Variety is an Americantrade magazine owned byPenske Media Corporation. It was founded bySime Silverman inNew York City in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater andvaudeville. In 1933,Daily Variety was launched, based in Los Angeles, to cover themotion-picture industry.Variety's website features entertainment news, reviews, box office results, plus a credits database, production charts and film calendar.
Variety has been published since December 16, 1905,[1][2] when it was launched bySime Silverman as a weekly periodical covering theater andvaudeville, with its headquarters inNew York City. Silverman had been fired byThe Morning Telegraph in 1905 for panning an act which had taken out an advert for $50.[3] He subsequently decided to start his own publication that, he said, would "not be influenced by advertising."[4] With a loan of $1,500 from his father-in-law, he launchedVariety as publisher and editor.[5] In addition toThe Morning Telegraph, other major competitors at the time of the company's launch wereThe New York Clipper and theNew York Dramatic Mirror.[5]
The original logo, which is very similar to the current design, was sketched by Edgar M. Miller, a scenic painter, who refused payment.[6] The front cover contained pictures of the original editorial staff: Alfred Greason, Epes W. Sargeant (Chicot or Chic), Joshua Lowe, and Silverman.[7] The first issue contained a review by Silverman's sonSidne, 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.[8]
In 1922, Silverman acquiredThe New York Clipper which had been reporting on the stage and other entertainment since 1853, in an attempt to attract advertising revenue away fromBillboard, following a dispute with William Donaldson, the owner ofBillboard.[9] Silverman folded it two years later after spending $100,000, merging some of its features intoVariety.[9][10] The same year, he launched theTimes Square Daily, which he referred to as "the world's worst daily" and soon scrapped.[5] During that period,Variety staffers worked on all three papers.
After the launch ofThe Hollywood Reporter in 1930,[11] Silverman launched the Hollywood-basedDaily Variety in 1933 with Arthur Ungar as the editor. It replaced theVariety Bulletin issued in Hollywood on Fridays as a four-page wraparound to theWeekly.[9]Daily Variety was initially published every day other than Sunday but mostly on Monday to Friday.[12] TheDaily and theWeekly were initially run as virtually independent newspapers, with theDaily concentrating mostly on Hollywood news and theWeekly on U.S. and international coverage.
Silverman passed on the editorship of theWeekly Variety toAbel Green as his replacement in 1933. He remained as publisher until his death later that year, soon after launchingDaily Variety. Silverman's son Sidne succeeded him as publisher of both publications but upon contractingtuberculosis in 1936 he could no longer take a day-to-day role at the paper.[13] Green, the editor, and Harold Erichs, the treasurer and chief financial officer, ran the paper during his illness.[13] Following Sidne's death in 1950, his only sonSyd Silverman, was the sole heir to what was thenVariety Inc. Young Syd'slegal guardian Erichs, who had started atVariety as an office boy, assumed the presidency.[13][9]
Ungar remained editor ofDaily Variety until his death in 1950.[14]He was followed by Joe Schoenfeld.[15]
In 1953,Army Archerd took over the "Just for Variety" column on page two ofDaily 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.[16]
Erichs continued to overseeVariety until 1956.[13][9] After that date, Syd Silverman managed the company as publisher of both theWeekly Variety in New York and theDaily Variety in Hollywood.
Thomas M. Pryor, former Hollywood bureau chief ofThe New York Times, became editor ofDaily 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.[17][18][15]
Green remained editor ofVariety until he died in 1973, with Syd taking over.[19][20]
In 1987,Variety was sold toCahners Publishing for $64 million.[21] In December 1987, Syd handed over editorship ofVariety to Roger Watkins.[20] After 29 years as editor ofDaily Variety, Tom Pryor handed over to his son Pete in June 1988.[15]
On December 7, 1988, Watkins proposed and oversaw the transition tofour-color print. Upon its launch, the new-lookVariety 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 inVariety since Sime gave up using them in the old format in 1920: they depicted Sime, Abel, and Syd.[22]
For 20 years from 1989,Variety's editor-in-chief wasPeter Bart, originally only of the weekly New York edition, with Michael Silverman (Syd's son) running theDaily in Hollywood. Bart had worked previously atParamount Pictures andThe New York Times.
