Pulling The Plug

The final, deafening silence will fall on September 25th. In the controlled chill of a once-bustling studio, the teleprompters will go dark, the iconic globe logo will spin for a final time, and the news desk, a veteran of countless celebrity scandals and triumphs, will sit empty. For E! News, the show that transformed Hollywood gossip into appointment television, the credits are rolling for good.

The demise of the show marks the latest, most symbolic nail in the coffin of traditional cable TV. But for the millions who grew up organizing their evenings around its 7 p.m. broadcast, it signifies something more profound: the official end of a golden age for celebrity news.

“Things are sadly just so different these days, because of how television has shifted,” notes Jason Kennedy, 43, who sat at the heart of the whirlwind as one of the show's longest-tenured anchors, sharing the desk with Giuliana Rancic from 2012 to 2019. “Not a lot of people come home and watch news anymore, especially on cable, because they can get it on social media.”

The logic is undeniable. In an era of push notifications and instantaneous TikTok tea, waiting for a nightly recap feels archaic. Like MTV News before it, which shuttered its iconic division in 2023, E! News now stands as a crumbled monument to a monolithic media culture, a time before the algorithm scattered our attention into a million personalized feeds.

Launched in 1991, its revolutionary concept was simple yet radical: treat the business of show with the same gravity CNN reserved for politics and war. Suddenly, box office grosses, once the domain of industry trades, were reported like election results. Celebrity misbehavior wasn't just a tabloid headline; it was the lead story, analyzed by a panel of correspondents. E! News democratized the inner workings of Hollywood, for better or worse.

It was a formula that created an era many look back on with a kind of fascinated nostalgia. “There was that time, like 2008 to 2012 — the Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears era, going to Kitson on Robertson,” Kennedy reminisces. “It’s almost like an untouchable time in entertainment news, and I was just lucky to be a part of it.” It was a perfect storm: celebrities living their lives publicly, a ravenous audience, and E! News as the essential, singular narrator connecting the two.

The show wasn't just about who was spotted leaving which nightclub. It commanded the media landscape during moments of genuine tragedy. Kennedy, who began as a correspondent, recalls the seismic event of Michael Jackson’s death in 2009. “I think we did 48 hours of live coverage for Michael Jackson,” he says. The channel became the de facto source for millions of grieving fans. “I’ll never forget arriving at the scene at UCLA Medical Center after he died. Thousands of people showed up.” It was a moment when entertainment news transcended its genre and simply became the news.

But the very digital world that provided E! News with so much of its content would ultimately render it obsolete. The celebrities it covered now control their own narratives. A breakup isn’t broken by a correspondent; it’s announced via a carefully crafted Instagram post. An apology isn’t delivered in a sit-down interview; it’s typed out in the Notes app and screenshotted for the world. E! News went from being the gatekeeper to being one of thousands of commentators, its reports often lagging hours behind the social media posts they were covering.

So when the lights go out on September 25th, it will be more than just a network programming change. It will be a quiet eulogy for the shared experience of the celebrity monoculture. It’s a farewell to the red-carpet marathons, the breathless "breaking" headlines, and the very idea of all of us watching the same story, at the same time. The ticker has stopped, for good.