference was published, which they claimed was the first book to contain a complete list of all winners and nominees for the Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, Tony Awards, Grammy Awards and Pulitzer Prize. The following year they published Variety major U.S. showbusiness awards containing just this award details and a revised edition, called Variety presents the complete book of major U.S. show business awards, was published in 1985.
In 1988, R.R. Bowker, a Reed Reference Publishing Company, part of Reed-Elsevier, PLC, a "sister" company to Variety, published Variety's Video Directory Plus, a CD-ROM subscription product, updated quarterly, containing metadata about 90,000 home video products and full-text film reviews from Variety.
Peter Cowie joined Variety in 1989 and his International Film Guide, which had been published annually since 1964, became Variety International Film Guide with reports from countries on the year in cinema as well as information of film festivals. It continued to bear Variety's name until 2006.
In 1990, Variety published a 15-volume set of its television reviews (including home video product) from 1923 to 1988. Additional supplements were published covering 1989–1990, 1991–1992 and 1993–1994.
In 1999, Cowie published The Variety Insider with detailed information on the year in entertainment as well as historical information. A second edition followed in 2000.
In 2004, Variety published VLife, providing insider news on lifestyle features for the entertainment industry. It was published seven times annually.
In January 2017, they launched the Variety Content Studio, creating custom content for brands.
|
|
