When Weekly Means Once a Month

This week was the end of an era as Entertainment Weekly switched to a monthly format.  I had been a subscriber to the magazine since I was in college, after becoming intrigued by it from seeing in various waiting areas since it debuted.  Oddly enough, the initial subscription may have come through Publisher's Clearing House.  Yeah, I know.  Back in those early days, I would spend almost two hours reading it through.  I would even read the articles ad reviews about things I really wasn't interested in, just so that I would be informed on the subject.  Sometimes, I would become interested and try to check something out.  I would get about forty-eight to fifty issues a year, with an occasional special.  Over the years, some parts of the magazine would change, but the main gist of it would be some brief topical pieces followed by deeper articles, and finally reviews, with snarky comical bits laced in.  Then, there were major changes.  Many of the comical bits were removed.  Celebrity milestones were removed all but entirely.  No more births, marriages, and divorces.  Just an occasional nod to a birthday or death.  The memorials were the last to leave.  They used to feature almost every significant death.  Then, all of a sudden, they would only do features on a select few, the ones they felt were the most important to the current culture, even if that meant someone who was no longer as pertinent would have to be ignored.  Most of this extra information was shifted to their website.  In fact, their website would become the center of their reporting, as the number of issues per year were whittled down to forty-five, and then forty.  At least they let readers know when there would be a skipped week, most of the time.  Suddenly, they wouldn't always acknowledge this fact.  Many times I would have to inform them about a missed issue, only to be told that it wasn't out yet.  Then EW expanded to SiriusXM satellite radio, another avenue that I had only limited access to.   A streaming television channel would follow.  More information total was available, but I wouldn't have steady access to most of it until last year.  Even then, I preferred the physical magazine to anything I could find online.  In the last year, things started to change again.  The number of issues were tracking down to under thirty-six per year, less than three per month.  The radio channel was ended.  The streaming television was no longer being mentioned, so I don't know what happened to it.  More issues were being dedicated to subjects I couldn't get into, with more specials that weren't part of the subscription appearing on newsstands.  With my time being divided by other interests, I no longer read every article fully, many times just giving some parts a full skim just short of actually reading it all.  I rarely even read the magazine in one sitting anymore, finding it difficult to slog through it just to find the parts I liked.  Then, late last month, issue 1569 came out and it was just forty-four pages.  The page count had been going down for years, but it had been hovering around seventy, give or take, for the last little bit.  Even with such a short page count, I found it hard to get through.  When the next issue wasn't in, even after two weeks and I thought I saw a notice of it online, I called to see where it was.  I was informed that the new issue would be coming out the next day, even though the evidence I found suggested an issue had already been published.  That's when I saw the note about the change in frequency online.  Even though the title wasn't changing, the magazine itself would now be monthly, with two issues per year being standard size the rest double.  The amazing deal I got to renew should have tipped me off.  When I got the newest issue, I hated it.  While the format structure was about the same, it felt haphazard and muddled.  The information in the main article about Comic-Con felt dated, it just having ended.  The magazine didn't even hint about what turned out to be the biggest news.  What was worse, they had pictures of Supergirl in her old costume; the new one having debuted just after these pictures were taken.  The review section is going to be difficult to maintain.  Reviews were already lagging behind for movies, and the other sections weren't much better.  Television was focusing on streaming over network and cable.  Music featured more interviews as opposed to actual albums, mostly focused on artists that I never heard of and didn't seem to be genres I would like.  Books were the worst.  They would heap so much praise on titles I hadn't heard of, and I currently run a book store.  If distributors weren't paying much attention to some of these titles, why were so many being reviewed?  I expected more correlation.  Now, any reviews will either be too late to count or too early to matter.  I guess they want people to go to the site for topical information, and for readers to get deeper insights in the magazine.  I, for one, am not liking it.  Unless something improves, I doubt I will be renewing this again in two years.  At least try to clear up some of the mixing, as the current issue feels like everything is being mashed together to cram it all in, with only the barest suggestion of the previous format and ordering.  Ugh.  Do better, please.