- E!
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This article is about the American television network. For other uses, see E! (disambiguation).
E! Launched July 31, 1987 as Movietime,
June 1, 1990 as E! (U.S.)
December 2, 2002 (Germany)Owned by NBCUniversal Headquarters Los Angeles, California, United States Formerly called Movie Time (1987–1990) Sister channel(s) NBC
NBCUniversal Cable NetworksWebsite http://www.eonline.com Availability Satellite DirecTV
(US)Channel 236
Channel 1236 (VOD)DirecTV
(Latin America)Channel 222 Dish Network
(US)Channel 114 (SD/HD) Dish Network Mexico Channel 212 Sky
(UK & Ireland)Channel 151 SKY Italia
(Italy)Channel 124 Foxtel
(Australia)Channel 121 Austar
(Australia)Channel 121 SKY Network Television
(New Zealand)Channel 011 DStv
(Southern Africa)Channel 124 CanalSat
(France)Channel 29 TrueVisions
(Thailand)Channel 53 Astro Nusantara
(Indonesia)Channel 46 Astro
(Malaysia)Channel 712 (SD)
Channel 742 (HD)Cyfrowy Polsat
(Poland)Channel 32 NOVA
(Greece)Channel 210 Digiturk
(Turkey)Channel 9 TotalTV
(Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Macedonia)Channel 17 (Serbia) Dialogtv
(Sri Lanka & Canada)Channel 19 SKY Brasil
(Brasil)Channel 33 TVCabo
(Portugal)Channel 75 Net Digital
(Brasil)Channel 84 Tring Digital
(Albania)Channel 30 yes
(Israel)Channel 26 Orbit Showtime
(Arab World)channel385 Indovision
(Indonesia)Channel 242 Dolce
(Romania)Channel 144 Bell TV
(Canada)Channel 621 TVCable
(Ecuador)Channel 20 Cable First Media
(Indonesia)Channel 70 Available on most cable systems Check local listings UPC Ireland Channel 501 Virgin Media
(United Kingdom)Channel 156 StarHub TV
(Singapore)Channel 441 HOT
(Israel)Channel 31 TelstraClear InHomeTV
(New Zealand)Channel 11 UPC
(Netherlands)Channel 115 UPC Austria Channel 148 UPC Romania Channel 54 naxoo
(Switzerland)Channel 33 UPC Poland Channel 113 SBB Serbia Channel 311 SkyCable
(Philippines)Channel 57 IPTV AT&T U-Verse
(US)Channel 134 (SD)
Channel 1134 (HD)Now TV
(Hong Kong)Channel 531 Vodafone Casa TV
(Portugal)Channel 102 Fetch TV
(Australia)Channel 118 A1 Kabel TV
(Austria)Channel 519 E! Entertainment Television is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by NBCUniversal. It features entertainment-related programming, reality television, feature films and occasionally series and specials unrelated to the entertainment industry.
E! has an audience reach of 88 million cable and satellite viewers in the U.S. and 600 million homes internationally.
Contents
History
E! Entertainment Television was founded by Larry Namer and Alan Mruvka.[1][2]
The network launched on July 31, 1987 as Movietime, a service that aired movie trailers, entertainment news, event and awards coverage, and interviews as an early example of a national barker channel.[3] Early Movietime hosts included Greg Kinnear, Paula Abdul, Katie Wagner, Julie Moran, Suzanne Kay (daughter of Diahann Carroll), Mark DeCarlo, Sam Rubin and Richard Blade. Three years later, in June 1990, Movietime was renamed E! Entertainment Television[4] to emphasize its widening coverage of the celebrity-industrial complex, contemporary film, television and music, daily Hollywood gossip, and fashion.
