By Karen Feigenbaum
[**** out of *****]
Entertainment Weekly's web-site is one of the best companion
sites to an existing product in another medium which I've ever visited.
Unlike other sister sites, in my opinion, their web page does not
supplant the want to purchase their magazine. The content they choose
to run on their web-site either compliments or supplements their magazine
content, but doesn't replace it.
The misnamed weekly site updates their news stories at least
once a day, offering the same type of gossipy fun side of the entertainment
news world as is provided in their print subscription. Basic information
from the magazine, such as weekend box office grosses and movie ratings,
are immediately displayed on the home page. Other more web-based items,
such as on-line polls, are accessible through linking.
By linking to more of the site's internal pages, articles wholly
different than those in the latest magazine edition become available.
Yet the magazine's sense of wit, fun, and occasional irreverence carries
throughout the site.
The site feels mildly skimpy on actual content, compared to the weightier
magazine, but I don't think it's inappropriate. And at every link
along the way, you're perpetually reminded that you can try two free
introductory issues of Entertainment Weekly… but again,
it doesn't feel inappropriate. In fact, the web site's main purpose
to hock it's own magazine does not seem unbecoming at all. I would
imagine that after reading small snippets of the information and style
they offer, a non-subscriber's appetite would probably be perfectly
whetted for the main product.
Much like Entertainment Weekly's unabashed sense of fun commercialism
in their magazine, the web site's candid approach to selling subscriptions
comes across as refreshingly honest. It's an honesty that I know I,
as both a reader of their site and their print periodical, find myself
highly appreciative of and amused by. EW has the ability to perfectly
toe some unspoken mental line while not crossing it.