The syndicated entertainment newsmagazine was supposed to be extinct by now. YouTube killed it, then Instagram killed it again, and TikTok was meant to deliver the final blow. Instead, Entertainment Tonight is averaging 2.99 million viewers in early October—its strongest fall performance in years—following the cancellation of Access Hollywood, its only remaining competitor of consequence.
The numbers are not merely a reflection of one show's misfortune becoming another's windfall. They suggest something more durable about the format itself: a cohort of viewers, largely older but not exclusively so, who prefer their celebrity coverage curated, produced, and delivered at a predictable hour by familiar faces. The parasocial relationship with an ET host, it turns out, is stickier than the parasocial relationship with a creator who might pivot to skincare sponsorships next month.
The Access vacuum
Access Hollywood's demise was not sudden. NBCUniversal had been quietly shopping the show for years, and its ratings had been sliding since the mid-2010s. But its formal cancellation earlier this fall removed the last vestige of direct competition from ET's timeslot in most markets. CBS Media Ventures, which produces ET, now operates in something close to a monopoly—at least within the narrow category of broadcast-syndicated celebrity programming.
This matters more than it might seem. Syndicated shows live and die by clearances, and station groups are far more willing to pay for a product when there is no alternative. ET's leverage in upcoming renewal negotiations has increased substantially, even as the broader advertising market for linear television continues its structural decline.
Why the format persists
The resilience of the entertainment newsmagazine is partly demographic and partly ritualistic. Its core audience skews female and over fifty, a group that still watches considerable linear television and that advertisers in categories like pharmaceuticals and retail are eager to reach. But there is also something irreplaceable about the format's pacing: a half-hour that moves briskly through a dozen stories, none of them requiring the viewer to seek them out or scroll past competing content.
Streaming has not replicated this. Netflix's foray into live events and topical programming remains experimental. YouTube's celebrity coverage is fragmented across thousands of channels. TikTok delivers gossip with ruthless efficiency but offers no anchor, no continuity, no sense of a trusted narrator. ET, for all its cheese, provides exactly that.
Our take
Celebrity journalism is not a prestige category, and ET has never pretended otherwise. But its survival—and now its resurgence—is a useful reminder that not every media format is destined for obsolescence. Some audiences want curation, routine, and a human face. As long as that cohort exists and watches television at 7 p.m., someone will sell them advertising for arthritis medication, and Entertainment Tonight will be there to collect the check. The format is not cool, but it is, against all odds, alive.
