The A.V. Club

The A.V. Club is an online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop culture media. The A.V. Club was created in 1993 as a supplement to The Onion, despite having a minimal presence on its website in its early years. A 2005 website redesign placed The A.V. Club in a more prominent position, allowing its online identity to grow. Unlike its parent publication, The A.V. Club is not satirical.

The publication's name is a reference to school audiovisual clubs.

History
In 1993, five years after the founding of The Onion, a student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Stephen Thompson, launched an entertainment section of the newspaper.

In 1996, both The Onion and The A.V. Club made their internet debut. The A.V. Club was originally a sub-section of the main theonion.com domain name. It was eventually moved to its own theavclub.com domain name before the 2005 acquisition of the shorter avclub.com domain name which coincided with a redesign that incorporated reader comments and blog content. In 2006 the website shifted its content model again to add content on a daily, rather than weekly, basis.

In December 2004, Stephen Thompson left his position as founding editor of The A.V. Club.

According to Sean Mills, then-president of The Onion, the A.V. Club website first received more than 1 million unique visitors in October 2007. In late 2009 the website was reported to have received over 1.4 million unique visitors and 75,000 comments per month.

At its peak the print version of The A.V. Club was available in 17 different cities. Localized sections of the website were also maintained with reviews and news relevant to specific cities. The print version and localized websites were gradually discontinued, and in December 2013 print publication ceased in the final three markets.

Controversy
On December 9, 2010, the website ComicsComicsMag revealed that a capsule review for the book Genius, Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth had been fabricated. The book had not yet been published nor even completed by the authors. The review was removed, and then-editor Keith Phipps posted an apology on the website. Leonard Pierce, the author of the review, was terminated from his freelance role with the website.

Books

 * The Tenacity Of The Cockroach: Conversations With Entertainment's Most Enduring Outsiders (2002, ISBN 1-4000-4724-2) is a collection of 68 interviews featured in previous issues.
 * Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined by Saxophone, and 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists (2009, ISBN 1-4165-9473-6) is a combination of never-before-published lists and material already available on the AV Club website.
 * My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure (2010, ISBN 1-4391-5312-4) consists of entries taken from the website's recurring My Year of Flops column along with new material not previously available. It is the first A.V. Club release credited to a single author: Nathan Rabin.