HitFix, or HitFix.com, was an entertainment news website that launched in December 2008 specializing in breaking entertainment news, insider information, and reviews and critiques of film, music, and television. In mid-2010 HitFix crossed the 1,000,000 unique users per month milestone.
HitFix had been cited as a source by ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'', ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
'', ''
HuffPost
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
'', ''
E! Online
E! (an initialism for Entertainment Television) is an American basic cable channel which primarily focuses on pop culture, celebrity focused reality shows, and movies, owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of NBCUniver ...
'', and ''The Daily Herald''.
In April 2016, it became a brand of
Woven Digital
''Uproxx'' (stylized in all caps) is an entertainment and popular culture news website. It was founded in 2008 by Jarret Myer and Brian Brater, and acquired by Woven Digital (later renamed Uproxx Media Group) in 2014. The site's target audien ...
and is now a part of the Woven Digital property
Uproxx
''Uproxx'' (stylized in all caps) is an entertainment and popular culture news website. It was founded in 2008 by Jarret Myer and Brian Brater, and acquired by Woven Digital (later renamed Uproxx Media Group) in 2014. The site's target audience ...
.
As of 2021 the HitFix web address redirects to Uproxx.
Founders
HitFix was founded by ex-
Reed Business Information Development executive Jen Sargent and former ''L.A. Times'' and
MSN.com film editor Gregory Ellwood. Sargent and Ellwood's goal was to create a site that fit into the gap between trade publications and gossip- or celebrity-scandal-driven sites, such as
TMZ, and to target an audience slightly skewed towards males – a unique approach in a female-driven industry
[Article on Variety.com](_blank)
– while catering to 18- to 34-year-olds.
Angel investment
HitFix received its first funding from Golden Seeds, the fourth largest angel investment group in the United States, in 2009. Since then, HitFix has twice benefited from investment from the
Tech Coast Angels, one of the largest angel investment networks in Southern California. The first such investment came in February 2009 in the amount of $850,000. In June 2010, the Angels added to their commitment investing an additional $1,600,000. In addition to Golden Seeds and Tech Coast Angels, HitFix investors include HBS Angels, Liquid Capital, and Gordon Crawford.
Contributors
Gregory Ellwood
In addition to being one of its co-founders, Ellwood reports on movies and awards for HitFix.
Drew McWeeny
Formerly known as “Moriarty”, McWeeny previously wrote for
Ain't It Cool News
Ain't It Cool News (AICN) is an entertainment news website founded by Harry Knowles and run by his sister Dannie Knowles since September 2017, dedicated to news, rumors, and reviews of upcoming and current films, television, and comic book proje ...
. In addition to being a screenwriter and movie critic, McWeeny now covers the movie industry for HitFix. McWeeny announced his move to HitFix in 2008 in a review of ''
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button''.
On September 20, 2016, McWeeny announced via Twitter that he would no longer be working for Hitfix.
Alan Sepinwall
After 14 years at ''
The Star-Ledger
''The Star-Ledger'' is the largest circulated newspaper in the U.S. state of New Jersey and is based in Newark. It is a sister paper to '' The Jersey Journal'' of Jersey City, ''The Times'' of Trenton and the '' Staten Island Advance'', all of ...
'', Sepinwall—also known for his blog, "What's Alan Watching"—moved to HitFix full-time in April 2010. Last spring,
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
executives went so far as to credit Sepinwall by name for his role in earning a renewal for ''
Chuck''.
''
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'' credited Sepinwall with having "changed the nature of television criticism".
See also
*
The A.V. Club
*
Blogcritics
Blogcritics is a blog network and online magazine of news and opinion. The site was founded in 2002 by Eric Olsen and Phillip Winn. Blogcritics features more than 100 original articles every week, and maintains an archive of all its published c ...
References
{{Reflist
Internet properties established in 2008
Mass media companies established in 2008
American entertainment news websites
Internet properties disestablished in 2016
Mass media companies disestablished in 2016
2008 establishments in California
2016 disestablishments in California