Richard Horgan considers the "Sexiest Man Alive" phenomenon at FilmStew.com:

Two decades later, the annual title of worldwide male hottie, which was awarded last week to a 40-year-old Johnny Depp, has become as iconic a signpost of American magazine publishing as Sports Illustrated’s perennial Swimsuit Issue, which launched in 1964 with Babette March on the cover, and Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year selection, beginning in the late 1920s with the likes of Lindberg, Chrysler and Ghandi.

Since two-thirds of People Magazine’s readership is made up of women, there was never any doubt about what the gender of its annual tent pole annual issue should be, nor any concern that with the odd exception such as John F. Kennedy Jr., all of the sexy honorees seem to live and work in Hollywood.

Ironically, while women around the country are still debating whether this year’s cover should have gone to Depp or his main rival for the magazine’s 2003 testosterone trophy, Irish actor Colin Farrell, many of the previous honorees share the general sense of befuddlement and self-deprecation that was originally expressed by [Mel] Gibson...

Today, thanks to the conglomeration of the media and the spread of the Internet, People Magazine’s celebrated cover boy is cross-promotional manna for its Time Warner siblings. For example, tens of thousands of people took part in a front page CNN.com poll last Friday to answer the question, “Is Johnny Depp a good choice as People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive?” (for the record, about two-thirds said no). Meanwhile, the story was also front and center on AOL’s main login page, its Instant Messenger news summary pop up, and so on.