Variety is a weekly entertainment trade newspaper founded in New York in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion picture industry,
Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Hollywood, was founded by Silverman in 1933. Both have been in continual operation since.
The magazine is owned by Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier, with three print editions and a Web site. For the last 20 years its editor-in-chief has been Peter Bart, who worked previously at Paramount Studios and The New York Times. Circulation hovers around 31,622 for the daily editions, and 30,800 for the weekly edition (Audit Bureau of Circulations, March 31, 2005). In April 2009 it was announced that Bart was moving to the position of "vice president and editorial director", characterised online as "Boffo No More Bart Up and Out at Variety". The new editor-in-chief is Timothy M. Gray.[1].
Silverman was the editor of the Variety publications until selecting Abel Green as his replacement in 1931; he remained as publisher until his death in 1933 soon after launching the daily. His son Sidne (1901-1950), known as "Skigie", succeeded him as publisher of both publications. Both Sidne and his wife, stage actress Marie Saxon (1905-1942), died of tuberculosis. Their only son Syd, born 1932, was the sole heir to what was then Variety Inc. Guardian Harold Erichs oversaw Variety until 1956. From then Syd took over and managed the company until 1987, when he sold it to Cahners Publishing (now Reed Elsevier) for US$64 million.
For much of its existence, Variety's writers and columnists have used a jargon called slanguage or varietyese (a form of headlinese) that refers especially to the movie industry, and has largely been adopted and imitated by other writers in the industry. Such terms as "boffo box-office biz," "sitcom," "sex appeal," "payola," and even "striptease" are attributed to the influence of the magazine[2], though its attempt to popularize "infobahn" as a synonym for "information superhighway" never caught on. Its most famous headline was from October, 1929, when the stock market crashed "Wall St. Lays An Egg." Another favorite, "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" [1][2], was made popular — although the movie prop renders it as "Stix nix hix flix!" &madash; by Michael Curtiz's musical-biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy; translated, it means that rural audiences were not attending rural-themed films. Television series are referred to as "skeins," and heads of companies or corporate teams are called "toppers." In addition, more common English words and phrases are shortened; "audience members" becomes simply "auds," "performance" becomes "perf," and "network" becomes "net," for example.