Controlling ownership was originally held by a consortium of five cable companies (Comcast, Continental Cablevision, Cox Cable, TCI, and Warner Cable), HBO/Warner Bros., and various founding shareholders, with HBO directly programming and managing the network. In 1989, after Time-Life bought Warner Brothers to fend off a takeover bid by Paramount, the new Time Warner company held four of the eight major ownership positions and took over management control of Movietime and renamed the network E! Entertainment Television. In 1997, Comcast, one of the minority partners, teamed up with The Walt Disney Company to buy the channel after Time-Warner had exercised their put agreement.[5] In November 2006, Comcast (which eventually had the largest ownership stake in most of the network through mergers of forerunners of TCI and Continental under various circumstances) acquired Disney's 39.5% share of E! for $1.23 billion to gain full ownership of the network as part of a broader programming carriage agreement between Disney/ABC and Comcast.[6]
Comcast Entertainment Group, the company's television unit, became a division of NBCUniversal Television Group, after Comcast acquired a 51% majority stake in NBCUniversal in January 2011.[7] E!'s only sister networks prior to the NBC Universal merger were Style Network and G4, along with Comcast's sports networks Versus, Comcast SportsNet and Golf Channel. In the case of Versus, E! staff produced that network's Sports Soup, while the Orlando-based Golf Channel featured no crossovers with E! at all due to incompatible audiences and operations. Versus and Golf Channel are now under the direct control of the NBC Sports division and are no longer connected to their former sister networks beyond advertising and in-house operations.
Programming
Main article: List of programs broadcast by E!News
See also: E! NewsE! is one of the only U.S. general-entertainment cable channels that broadcasts a daily news program; its flagship entertainment news program is E! News, which debuted on September 1, 1991. The weekday program (which also has an hour-long weekend edition) features stories and gossip about celebrities, and the film, music and television industry, and has been broadcast under various formats since its launch, even being aired live for a time in the mid-2000s. First hosted by Dagny Hultgreen, it has been hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana Rancic since 2006.
E! News was the only entertainment news show on the channel for much of its history, until 2006 when the channel launched The Daily 10, hosted by Sal Masekela and Catt Sadler (Debbie Matenopoulos also co-hosted from the show's inception until 2008); the series was cancelled in September 2010 after E! announced that the weekday editions of E! News would be expanded to one hour starting on October 25, 2010,[8] and in the midst of controversy over a joke by Loveline co-host Mike Catherwood, who filled in for Masekela on the show frequently during 2010, that openly gay singer and ex-American Idol contestant Adam Lambert would enjoy being in jail with all men, during a story on the September 17, 2010 edition of The Daily 10 on an altercation Lambert allegedly had with a paparazzi.
Outside of E! News telecasts, the channel runs an E! News-branded ticker displaying entertainment news headlines each half-hour during regular programming (except during airings of E! News and The Soup, and the channel's early morning infomercial block), which is updated daily; fast-breaking entertainment headlines (e.g., celebrity arrest or death) may also be displayed on a ticker, during any program when warranted.
Original series
E! is known for its live red carpet pre-shows for the industry's three prominent award shows, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards and the Academy Awards, famous for its fashion critiques by Joan Rivers; Rivers has also hosted post-awards specials titled Fashion Police, which became a regular weekly series in September 2010. The network also produces a decent amount of documentary and biographical series, most notably E! True Hollywood Story; many of E!'s original specials are entertainment-related ranging from light fare such as 25 Cutest Child Stars All Grown Up to serious fare such as 15 Most Unforgettable Hollwood Tragedies. It also produces specials centering on investigative and crime stories including E! Investigates, which features topical investigative reports on subjects ranging from child prostitution to teenage pregnancy.
In recent years, the network has become popular for its reality television programs. Its most popular series as of 2011 is Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which has spawned three spinoffs (Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami, Kourtney and Kim Take New York, and Khloe and Lamar). Other reality programs that have aired on E! include The Anna Nicole Show, Sunset Tan, Gastineau Girls, The Girls Next Door (which itself has spawned two spinoffs Holly's World and Kendra), The Spin Crowd, Married to Rock, and most recently, Ice Loves Coco.
E! airs three comedy programs: the late night talk show Chelsea Lately, hosted by comedienne Chelsea Handler, its spinoff After Lately, and The Soup (based on the popular 1991-2002 E! series Talk Soup), featuring clips of the previous week's TV shows with humorous commentary delivered by the host, actor/comedian Joel McHale.
Uncharacteristic for any television network, E! airs the full credits of the current program at the show's beginning rather than the end; some programs, most prominently E! News, air their copyright tags in a similar fashion, and many series often feature production company credits at the start of the final segment of a program. However, feature films airing on the channel display the credits at the traditional end of program placement.
