Entertainment Tonight

10-Year Brand Overhaul (Summer 2014)

As a User Experience Consultant, D.B. was engaged by John Marchesini (former leadership at The Hollywood Reporter) to provide UX consulting and prototyping for a major 10-year brand overhaul of Entertainment Tonight at CBS.

The project aimed to modernize Entertainment Tonight’s outdated online presence, which had stagnated for a decade. Tasked with delivering a responsive, bulletproof Tablet/Desktop experience within a tight 6-week timeline, D.B. faced immediate challenges due to gaps in the design process. Although award-winning the in-house designer lacked expertise in User Experience and mobile-responsive design, delaying prototyping efforts.

Through 3 weeks of intensive coaching, D.B. guided the designer to align with modern UX standards, enabling the development of effective prototypes. The investment paid off, resulting in a seamless, high-performing User Interface.

Key Challenges:

Leadership fearful of embracing web and digital technologies
Antiquated, bespoke content management system
Ambitious news aggregator-style interface
Transition under a new Director of Digital
Compressed 6-week timeline

Technical Stack:

Genericons, CSS pseudo-elements, CSS sprites for optimized performance
Custom-rolled jQuery for critical performance enhancements
Twitter Bootstrap (Responsive Design framework)
HTML5 landmark elements for accessibility
PHP, JavaScript, HTML5 Boilerplate

Delivered:

A responsive, accessible, and high-performance User Interface that revitalized Entertainment Tonight’s digital presence, tailored for modern audiences.

Outcome:

Monthly unique visitors surged from 1 million to 5.5 million in under 5 months, marking a triumphant relaunch for the iconic brand.