Whoa, well 2018 was a blur.
A little bit (and we mean a really little bit) of history about how this crazy idea of Reel Chicago expanding to cover the rest of the country’s advertising, film, TV and entertainment news began.
It actually started with our former founder publisher, Ruth L. Ratny. Ruth always had a penchant for looking at the big picture. She knew in order to not only just survive, but to thrive as an online news magazine, Reel Chicago would one day have to look beyond Michigan Avenue for news.
Ruth’s dream began to realize itself in 2016 as articles from Los Angeles began to pepper stories from Chicago and the midwest in Reel Chicago.
After Ruth’s passing, new publisher Barbara Roche decided to not only continue Ruth’s dream, but to expand upon it a little more. The column ‘REEL LA’ was created and became a daily column joining the other news.
Then in early 2018, Roche made a bold decision – she launched a second publication, REEL 360, making the commitment to national coverage of advertising, film, TV and the media news.
REEL 360 had a soft launch. For the most part stories from Reel Chicago were re-posted with a spattering of national news. But something happened in June. Other agencies from California and the rest of the country, began to notice Reel Chicago’s sister. By mid-year, REEL 360 was covering stories from around the country.
The staff is still small, so there are stories we missed. But, there are also stories we got that others didn’t. Or if they did, we gave it our REEL 360 spin. Below are a few of the stories, we felt would give our growing audience knowledge about the industry or just pure entertainment.
As with other news outlets, 2018 was dominated by #metoo and that was reflected in advertising news with the removal of several execs from large agencies as well as networks. There were also several deaths that touched the REEL 360 team including Stan Lee, President Bush and his wife as well as Aretha Franklin.
And of course, there was the strange – like the pairing of Donny Osmond and L’il Yachty and Kool Aid and L’il Jon.
So, here are our top 20 stories of 2018:
Gary Kurtz, Producer on ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Empire Strikes Back’ dies
REEL 360 will continue to bring you the informative, the funny, the interviews, the surprising and the weird (looking at you Donny Osmond) in 2019.
Happy New Year from the REEL 360 team!
