Tag Archives: American Idol

Will.i.am’s Nerd Idol

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lack Eyed Peas star Will.i.am is developing a new American Idol-type talent show for nerds.

The hitmaker, who has signed on to help Britney Spears mentor her X Factor team on TV in the U.S., is hoping to find the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.

will.i.am, who recently debuted his new song, Reach for the Stars, from Mars via the Curiosity rover, insists there should be a TV show “celebrating” innovators and inventors.

He says, “We need creative people working with broadcasters, making smart content to inspire people to be geniuses. It will be great TV and great for society.”

will.i.am is currently in negotiations with TV executives about his plans for the show.

Jennifer Lopez Peaces Out on ‘American Idol’

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What happened to American Idol? The once great media darling that trounced all competition and raked huge commercial success for it’s producers is “now” becoming a laughing stock. Just days after rocker Steven Tyler announced he would forgo his post as panel judge for the upcoming 12th season, word just broke that Jennifer ‘from the block” Lopez is also stepping down.

Lopez broke the news to American Idol host Ryan Seacrest on his morning radio show.

“I really was dreading this phone call with you,” she told him. “I honestly feel like the time has come that I have to get back to doing the other things that I do that I’ve put kind of on hold because I love ‘Idol’ so much.”

With Tyler and Lopez out, the only dawg left standing is Randy Jackson. Along with Seacrest, Jackson is by far the bouie that keeps this sinking ship afloat. Can “Idol” go into it’s 12th season with only one host? Or maybe no host at all?

When Tyler broke the news on Thursday, he sited his passion for all things Rock n Roll as the reason behind his departure.

“I strayed from my first love, Aerosmith, and I’m back — but instead of begging on my hands and knees, I got two fists in the air and I’m kicking the door open with my band,” Tyler said in a statement. Aerosmith are on a nationwide tour with Tyler and have an album due out in the fall. In a phone interview Thursday with The Associated Press as the news about Tyler broke, Lopez had said she was saddened to hear that Tyler was leaving and that his departure would play a role in her decision.

“I can’t even imagine anyone else there right now because I’ve just spent two years sitting next to him,” she said. “I love Steven, and we became close during that time. We were a great support for each other, on an adventure that neither one of us knew what it was going to be. So it’s hard to hear that he won’t be doing it.”

Fox Executives were left scrambling to pick up the pieces.

“We are very sad that Steven has chosen to focus more on his music, but we always knew when we hired a rock ‘n’ roll legend, he would go back to his music,” said Mike Darnell, the network’s president of alternative entertainment.

Speculation about new panelists has swirled around Mariah Carey to former “Idol” runner up Adam Lambert. There’s even rumors that Mr. Tiger Blood himself, Charlie Sheen might take a crack at Judging.

“Idol” still rules among the most-watched talent shows, topping ABC’s ” Dancing With The Stars” and NBC’s “The Voice.” But the show is fighting hard to keep it’s young viewers, with “The Voice” nearly equaling its audience among adults 18 to 49.

FOX, which from the start has protected “Idol” by programming it just once a year, has now diluted its uniqueness with a family competitor, Cowell’s “The X Factor,” which debuted last fall. After a disappointing start, the show underwent its own judging shake-up to add Demi Lovato and Britney Spears.

“American Idol” hasn’t been helped by a run of horrible champions who have failed to achieve commercial success ala Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson or Carrie Underwood.

One things for sure, the show may not have the same appeal but the Judges are using the panel as a catapult to shill their own brands and make out like bandits.

‘Idol’ Second Place is the 1st Loser

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Coming in second on “American Idol” may still be a path to superstardom, but it no longer offers guaranteed paychecks worthy of the next pop idol or rock star.

Wednesday night’s runner-up, 16-year-old Jessica Sanchez, doesn’t have a definite shot at producing an album and could be paid as little as $30,000 in advances for recording singles, according to the “Idol” contract she and other Season 11 contestants signed earlier this year.

The agreement appears to be the first time in the show’s history that producers are not offering the runner-up an album deal that in previous years came with a guaranteed advance of at least $175,000, an Associated Press review of the FOX show’s contracts reveals.

The analysis covers eight of the show’s 11 seasons during which contracts filed for contestants under the age of 18 were available. The contracts were reviewed by judges in accordance with a California law that requires at least 15 percent of a minor entertainer’s earnings be set aside for his or her benefit once he or she reaches adulthood.

The reduced royalty advance covers the period immediately following the show. In addition to recording new music, the series’ winners and finalists are obligated to perform in a concert tour and lend their likeness to a Walt Disney World Resort attraction in Florida.

