Collection Spotlight: Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive
by Michael Pasqualoni, Librarian for the Newhouse School of Public Communications
Many Syracuse University professional and academic programs rely upon access to trade and industry magazines, and ProQuest’s Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive is a stand-out historical collection. Its archive is a treasure of publications, revealing a long view of trends within a wide array of U.S. entertainment business contexts, and some U.K. sources too. Investigate specific industry data (e.g., movie box office revenues, historical Nielsen ratings for some leading television programming), longer form articles, industry announcements or examples of business-to-business advertising targeting entertainment industry insiders. Articles are written from and for leaders behind the creative work inside several entertainment fields. Talent from stage, screen, music, theatre and gaming are housed within well-known publications that span the business and art of entertainment from 1880 through 2015 and after.
Imaged versions of these publications replicate the kind of browsing done by casting agents, theatre producers, television network executives and other industry tradespeople and performers. A few examples of iconic entertainment related trade magazine titles within this collection are:
- American Cinematographer (1930-2015)
- Back Stage (1960-2000)
- Billboard (1894-2000)
- Box Office (1936-2000)
- Broadcasting (and successor titles) (1931-2000)
- Computer & Video Games [U.K.] (1981-2004)
- Creme Magazine (1969-1988)
- Film Journal (1980-1996)
- Filmmaker (1992-2015)
- Hollywood Reporter (1930-2013)
- Kinematograph Weekly [U.K.] (1919-1959)
- Kinematograph & Lantern Weekly [U.K.] (1970-1919)
- New Atari User [U.K.] (1989-1995)
- Nintendo Power (1988-2006)
- PC Gamer [U.K.] (1993-2020)
- PC Gamer [U.S.] (2001-2020)
- Screen International[U.K.] (1976-2000)
- Spin (1985-2000)
- Variety (1905-2000)
For a complete title list, view ProQuest's corporate site or click the link labeled “publications” at the SU Libraries subscription to Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive.
Students and faculty at Syracuse University with a focus on entrepreneurship, radio and television, broadcasting history, mass communication and media studies, advertising, music industries, performing arts, gaming and eSports will find historical discussions and data with benefits and insights useful as context for more recent situations for both professional and scholarly purposes.
Enter search queries for proper names of programs, persons, companies, networks, movie names or stage play titles and more. Look at crossovers between entertainment media and politics. For example, search for mentions of Ronald Reagan, Eleanor Roosevelt, Watergate or Teapot Dome, or probe event related words and phrases in various entertainment media contexts, such as search queries for Moon Landing, Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby or Sputnik. Look for treatments of television, film or theatrical titles ranging from I Love Lucy, Star Trek and Dr. Strangelove to Gone with the Wind, Bye Bye Birdie, Guys & Dolls or Sweet Charity.
Chronicle the mentions of iconic broadcasters and journalists, such as Edward R Murrow (yields over 3,600 search hits, the oldest being Murrow in Variety on December 9, 1936 – in attendance at one of the earliest Federal Communications Commission sponsored conferences on educational broadcasting). Explore articles written by Murrow, like his January 9, 1946 piece for Variety entitled, “International Broadcasting’s Difficult Post-War Job.”
Combine what is uncovered about a brand name on modern social media, Wikipedia or using AI tools with primary source historical context from this database archive. As an example, during the heyday of drive-in and movie theatre attendance in America in the 1950s and 1960s, concession fads included a craze over pickle sales. Using this database, you can review advertising brands directory from September 29, 1969 – published in the trade magazine Box Office – linking one of the more well known movie theatre concession pickle brands, Chilly Dilly, to Morton Foods in Dallas Texas. Or peruse a display advertisement from January 30, 1969 for the Chilly Dilly brand that targeted movie theatre owners. Broaden your view beyond a single product category by looking at general industry trends in Box Office dated July 28, 1980 discussing movie theatre concession sales spanning multiple years. You’ll find another mention of the Chilly Dilly brand marketed as part of pickle political party preference polls mounted by movie theatres during U.S. Presidential election years.
This example illustrates that trade publication sources reveal considerable content and historical context not otherwise found through open sources. Even modern artificial intelligence tools are not yet likely to provide the narrow and specialized historical industry data and discussion available within this subscription database archive.
A handful of additional examples from investigating Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive for primary sources include:
- Arrival in the early to mid-1980s of the compact disc as a popular consumer audio format, as covered by SPIN Magazine.
- Historical context for the U.S. international radio broadcasting initiative, Voice of America, through more than 5,000 references published between the 1940s and 2001.
- Hollywood Reporter coverage from late April and early May 1997, when the TV character played by comic actor Ellen DeGeneres made sit-com television history by revealing they are gay.
- Discussion and advertising within American Cinematographer on emergence of wide screen cinema formats as competition for U.S. households having an increasing love of smaller screen television viewing; great details about film lens and camera technologies like Cinemascope, Todd-AO or VistaVision (the latter format re-employed by director Brady Corbet in the 2024 feature film cinematography Academy Award winner, The Brutalist – a first time that the wide-screen filmmaking format was used on a major release Hollywood movie since the Marlon Brando directed 1961 feature film, One Eyed Jacks).
- Explore industry advertising for filmmaking equipment (e.g., Arriflex, Bolex and Panavision film cameras).
- Search all references in these trade magazines for stage play or musical titles. Most current and past productions mounted by SU’s Drama Department (College of Visual & Performing Arts) could by queried within this industry magazine database (e.g., for historical references to “A Chorus Line,” “The Crucible,” “Sweet Charity,” “Cymbeline,” or more).
Broadcasting Magazine’s nearly seventy years of coverage within Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive also has personal connections to the Syracuse University community. Descendants of that magazine’s founding editor Sol Taishoff, through the Taishoff Family Foundation, funded The Lawrence B. Taishoff Center for Inclusive Higher Education here at SU’s School of Education. Sol’s grandson Robert chairs that foundation and is a class of 1986 Syracuse University graduate and a life member of the SU Board of Trustees.
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