E!

Overview

E! News has been canceled twice. The first cancellation came in August 2020, when E! ended its New York-based entertainment news block, scrapping the flagship newscast along with Pop of the Morning and In the Room as the pandemic hammered Hollywood production (Essence). The show came back: on November 14, 2022, a reimagined E! News returned as a late-night broadcast with Adrienne Bailon-Houghton and Justin Sylvester hosting (TheWrap). Then it was canceled again. On the morning of July 24, 2025, roughly 20 staffers learned the linear show was over; the final episode aired September 25, 2025, and the brand retreated to digital-only life on social platforms (EntertainmentNow).

That double cancellation is the least-shared fact about E!. Most reference bios still describe the network as an NBCUniversal property and treat the 2020 axing as the end of the E! News story. Both are out of date. In January 2026, Comcast completed the spinoff of its cable networks into Versant Media Group, which began regular Nasdaq trading under the ticker VSNT on January 5, 2026 — making E! part of an independent public company rather than a division of NBCUniversal (Reuters).

The network itself is an American cable entertainment channel built on celebrity news, reality television, and red-carpet coverage. It began in the mid-1980s as Movietime, created by Alan Mruvka with Larry Namer — a 2009 Adweek profile dates the founding to “23 years ago” (Adweek). It is now known as E!: Entertainment Television (Adweek).

From Movietime to E!

The founding story survives in the founder’s own words. In the Adweek profile, Mruvka recalled his original pitch for the channel: “TV is like a newspaper; there’s headlines and sports, but there was no (entertainment) section” (Adweek). The concept was a channel devoted entirely to entertainment coverage at a time when no such section existed on television. The channel launched as Movietime and was later renamed E!: Entertainment Television (Adweek).

Ownership consolidated in the 2000s. On November 21, 2006, Comcast announced it had acquired the Walt Disney Company’s 39.5 percent stake in E! Networks for $1.23 billion, leaving E! Networks — which comprised E! Entertainment Television and the Style Network — wholly owned by Comcast (The Walt Disney Company). The Style Network, E!‘s fashion-and-lifestyle spinoff channel, was part of the same deal, and Mruvka himself later described his new web venture as a hybrid of E! and the Style Network (Adweek).

The show that was canceled twice

E! News premiered on E! back in 1991 and ran for nearly three decades as the network’s flagship newscast (Essence). Its first death was a pandemic casualty. In August 2020, E! canceled the show along with the companion New York-based programs Pop of the Morning and In the Room, one of the first wave of program cuts in a broader NBCUniversal restructuring and streamlining effort (TheWrap). The final iteration had been hosted by Lilliana Vazquez and Scott Tweedie (Essence).

The revival arrived just over two years later. In October 2022, E! announced that a reimagined E! News would return to the cable lineup in its late-night block, premiering November 14 with Adrienne Bailon-Houghton and Justin Sylvester as co-hosts and veteran producers John Redmann and John Pascarella executive-producing (TheWrap). The network’s news chief at the time said the show would continue the franchise’s “long history of entertainment news excellence” with an emphasis on celebrity-friendly reporting (TheWrap).

The second cancellation was a corporate-strategy call, not a pandemic one. On July 24, 2025, the roughly 20 employees on the show — then hosted by Keltie Knight and Justin Sylvester in the 11:30 p.m. slot — were told the linear broadcast would end with the September 25 episode (EntertainmentNow). The decision came from Versant, the new company being formed out of NBCUniversal’s cable assets, as E! chose to push its entertainment coverage onto digital and social platforms instead of a late-night slot (EntertainmentNow). The brand did not die with the broadcast: E! News continues as a digital operation, with Deadline reporting at the time that it reached around 87 million followers across platforms and that digital shows like The Rundown on Snapchat, Hot Goss on Instagram, and RE!CAP on YouTube would remain part of the slate (EntertainmentNow).

The Kardashian era — and a three-part detour with Nicki Minaj

For fourteen years, E! was, in TheWrap’s phrase, the “Kardashian Network.” Keeping Up with the Kardashians ran for 20 seasons on the channel from 2007 to 2021, a run long enough that the network spent the years afterward visibly struggling to redefine its brand and target demographic in a post-Kardashian era (TheWrap).

Inside that era came a smaller, stranger programming bet: a three-part reality special built around Nicki Minaj. Nicki Minaj: My Truth premiered on E! on Sunday, November 4, 2012, at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT, with the second and third installments airing November 11 and November 18 (BroadwayWorld). The timing was deliberate — the special debuted just ahead of the November 19 release of Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded – The Re-Up and captured Minaj preparing for her debut as an American Idol judge, rushing between wardrobe fittings, a View appearance, and her fragrance launch (BroadwayWorld). SPIN’s review of the first episode noted its centerpiece confrontation between Minaj and gossip blogger Perez Hilton over his coverage of her, alongside the debut of her song “Freedom” (SPIN). The series was produced by Comcast Entertainment Studios (BroadwayWorld).

E! under Versant

The January 2026 spinoff redrew the network’s corporate map. Comcast’s separation of Versant Media Group was completed effective January 2, 2026, with regular Nasdaq trading under the ticker VSNT beginning January 5 (Reuters). E! went with the cable bundle into the new standalone company, ending two decades in which its ultimate owner was Comcast and, through it, NBCUniversal.

The linear network continues with original programming. As of the 2025 cancellation reporting, E! was airing series including Botched Presents: Plastic Surgery Rewind and Honestly Cavallari: The Headline Tour, with Kimora: Back in the Fab Lane and E!‘s Dirty Rotten Scandals announced as upcoming, and the network maintained its red-carpet presence under the Live From E! banner (EntertainmentNow). The through line from Mruvka’s newspaper pitch to the Versant era is intact: a channel built on the proposition that entertainment deserved its own section — now publishing that section as much on phones as on cable.

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not give Movietime an exact launch date — July 31, 1987 is the commonly cited date, but the 1987 New York Times coverage could not be read (the domain is blocked by the fetch policy) and no other tier-1 or tier-2 source read in full confirmed it. It does not date the rename to E!: Entertainment Television to 1990, or recount the 1997 Comcast/Disney joint purchase after Time Warner’s put, for the same reason: those details appear in bios but rest on sources this profile did not personally read. It does not repeat episode-level ratings for Nicki Minaj: My Truth, which circulate on fan wikis without a citable source. It does not claim the Critics Choice Awards aired on E! on January 4, 2026 — a July 2025 report said the telecast was scheduled, and this profile did not verify that it happened. And it treats the 87-million-follower figure as what it is: a number reported by Deadline and relayed through a third outlet, not an independently audited audience count.