E Entertainment
For the Canadian equivalent, see E! (Canada).
E!: Entertainment Television (or simply E!) is an American cable television and direct broadcast satellite network. From November 2006 onwards, it became wholly owned by Comcast.
History
E! Entertainment Television was launched by Alan Mruvka and Larry Namer on July 31, 1987 as Movietime, a service that aired movie trailers, entertainment news, event coverage, and interviews .
Early Movietime hosts included Greg Kinnear, Paula Abdul, Katie Wagner, and Richard Blade. Three years later, in June 1990, Movietime was renamed E! Entertainment Television to emphasize its widening coverage of the celebrity-industrial complex, contemporary film, television and music, entertainment awards shows, daily Hollywood news and gossip, and fashion.
In November 2006, Comcast acquired the Walt Disney Company'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 .
E! has an audience reach of 88 million cable and satellite viewers in the U.S.
E!'s sister networks are the Style Network and G4, along with Comcast's sports networks Versus and Golf Channel. In the case of Versus, E! staff produce that network's Sports Soup, while the Orlando-based Golf Channel features no crossovers with E! at all due to incompatible audiences and operations.
Michael Jackson trial
E! reported on Michael Jackson's 2005 trial and acquittal.
As no cameras were allowed in the courtroom, E! used the transcripts of the court case and actors to reenact the day's proceedings. This was discontinued in January 2009, and Bloomberg now only airs programming on their own channel.
Personalities
Red carpet events such as premieres and E! News have been hosted by a variety of personalities.
Giuliana Rancic and Ryan Seacrest host award shows and E! News.
Ted Casablanca interviews various celebrities and has The Awful Truth column online .
Kristin Dos Santos (née Veitch) hosts all season premieres and events for television programming along with her online column Watch With Kristin.
Marc Malkin provides breaking news and commentary on E! News and various other programs on the network along with his online column "Planet Gossip" and online videoblog of the same name.
Previous hosts include Alisha Davis with John Burke on E! News.
Michael Castner on Inside Word, Behind the Scenes, Live From the Red Carpet and Sex On the Riviera.
Brooke Burke on Wild On! and Rank.
Jules Asner on Revealed with Jules Asner
Red carpet events, now called Live From the Red Carpet, were hosted previously by Joan Rivers (often with daughter Melissa Rivers), Star Jones, Kathy Griffin, and Nicky Hilton.
Other hosts have included Emme on Fashion Emergency, Suzanne Sena on Celebrity Homes (now with Kristin Malia) and A.J.
Jenny McCarthy and Anna Nicole Smith hosted Party @ the Palms and The Anna Nicole Show, respectively.
Joel McHale is the host of The Soup, a weekly show on E!. He often jokes about the network, commenting on Ryan Seacrest's vertical disability, or the size and budget of The Soup.
He has jokingly asked a guest on his show "what's it like on the outside?". Your closest friends in the world surround you, either in the band or in your crew.
Thinking he's a security guy or a drunk fan who's just a bit out a line, you continue to perform. Two seconds later, he lifts his arms, aims a rifle at your brother, your best friend, your buddy and blows his brains out, not three feet from where you are.
Now imagine it's a few years later and you turn on the TV set.
Only with some two bit actor who thinks this is his big Hollywood break.
International
E! has licensed its name and brand identity to regional cable television networks in nearly every country worldwide. When this contract expired in September 2007, the E! library was reassigned to Canwest, which relaunched its secondary television system, CH, as a Canadian version of E!, combining the American channel's entertainment programming with lower-profile primetime programming mainly acquired from the major U.S.
broadcast networks.
In Turkey,a cable TV Service called Digiturk broadcast E! TV both in English and Turkish(usually with subtitles).For nearly 2 years turkish viewers can watch it,but often the old episodes of 2006 or 2007.
In the Philippines, the network has delayed telecast from the selected programs in U.S. version, the channels are aired on Lifestyle Network and Velvet of SkyCable; ETC Entertainment Central, C/S Origin, Jack TV & 2nd Avenue of Solar Entertainment Corporation and QTV of GMA Network.
In Iran, E! programs are syndicated on the most popular Iranian music channel, PMC, in Persian.
In Latin America and Brazil the channel airs most of the U.S.
The channel is controlled and broadcast by Time Warner's HBO Latin America Group.
E! HD
The network launched their HD simulcast on December 8, 2008, like the rest of E!'s sister lifestyle and sports networks, in 1080i format.