News
E! is one of the few American general-entertainment cable channels that broadcasts a daily news program; its flagship entertainment news program is E! News, which debuted on September 1, 1991. The weekday program (which also has an hour-long weekend edition) features stories and gossip about celebrities, and the film, music and television industries, and has been broadcast under various formats since its launch, even being aired live for a time during the mid-2000s. It was first hosted by Dagny Hultgreen. Steve Kmetko was a host from 1994 to 2002. It has been hosted by Terrence Jenkins and Giuliana Rancic since 2012 and 2006, respectively, with Ryan Seacrest (who co-anchored the program from 2006 to 2012) serving as managing editor of the news operation.
E! News was the only entertainment news show on the channel for much of its history until 2006, when the channel launched The Daily 10, hosted by Sal Masekela and Catt Sadler (Debbie Matenopoulos also co-hosted from the show's inception until 2008); the series was cancelled in September 2010 after E! announced that the weekday editions of E! News would be expanded to one hour starting on October 25, 2010.[19]
E! also carried a simulcast of business news channel Bloomberg Television from 2004 to January 2009, when the latter network had expanded its cable and satellite carriage to a level that allowed the discontinuation of the simulcast.
Outside E! News telecasts, the channel runs an E! News–branded news ticker displaying entertainment news headlines each half-hour during regular programming; fast-breaking entertainment headlines (such as a celebrity arrest or death) may also be displayed on a ticker, during any program when warranted.
On August 5, 2020, E! canceled both New York-based shows, along with In the Room, one of the first of many program and employee cuts and staff realignments announced across NBCUniversal that week due to the pandemic.[20][21] The news operation continued to maintain the E! News website, and its social media presences. Two years later, E! announced that E! News would be revived as a late-night entertainment news program and would return to the E! network after a two-year hiatus, with Adrienne Bailon-Houghton and Justin Sylvester (the latter of whom returned to the show for the revival) serving as co-hosts; it premiered on November 14, 2022.[22][23]
Original series
The network was known early on for its daily video simulcast of the Howard Stern Show, which aired from June 20, 1994, until July 8, 2005, weeknights in a truncated half-hour form, airing three times in late night. The program was discontinued several months after Stern moved to Sirius Satellite Radio and sold the video rights to his show to pay-per-view provider In Demand as a monthly pay offering (video rights are now held by Sirius XM).[24]
E! is known for its live red carpet pre-shows for the industry's three prominent award shows, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, and the Academy Awards, and were famous for their fashion critiques by Joan Rivers; Rivers also hosted post-awards specials under the title Fashion Police, which became a regular weekly series in September 2010. In April 2017, it was announced that E! had acquired the People's Choice Awards, which will move to the network from CBS in 2018 with a new November scheduling. The network promoted that the show would be given an "end-to-end" experience that will leverage its existing experience in awards show coverage.[25][26]
Acquired series and films
Over the years, E! has occasionally run acquired programming including reruns of Alice, Absolutely Fabulous, 20/20 lifestyle-based interview shows from ABC (since removed under NBCUniversal ownership), and edited 60-minute versions of Saturday Night Live, though fewer of these programs currently air.[30] The only programming currently airing on E! that it does not produce are broadcast standards-edited reruns of the former HBO series Sex and the City originally carried by HBO's sister network TBS, and feature films that air under the banner "Movies We Love"; the latter was part of a since-abandoned initiative by the network to use films to increase the network's ratings, though the branding remains, and low and mid-grossing female-focused films from the Universal Pictures library usually receive their basic cable premiere on E!, with higher-grossing films premiering on USA Network. The network has aired same-week runs of NBC series (such as The Voice, Fashion Star, Whitney, and Are You There, Chelsea?), and in the past aired previews of G4 programming to give that network an extended promotional platform due to their lowered carriage when it was removed from
Sports programming
Since Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal, E! infrequently aired sporting events as an overflow outlet for NBC Sports. It has participated in NBC's "Championship Sunday" effort to broadcast all matches on the final matchday of the Premier League soccer season.[31] In January 2022—following the shutdown of long-time sister channel NBCSN—E! was incorporated into NBC Sports' coverage of two figure skating events ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, the 2022 European Figure Skating Championships and Four Continents Figure Skating Championships.[32] E! would be involved in NBC's coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics.[33]