Syd remained as publisher until 1990 when he was succeeded onWeekly Variety by Gerard A. Byrne and onDaily Variety by Sime Silverman's great-grandson, Michael Silverman. Syd became chairman of both publications.[23]
In April 2009, Bart moved to the position of "vice president and editorial director", characterized online as "Boffo No More: Bart Up and Out atVariety". From mid-2009 to 2013, Timothy M. Gray oversaw the publication as Editor-in-Chief,[24] after over 30 years of various reporter and editor positions in the newsroom.[25]
In October 2012,Reed Business Information, the periodical's owner, (formerly known as Reed-Elsevier, which had been parent to Cahner's Corp. in the United States) sold the publication toPenske Media Corporation (PMC).[26][27] PMC is the owner ofDeadline Hollywood, which since the2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike has been consideredVariety's largest competitor in online showbiz news. In October 2012,Jay Penske, chairman and CEO of PMC, announced that the website'spaywall would come down, the print publication would stay, and he would invest more intoVariety's digital platform in atownhall.[28]
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 printingDaily Variety with the last printed edition published on March 19, 2013, with the headline "Variety Ankles Daily Pub Hubbub".[29][30]
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.[31] 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 fromVariety andVariety 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 forVariety 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.[32]
A significant portion of the publication's advertising revenue comes during the film-award season leading up to theAcademy Awards. During this "Awards Season", large numbers of colorful, full-page "For Your Consideration" advertisements inflate the size ofVariety to double or triple its usual page count. These advertisements are the studios' attempt to reach other Hollywood professionals who will be voting on the many awards given out in the early part of the year, including theAcademy Awards, theGolden Globes and various guild award honors.[citation needed]
Variety (first edition published December 16, 1905) is a weekly entertainment publication with a broad coverage of movies, television, theater, music and technology, written for entertainment executives. It is the only remainingVariety print publication and is published weekly and delivered internationally.
Daily Variety (first edition published September 6, 1933[33] and last published March 19, 2013) was the Los Angeles–based Hollywood andBroadway daily edition. TheDaily 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 theDaily Variety page ofVariety.com.[34]Daily Variety Gotham, (started in 1998) was the name of the New York City–based edition which gave a priority focus toEast Coastshow-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 (launched in 1998) is theInternet version ofVariety. 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.[35] 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 asVariety On-The-Go.[36]
Variety Hitmakers (first edition published in November 2017) is the publication's first music franchise.[37] 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".[38][39][40]Kendrick Lamar,DJ Khaled, andScooter Braun featured on three individual covers of the premiere print issues, with Lamar named Hitmaker of the Year.[41] He, along with Khaled andHailee Steinfeld, was honored at the inauguralHitmakers awards ceremony held later that same month—the event has continued annually since.[42][43] Other honorees have includedDua Lipa andBebe Rexha as 2018's Breakthrough Artist and Songwriter of the Year respectively,[44]BTS (2019 Group of the Year),[38] andHarry Styles (2020 Hitmaker of the Year).[45]
On December 15, 1906,Variety published its first anniversary number that contained 64 pages, double the size of a regular edition.[46] 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[47] and, from 1949, the annually updated all-time rental chart.[48] The editions also contained many advertisements from show business personalities and companies. The 100th anniversary edition was published in October 2005 listingVariety's icons of the century.[49] 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,[50] MIFED Film Market,[51] andAmerican Film Market[52]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.[53]
Older back issues ofVariety are available onmicrofilm. In 2010,Variety.com allowed access to digitized versions of all issues ofVariety andDaily Variety with a subscription.[54] Certain articles and reviews prior to 1998 have been republished onVariety.com. The Media History Digital Library has scans of the archive ofVariety from 1905 to 1963 available online.[55]
The first issue ofVariety sold 320 copies in 1905.[6]
Paid circulation for the weeklyVariety magazine in 2023 was 85,300.[56] Each copy of eachVariety issue is read by an average of three people, with an estimated total readership of 255,900.[57]Variety.com has 32 million unique monthly visitors.[58][59]
For much of its existence,Variety's writers and columnists have used ajargon calledslanguage[60] orVarietyese (a form ofheadlinese) that refers especially to the movie industry, and has largely been adopted and imitated by other writers in the industry. The language initially reflected that spoken by the actors during the early days of the newspaper.[10]
Such terms as "boffo", "payola", and "striptease" are attributed to the magazine.[61]
In 1934, founder Sime Silverman headed a list inTime magazine of the "ten modern Americans who have done most to keep American jargon alive".[62]
According toThe Boston Globe, theOxford English Dictionary citesVariety as the earliest source for about two dozen terms, including "show biz" (1945).[63] In 2005, Welcome Books publishedThe Hollywood Dictionary by Timothy M. Gray and J. C. Suares, which defines nearly 200 of these terms.