If Sanchez is given an album deal following the show, she will receive the same $175,000 bonus that Lauren Alaina was paid after placing second in the show’s 10th season. But 19 Recordings Inc., which has the option to handle the albums and recordings of “Idol” contestants for several years after they appear on the show, has replaced a guaranteed album deal for the runner-up with a staggered “Development Period” that requires less music and pays out less in advances.

Sanchez could be paid as little as $30,000 if she is asked to perform four single songs, or $60,000 if she records an EP of between four and 10 songs.

Representatives for 19 Recordings Inc. and “American Idol” producer FremantleMedia declined comment. They also have not disclosed which recording deal would be offered to Sanchez.

“It makes sense. You can’t continue to offer the same sorts of rewards and incentives when the program was averaging 25 to 30 million (viewers), and (now) the finale is barely breaking 20 million,” said Northwestern University assistant professor Max Dawson, who teaches a course on reality television. Wednesday’s finale was the lowest-rated final show for “Idol” in its history.

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Oh Sh*t, grab your kids, grab your wife, Jedward is coming!

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Apparently if you haven’t heard already, there’s a pop “group” out of Dublin, Ireland known as Jedward. And if all goes according to their diabolical plan, the twins will be making their way Stateside any minute now.

Don’t panic just yet. Let’s analyze this movement from the “Haters” perspective and if we have more time, we’ll delve into the brain of a …”Fan” to anticipate what we’re in for.

Hater: What?!!! Are you freaking kidding me? Just when we thought the Justin Bieber movement was waning, someone found a way to clone the hack and created TWINS?!!! For the love of all that is right in the Universe, let’s hope these cross-dressing, no talent having little twits never learn how to use Google maps.

Fan: Oh, wow! OMG! …Justin Bieber, times two? Thank heavens our cloning device worked. Now we can listen to bad music for the next decade but this time, … in STEREO! Bieber aka Jedward ROCKS!

Yeah! We know, we know, either way, we’re all screwed. If only we had a “Regulator” to keep these hacks in check. Where’s Kanye when you need him. Wait, …what? He’s stuck in the Kardashian vortex. Damn! We are SCREWED!

Ellen Wins Top Humor Prize

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Ellen DeGeneres, who broke ground in 1997 as the first lead character on prime-time TV to reveal she was gay, is winning the nation’s top humor prize.

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced Tuesday that DeGeneres will receive the 15th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. She will be honored Oct. 22 with a lineup of star performers in a tribute show that will be recorded for broadcast at a later date.

In a written statement, DeGeneres said receiving the same award as past honorees Bill Cosby, Tina Fey and Will Ferrell makes her wonder, “Why didn’t I get this sooner?”

It was 15 years ago — just before the humor prize was created — when DeGeneres came out on Time magazine’s cover and as her character on the sitcom “Ellen,” to a record 46 million viewers. The popular show began losing viewers, though, and was canceled a year later. DeGeneres said at the time that ABC caved in to fear and abandoned the show. She faced tough questions over whether the sitcom was “too gay” and if she had torpedoed her career by pushing a “gay agenda.”

“When I’m accused of becoming political, I’m showing love,” DeGeneres told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in a 1998 interview. “How is that political to teach love and acceptance?”

The rejection was enough to send DeGeneres into a deep depression.

“Ellen” paved the way, though, for future shows to also break the taboo of showing gay characters. “Will and Grace” would follow, along with “Glee,” “Modern Family” and others.

DeGeneres bounced back with movie roles, including as the voice of a lead character in the animated film “Finding Nemo.” She also has a hit talk show now in its ninth season, best-selling books and had a stint as the fourth judge on “American Idol.”

Cappy McGarr, an executive producer for the Mark Twain Prize show and a Kennedy Center board member, said DeGeneres has a special style of observational humor in the tradition of Twain. She also makes people laugh across political lines.

“She’s not just a comedian,” he said. “She’s really a miracle worker. She got the president to dance, the first lady to do push-ups and (Republican) Tom Delay to laugh.”

The New Orleans native got her start as an emcee at a local comedy club in her hometown. In 1982, a videotape of her club performance won DeGeneres Showtime’s “Funniest Person in America.” By 1986, she appeared on “The Tonight Show” and became the first female comedian summoned to Johnny Carson’s desk to chat about her performance.

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LMFAO’s $7M lawsuit

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Before LMFAO hit the American Idol stage for a performance Thursday night, the party-loving pop outfit was served with a $7 million lawsuit from their fomer management company, TMZ reports.

According to the website, the band’s DJ frontman RedFoo, he of the wild hair and lack of inhibitions, was handed the suit for breach of contract on his way into the Idol studio. TMZ said he laughed in response, taking a photo with the process server, who smiled for the camera (see: photo evidence on the site).

