World Entertainment News Network
Encyclopedia
World Entertainment News Network (commonly known as WENN) is a 24/7
global entertainment text and photo wire services provider headquartered in London with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas and Berlin.
WENN provides breaking entertainment news, "fun facts", images and text features to newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television networks, mobile phone company and websites (blogs) world wide such as Yahoo UK Entertainment News
and IMDb.com
, BBC
, ABC
and - a first for any Western news service - Russia's leading national daily youth newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda
.
In 1991 the company name was changed to the World Entertainment News Network (WENN) to reflect its focus on celebrity news and photos.
1993 saw another significant development with the opening of the WENN picture desk, which was set up to cover the worlds of movies, music, and show business.
In 1994, a Los Angeles bureau was opened on Melrose Avenue to cover the Hollywood celebrity scene.
A year later, WENN opened a TV operation and spent 18 months interviewing international celebrities for global clients throughout Europe and in Japan and South Africa.
Meanwhile, Kevin Lewin became a minor radio celebrity broadcasting regularly in Japan.
Success prompted WENN to open satellite offices throughout the world, including Eastern Europe, Japan, Australia and South America. The company also added a number of impressive clients - subscribers who are household names, such as Sony
, Blockbuster and ITV
.
Again, reacting to industry demands, in the late 1990s WENN invested further in its picture division and now boasts a global network of skilled photographers.
In 2000, WENN's long-serving sales director Lloyd Beiny became the ever-expanding company's CEO after Jonathan Ashby was forced to retire through ill-health and, under Beiny's leadership, the firm opened major hubs in New York and Berlin.
With the expansion came more impressive clients - WENN's news and photos can now be seen via a significant number of new media and telecoms companies such as O2
, Virgin Mobile
, imdb.com and Bloomberg
.
prepared for fame and celebrity by reporting on other stars as a turn-of-the-new-century reporter, as did DJ Yoda
. Other noteworthy former employees include Channel Four and BBC1 presenter Matthew Wright, Channel Four Entertainment News correspondent Stephanie West Sunday Mirror
Showbiz editor Sean Hamilton, Daily Star Sunday
columnist Joe Mott, Daily Star showbiz columnist Charli Morgan, Sunday Mirror
showbiz columnist Zoe Griffin, DJ /music writer (BBC America, The Slits' biography 'Typical Girls?') Zoë Street Howe and News of the World
showbiz journalist James Desborough
. Veteran New York radio news editor Shelli Sonstein, ABC Radio News correspondent Dave Alpert, Veteran Canadian music journalist Larry LeBlanc also worked for WENN in the early '90s. NME
journalist Alan Woodhouse also had a stint at WENN in the late 1990s.
24/7
24/7 is an abbreviation which stands for "24 hours a day, 7 days a week", usually referring to a business or service available at all times without interruption...
global entertainment text and photo wire services provider headquartered in London with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas and Berlin.
WENN provides breaking entertainment news, "fun facts", images and text features to newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television networks, mobile phone company and websites (blogs) world wide such as Yahoo UK Entertainment News
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
and IMDb.com
History
WENN was launched as an entertainment news wire service in London in 1989 by UK national newspaper journalist and ABC Radio News correspondent Jonathan Ashby. WENN started life as the World Rock News Network (WRNN) and the company soon established a niche for itself, providing music news to a prestigious list of subscribers including MTVMTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
, BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
and - a first for any Western news service - Russia's leading national daily youth newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda
Komsomolskaya Pravda
Komsomolskaya Pravda is a daily Russian tabloid newspaper, founded on March 13th, 1925. It is published by "Izdatelsky Dom Komsomolskaya Pravda" .- History :...
.
In 1991 the company name was changed to the World Entertainment News Network (WENN) to reflect its focus on celebrity news and photos.
1993 saw another significant development with the opening of the WENN picture desk, which was set up to cover the worlds of movies, music, and show business.
In 1994, a Los Angeles bureau was opened on Melrose Avenue to cover the Hollywood celebrity scene.
A year later, WENN opened a TV operation and spent 18 months interviewing international celebrities for global clients throughout Europe and in Japan and South Africa.
Meanwhile, Kevin Lewin became a minor radio celebrity broadcasting regularly in Japan.