In 2012, Rizzoli Books publishedVariety: An Illustrated History of the World from the Most Important Magazine in Hollywood by Gray. The book coversVariety's coverage of hundreds of world events, from the1906 San Francisco earthquake, throughArab 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 callsVariety "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 DailyVariety in TV shows and films, ranging fromI Love Lucy toEntourage.[citation needed]
Variety's first offices were in theKnickerbocker Theatre located at 1396 Broadway on 38th and Broadway in New York. Later it moved to 1536 Broadway at the 45th and Broadway corner untilLoew's acquired the site to build theLoew's State Theatre.[5] In 1909,Variety set up its first overseas office in London.[68]
In 1920, Sime Silverman purchased an old brownstone building around the corner at 154 West 46th Street in New York, which became theVariety headquarters until 1987, when the publication was purchased.[69] Under the new management of Cahners Publishing, the New York headquarters of theWeekly Variety was relocated to the corner of 32nd Street and Park Avenue South.[69] 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 toLos Angeles.[citation needed]
WhenDaily 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 theMiracle Mile onWilshire Boulevard.
In late 2008,Variety moved its Los Angeles offices to5900 Wilshire, a 31-story office building on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile area.[70][71] The building was dubbed theVariety Building because a red, illuminated "Variety" sign graced the top of it.[70]
In 2013, PMC, the parent company ofVariety, announced plans to moveVariety's offices to their new corporate headquarters at 11175 Santa Monica Blvd. in Westwood.[70] There,Variety shares the 9-story building with parent company PMC,Variety Intelligence Platform, and PMC's other media brands, includingDeadline.com,Rolling Stone,Vibe,Billboard,Robb Report and the West Coast offices ofWWD andFootwear News.[72]
On January 19, 1907,Variety published what is considered the firstfilm review in history. Two reviews written by Sime Silverman were published:Pathe's comedy shortAn Exciting Honeymoon andEdison Studios' western shortThe Life of a Cowboy directed byEdwin S. Porter.[73][74]Variety discontinued reviews of films between March 1911 until January 1913[75] as they were convinced by a film producer, believed to beGeorge Kleine, that they were wasting space criticizing moving pictures and others had suggested that favorable reviews brought too strong a demand for certain pictures to the exclusion of others.[76] Despite the gap,Variety is still the longest unbroken source of film criticism in existence.[75]
In 1930Variety also started publishing a summary of miniature reviews for the films reviewed that week[77] and in 1951 the editors decided to position the capsules on top of the reviews,[78] a tradition retained today.
Writing reviews was a side job forVariety staff, most of whom were hired to be reporters and not film or theatre critics. Many of the publication's reviewers identified their work with four-letterpen names ("sigs") rather than with their full names. The practice stopped in August 1991.[79] Those abbreviated names include the following:[7]
Variety is one of the three English-language periodicals with 10,000 or more film reviews reprinted in book form. These are contained in the 24-volumeVariety Film Reviews (1907–1996). Film reviews continue to be published inVariety. The other two periodicals areThe New York Times (asThe New York Times Film Reviews (1913–2000) in 22 volumes) andHarrison's Reports (asHarrison's Reports and Film Reviews (1919–1962) in 15 volumes).
In 1992,Variety published theVariety Movie Guide containing a collection of 5,000 abridged reviews edited byDerek Elley.[75] The last edition was published in 2001 with 8,500 reviews.[95] Many of the abridged reviews for films prior to 1998 are published onVariety.com unless they have later posted the original review.[96]
The complete text of approximately 100,000 entertainment-relatedobituaries (1905–1986) was reprinted asVariety Obituaries, an 11-volume set, including alphabetical index. Four additional bi-annual reprints were published (for 1987–1994) before the reprint series was discontinued.
The annual anniversary edition published in January would often contain anecrology of the entertainment people who had died that year.[97]
Variety started reportingbox office grosses for films by theatre on March 3, 1922, to give exhibitors around the country information on a film's performance on Broadway, which was often where first run showings of a film were held. In addition to New York City, they also endeavored to include all of the key cities in the U.S. in the future and initially also reported results for ten other cities including Chicago and Los Angeles.[98] They continued to report these grosses for films until 1989 when they put the data into a summarized weekly chart[99] and only published the data by theatre for New York and Los Angeles as well as other international cities such as London and Paris.
Asmedia 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.[47]
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.[100][101] 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.[102] An updated chart was published annually for over 50 years, normally in the anniversary edition each January.[103][104]
In the late 1960s,Variety started to use anIBM 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.[105] "The Love Bug" was the number one in the first chart published for the week ending April 16, 1969.[106] 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.[99] The sample chart was discontinued in 1990.[107]
Arthur D. Murphy, who joinedVariety 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.[90] Murphy used the weekly sample reports to estimate the total US weekly box office compared with previous annual totals which was reported inVariety's US Box Office Report each week. The sample also allowed Murphy to estimate the Market Share percentage rankings of distributors.[99]
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.[108] 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 inVariety 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.[107]
In 2009,Variety launched a chart showcasing the top performing film trailers ahead of theatrical release in partnership with media measurement firm Visible Measures.[109]
In 1937,Variety compiled and published a Radio Directory compiling a record of events in radio such as program histories, ratings and popularity polls.[110] It published an annual edition for the next three years[111] which are available on the Media History Digital Library.