Acquired series
Over the years, E! has occasionally run acquired programming including reruns of Alice, Absolutely Fabulous, several 20/20 news programs from ABC, and edited 60-minute versions of Saturday Night Live, though fewer of these programs currently air. The only programming currently airing on E! that they do not produce are reruns of the former HBO series Sex and the City and films under the banner "Movies We Love"; the latter was part of a since-abandoned initiative by the network to use films to increase their ratings.
E! HD
The network launched a high definition simulcast on December 8, 2008, like the rest of E!'s sister lifestyle and sports networks owned by former parent Comcast Entertainment Group and subsequently the NBC cable networks, airing in the 1080i format. Currently filmed content and all of the network's post-2010 content, along with limited pre-2010 content are carried in the format, with HD programming airing in a letterbox format on the SD channel (films remain in 480i due to contractual or technical reasons).
During E!'s run as a broadcast service in Canada, the E! Ontario version of the service until the December 2008 discontinuation of the E! broadcast television system was available in HD over Hamilton, Ontario-based CHCH-TV (channel 11) on their channel 18 digital signal.
E! Online
E! Online is the online arm of E!, featuring live updates on entertainment news stories; the website includes a online-only entertainment news bulletin titled E! News Now, which is updated each weekday. The website also provides live streaming video of major red carpet events including movie premieres and award shows such as the Academy Awards and the Emmys, along with some blogs involving shows such as The Soup. Columnists featured on the website include Kristin dos Santos (the "Watch with Kristin" television blog), Ted Casablanca ("The Awful Truth" gossip blog) and Marc Malkin (writer of a eponymous gossip blog and host of a daily videoblog on the site).
See also
- ReelzChannel (has same concept as original Movie Time)
- E!, a defunct Canadian broadcast television system owned by Canwest previously called CH.
- E! (Canadian TV channel), the current-day sister network in Canada, the former Star! network, a division of Bell Media which is owned by BCE Inc.
References
- ^ Slide, Anthony (1991). The television industry: a historical dictionary (illustrated ed.). Greenwood Press. pp. 94. ISBN 0313256349. OCLC 9780313256349. http://books.google.com/books?id=z4EYAAAAIAAJ&q=alan-mruvka&dq=alan-mruvka.
- ^ Dougherty, Philip H. (July 30, 1987). "Advertising; Promoting Movies Via Cable". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/30/business/advertising-promoting-movies-via-cable.html. Retrieved 2009-06-24.
- ^ Gerard, Jeremy (June 3, 1990). "TELEVISION; Fledgling Cable Networks Are Poised for Flight". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE4DD173CF930A35755C0A966958260&sec=&spon=.
- ^ Box Office Magazine, July 1990
- ^ Comcast Corp. Gains Exclusive Right to Buy E! Entertainment, Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News (originated from The Philadelphia Inquirer; via HighBeam Research), January 11, 1997.
- ^ http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail.ashx?PRID=24
- ^ NBC-Universal-Comcast Merger: What We Do and Don't Know, PCWorld, December 3, 2009.
- ^ E! Expands Weeknight Newscast To One Hour 2011 NewBay Media
External links
- Official website
- E! Online International Official Site
- E! – Latin America Official Site (In Spanish)
- Wikinews interview with Michael Musto about the art of celebrity journalism
Current programming - E! News
- Chelsea Lately
- E! Investigates
- True Hollywood Story
- The Soup
- Fashion Police
- Kendra
- Dirty Soap
- Kourtney and Kim Take New York
- After Lately
- Khloe and Lamar
- Keeping Up with the Kardashians
- Live From the Red Carpet
- Movies We Love
- Sex and the City
Former programming Upcoming programming - Scouted
- ABC (current)
- AMC
- CBS (current)
- CW
- E!
- Fox
- FX
- HBO
- OWN
- NBC (current)
- Showtime
- Starz
- TBS
- TNT
- USA
Categories:- American television networks
- Comcast Corporation
- NBC Universal
- NBC Universal networks
- Television channels and stations established in 1987
- English-language television stations in the United States
- Infotainment
- E!
- Television channels in Italy
- Companies based in Los Angeles, California
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