Bistro Awards

Backstage

The first issue of the new glossy magazine version of Backstage, launched on August 30, 2012.
Frequency	Weekly
Year founded	1960 (1960-month)
Company	Backstage, LLC
Country	USA
Based in	New York City and Los Angeles
Language	English
Website	www.backstage.com
ISSN	0005-3635

Backstage (aka Back Stage) is an entertainment-industry brand aimed at people working in film and the performing arts, with a special focus on casting, job opportunities, and career advice.

Backstage publishes a print-edition magazine in the U.S. (Backstage, also available as a digital-edition PDF publication) and a periodic digest-sized resource directory (Call Sheet) that cover the entertainment industry from the perspective of performers (singers, dancers, comedians, models, etc.), the performance unions (SAG-AFTRA, Actors' Equity Association, AGVA, AGMA, the American Federation of Musicians, etc.), casting directors, agents, writers, filmmakers, and, in particular, actors.

Backstage also publishes related newsletters, along with running multiple websites, including Backstage.com, The Backstage Message Boards, and Audition Update.

Backstage (the company) was founded by Allen Zwerdling and Ira Eaker in New York City in December 1960 as a weekly tabloid-sized newspaper called Back Stage (later renamed Backstage). Zwerdling and Eaker had worked together for years as editor and advertising director, respectively, of the Show Business casting newspaper, which was founded by Leo Shull as Actor's Cues in 1941. After Zwerdling and Eaker left Show Business they looked into creating a casting section within The Village Voice newspaper; but, having been turned down, they decided to launch Backstage on their own.

At the time of its founding, Backstage (the newsmagazine) was primarily a casting paper for New York actors intended to compete with Show Business Weekly. It gradually broadened its scope to include coverage of New York's television commercial production industry and a variety of performing arts, the former of which proved to be so lucrative advertising-wise that the commercial-production beat came to dominate the publication. Additionally, Backstage's reach began to slowly spread across the U.S., although the largest portion of its readership remained on the East Coast.