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 theAcademy Awards,Emmy Awards,Tony Awards,Grammy Awards andPulitzer Prize. The following year they publishedVariety major U.S. showbusiness awards containing just this award details and a revised edition, calledVariety presents the complete book of major U.S. show business awards, was published in 1985.[112]
In 1988, R.R. Bowker, a Reed Reference Publishing Company, part of Reed-Elsevier, PLC, a "sister" company toVariety, publishedVariety's Video Directory Plus, a CD-ROM subscription product, updated quarterly, containing metadata about 90,000 home video products and full-text film reviews fromVariety.
Peter Cowie joinedVariety in 1989[113] and hisInternational Film Guide, which had been published annually since 1964, becameVariety International Film Guide with reports from countries on the year in cinema as well as information of film festivals. It continued to bearVariety's name until 2006.[114]
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.[115]
In 1999, Cowie publishedThe Variety Insider with detailed information on the year in entertainment as well as historical information. A second edition followed in 2000.[116]
In 2004,Variety publishedVLife, providing insider news on lifestyle features for the entertainment industry. It was published seven times annually.[117]
In November 2014,Variety premieredVariety Studio: Actors on Actors, a co-production with PBS SoCal that featured two actors discussing their craft and thoughts on Hollywood, which subsequently went on to win three Emmy awards, including a Daytime Creative Arts Award in May 2019.
In January 2017, they launched theVariety Content Studio, creating custom content for brands.[118][119][120][121]
Variety established its data and research division,Variety Insight, in 2011 when it acquired entertainment data company, TVtracker.com.[122] Its film database was announced in December 2011 as FlixTracker, but was later folded intoVariety Insight. The subscription service is positioned as an alternative to crowd-sourced websites, such as theIMDb.[123] The database usesVariety's existing relationships with the studios to get information. TheNew York Observer identified the main competitor asBaseline StudioSystems.[122] In 2014,Variety Insight added Vscore, a measure of actors' cachet and bankability.[124] In 2015, it partnered with ScriptNoted, a social media website for filmscripts.[125] In October 2020, it was rebranded Luminate Film & TV, part of Luminate, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation (PMC) and Eldridge Industries.[126]
Variety Australia is a website owned byBrag Media, published under license fromVariety Media, LLC. It covers film, TV and music around the world, but with a special focus on the Australian and New Zealand industries. The main writer is Vivienne Kelly.[127]
^Cieply, Michael (March 14, 2010)."Trade Papers Struggling in Hollywood".The New York Times.Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. RetrievedJanuary 3, 2021.Mr. Silverman started a paper of his own. Its first issue promised notices "that will not be influenced by advertising."
^"Cannes Festival Special Issue".Variety. May 1989.554 pages
^"MIFED Film Market Review 1989 Special Issue".Variety. October 1989.392 pages
^"10th American Film Market Edition".Variety. February 21, 1990.356 pages
^"43rd Anniversary Edition".Daily Variety. October 26, 1976.
^Gray, Tim (September 13, 2010)."Opening the Variety vault".Variety.Archived from the original on July 29, 2020. RetrievedMarch 22, 2018. Accessed March 9, 2018.
^"Variety's "Slanguage Dictionary"". February 20, 2013.Archived from the original on December 18, 2015. RetrievedJanuary 28, 2018.Now that Variety is available online, we offer the following glossary of terms, most of which you're likely to see while scanning this site.
^ab"American Roof",Variety, April 15, 1925, p. 11.Internet Archive, San Francisco, California. Retrieved July 28, 2019. Both of the trade publication's reviewers Harry Ennis ("Bell") and Ed Barry ("Edba") are identified in the cited source.
^Fisher, James (ed.)."Conway, Jack".The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. RetrievedJuly 20, 2023. Republished asFisher, James; Londré, Felicia Hardison (2018). "Conway, Jack (1888–1928)".Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism. Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts (2nd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 158.ISBN978-1-5381-0786-7. RetrievedJuly 22, 2024.
^"Jim Harwood".Variety. September 7, 1993.Archived from the original on July 4, 2021. RetrievedApril 6, 2021.
Besas, Peter (2000).Inside Variety. Madrid: Ars Millenii. The 563-page book gives a detailed history of the newspaper (it was never called a "magazine" under the Silvermans) from its birth in 1905 to its sale in 1987.