Success prompted WENN to open satellite offices throughout the world, including Eastern Europe, Japan, Australia and South America. The company also added a number of impressive clients - subscribers who are household names, such as Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, Blockbuster and ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
.
Again, reacting to industry demands, in the late 1990s WENN invested further in its picture division and now boasts a global network of skilled photographers.
In 2000, WENN's long-serving sales director Lloyd Beiny became the ever-expanding company's CEO after Jonathan Ashby was forced to retire through ill-health and, under Beiny's leadership, the firm opened major hubs in New York and Berlin.
With the expansion came more impressive clients - WENN's news and photos can now be seen via a significant number of new media and telecoms companies such as O2
O2 plc
Telefónica Europe plc is a European broadband and telecommunications company that trades as O2 . The company originated as a collection of worldwide telecommunications companies, known in the later half of the 1990s as BT Wireless, and a global mobile data business known then as Genie Internet,...
, Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile is a brand used by many mobile phone service providers across the globe; its headquarters are based in the United Kingdom. Virgin Mobile has local operations in Australia, Canada, France, India, South Africa, Greece, United Kingdom and the United States. It briefly also had operations...
, imdb.com and Bloomberg
Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial software, media, and data company. Bloomberg makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market with estimated revenue of $6.9 billion. Bloomberg L.P...
.
Competitors
WENN key business is in the entertainment photo and text business. WENN's photo business competitors include:- Film Magic
- Getty ImagesGetty ImagesGetty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage...
- INF Photos
- Splash News
- Wire Image
Former employees
WENN has been a launch-pad for a host of household names - Amy WinehouseAmy Winehouse
Amy Jade Winehouse was an English singer-songwriter known for her powerful deep contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B, soul and jazz. Winehouse's 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize...
prepared for fame and celebrity by reporting on other stars as a turn-of-the-new-century reporter, as did DJ Yoda
DJ Yoda
Duncan Beiny , better known as DJ Yoda, is a hip hop turntablist who uses samples to create a cartoony musical style.-Biography:From 1995 to 1998, he studied English and American literature at the University of Warwick...
. Other noteworthy former employees include Channel Four and BBC1 presenter Matthew Wright, Channel Four Entertainment News correspondent Stephanie West Sunday Mirror
Sunday Mirror
The Sunday Mirror is the Sunday sister paper of the Daily Mirror. It began life in 1915 as the Sunday Pictorial and was renamed the Sunday Mirror in 1963. Trinity Mirror also owns The People...
Showbiz editor Sean Hamilton, Daily Star Sunday
Daily Star Sunday
The Daily Star Sunday is a weekly tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom. It was launched as a sister title to the Daily Star on 15 September 2002....
columnist Joe Mott, Daily Star showbiz columnist Charli Morgan, Sunday Mirror
Sunday Mirror
The Sunday Mirror is the Sunday sister paper of the Daily Mirror. It began life in 1915 as the Sunday Pictorial and was renamed the Sunday Mirror in 1963. Trinity Mirror also owns The People...
showbiz columnist Zoe Griffin, DJ /music writer (BBC America, The Slits' biography 'Typical Girls?') Zoë Street Howe and News of the World
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
showbiz journalist James Desborough
James Desborough
James Desborough started work at the London regional newspaper the Barking & Dagenham Post as a news reporter in 1994. The newspaper’s other famous past reporters include Phil Hall, who later became the editor of The News of The World....
. Veteran New York radio news editor Shelli Sonstein, ABC Radio News correspondent Dave Alpert, Veteran Canadian music journalist Larry LeBlanc also worked for WENN in the early '90s. NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
journalist Alan Woodhouse also had a stint at WENN in the late 1990s.
Photographers
WENN relies on a team of professional photographers in obtaining entertainment and news photo world wide. Their photographers are known for fast and accurate transmission of photos for their clients.US based photographers
- Aaron D. Settipane, Los Angeles
- Anthony Dixon, New York
- Carrie Devorah, Washington DC
- Judy Eddy, Las Vegas
- C.M. Wiggins, Chicago
- Owen Beiny, Los Angeles
- Patricia Schlein, New York
UK based photographers
- Carsten Windhorst, London
- Daniel Deme, London
- Sakura Henderson, North West
- Ben Benjilali, London
- Ross Robinson. London