By: E&P Staff The Los Angeles Times today restored free access to its calendarlive.com Web site, which features the paper's entertainment reviews and listings, after a year and a half of requiring a paid subscription to view that information.
The move is part of a redesign of the paper's online operation.
Calendarlive.com, which lists more than 2,000 events at a time, had been paid content since August 2003, Times spokesman David Garcia told E&P. He wouldn't provide any subscription numbers.
The paper also introduced a new design for its main page and article pages.
"Visitors to latimes.com will now find a wider, cleaner home page that includes 'Pacific Time,' a prominent home for Times stories that take the pulse of Southern California," Rob Barrett, the general manager of latimes.com, wrote in an e-mail to Times staff. "The home page, which is lighter and loads faster on PCs, is also a one-stop online guide to all Los Angeles Times news, features and classifieds sections, and content."
Jeffery M. Johnson, executive vice president and general manager of the Times who becomes publisher on June 1, said in a statement the changes were aimed at making latimes.com indispensable for area residents. "Our goal is to make ltimes.com a daily stop in the lives of Southern Californians and a powerful complement to the paper," he said.
"Entertainment guides and listings are key to the local online experience," Johnson said. "And we want to make the extensive offerings of calendarlive.com available to the broadest audience possible."
The redesign also introduced "promotion of breaking news, key Times features, and 'most e-mailed' stories" to every page on the site, as well as "easier 'tabbed' access to service features, including calendarlive.com listings, traffic, weather, and classifieds," the statement said, adding that the paper will develop more online improvements over the coming months.
"Going forward, we will add original Web features and voices that will turn latimes.com sections into major online destinations," Barrett said in a statement. "As part of that effort, we'll create venues for community interaction across the board -- in news, sports, local issues and activities, entertainment, and classifieds marketplaces."
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