I’ve been reading Entertainment Weekly for years and years. I think I subscribed back in like 1993 or so. And I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with it. I’ve canceled my subscription on a number of occasions, mostly because I believed that it didn’t cover enough of the indie stuff I enjoyed (which is still largely true). But then I’d see an issue and realize that it is a fun magazine to flip through, so I’d re-subscribe.
Over the years, EW has morphed more and more. And each change to the magazine makes me like it less. And now in its current iteration, which happened about a year ago, I feel that they have removed all pretense to being a “smart” publication. Although, at least they stopped including the bold line of text which presumably highlighted the best line of a review. Evidently they thought we couldn’t 
read the entire half-a-column-length of an article. But they removed that, and it’s back to simple reviews.
I’ve always been sort of iffy about their rating system (A through F). It’s a simple guide, so it’s easy to see quickly whether they liked it or not, but as in school, it seems hard to pinpoint exactly what the difference is between say an A- and a B+. But hey, that’s their thing, so it’s okay.
And as a sort of all-purpose guide to entertainment, it’s pretty useful.
The new design has largely changed the order of things in the magazine. And so The Must List which used to be a small thing in the middle now opens the magazine as a full page extravaganza (highlighting in a nutshell what is wrong with this latest incarnation of the magazine–something that used to fill up a page at most is now a two page spread with bigger pictures!) (more…)
Radar Magazine
SOUNDTRACK: RICHARD THOMPSON-Industry (with Danny Thompson) (1997), Mock Tudor (1999), 1000 Years of Popular Music (2003).