The management company, named in reports as Rpm Grp, claims it signed the Los Angeles-based electronic pop duo of Stefan Kendal Gordy (RedFoo) and Skyler Austen Gordy (SkyBlu) in 2008, helping launch them “from 0 to 60,” only to get shown the door once they became successful.

The suit, filed in Santa Monica Superior Court, also accuses the group of tortious interference and accounting, alleging RedFoo and SkyBlu poached Rpm employees to be their new managers, paying them a salary rather than writing the agency a commission check.

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Dick Clark dead at 82

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(CBS/AP) Host and TV producer Dick Clark has died. He was 82.

Spokesman Paul Shefrin said Clark had a heart attack Wednesday morning at Saint John’s hospital in Santa Monica, a day after he was admitted for an outpatient procedure.

Long dubbed “the world’s oldest teenager” because of his boyish appearance, Clark bridged the rebellious new music scene and traditional show business, and was equally comfortable whether chatting about music with Sam Cooke or bantering with Ed McMahon about TV bloopers. He thrived as the founder of Dick Clark Productions, supplying movies, game and music shows, beauty contests and more to TV. Among his credits: “The $25,000 Pyramid,” “TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes” and the American Music Awards.

For a time in the 1980s, he had shows on all three networks and was listed among the Forbes 400 of wealthiest Americans. Clark also was part of radio as partner in the United Stations Radio Networks, which provided programs – including Clark’s – to thousands of stations.

“There’s hardly any segment of the population that doesn’t see what I do,” Clark told The Associated Press in a 1985 interview.

“It can be embarrassing. People come up to me and say, ‘I love your show,’ and I have no idea which one they’re talking about.”

The original “American Bandstand” was one of network TV’s longest-running series as part of ABC’s daytime lineup from 1957 to 1987. It later aired for a year in syndication and briefly on the USA Network. Over the years, it introduced stars ranging from Buddy Holly to Madonna. The show’s status as an American cultural institution was solidified when Clark donated Bandstand’s original podium and backdrop to the Smithsonian Institution.

Clark joined “Bandstand” in 1956 after Bob Horn, who’d been the host since its 1952 debut, was fired. Under Clark’s guidance, it went from a local Philadelphia show to a national phenomenon.

“I played records, the kids danced, and America watched,” was how Clark once described the series’ simplicity. In his 1958 hit “Sweet Little Sixteen,” Chuck Berry sang that “they’ll be rocking on Bandstand, Philadelphia, P-A.”

As a host, he had the smooth delivery of a seasoned radio announcer. As a producer, he had an ear for a hit record. He also knew how to make wary adults welcome this odd new breed of music in their homes.

Clark endured accusations that he was in with the squares, with critic Lester Bangs defining Bandstand as “a leggily acceptable euphemism of the teenage experience.” In a 1985 interview, Clark acknowledged the complaints. “But I knew at the time that if we didn’t make the presentation to the older generation palatable, it could kill it.”

“So along with Little Richard and Chuck Berry and the Platters and the Crows and the Jayhawks … the boys wore coats and ties and the girls combed their hair and they all looked like sweet little kids into a high school dance,” he said.

But Clark defended pop artists and artistic freedom, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said in an online biography of the 1993 inductee. He helped give black artists their due by playing original R&B recordings instead of cover versions by white performers, and he condemned censorship.

His stroke in December 2004 forced him to miss his annual appearance on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.” He returned the following year and, although his speech at times was difficult to understand, many, including other stroke victims, praised his bravery.

Still speaking with difficulty, he continued taking part in his New Year’s shows, though in a diminished role. Ryan Seacrest became the main host.

“I’m just thankful I’m still able to enjoy this once-a-year treat,” he told The Associated Press by e-mail in December 2008 as another New Year’s Eve approached.

He was honored at the Emmy Awards in 2006, telling the crowd: “I have accomplished my childhood dream, to be in show business. Everybody should be so lucky to have their dreams come true. I’ve been truly blessed.”

He was born Richard Wagstaff Clark in Mount Vernon, N.Y., in 1929. His father, Richard Augustus Clark, was a sales manager who worked in radio.

Clark idolized his athletic older brother, Bradley, who was killed in World War II. In his 1976 autobiography, “Rock, Roll & Remember,” Clark recalled how radio helped ease his loneliness and turned him into a fan of Steve Allen, Arthur Godfrey and other popular hosts.

From Godfrey, he said, he learned that “a radio announcer does not talk to `those of you out there in radio land’; a radio announcer talks to me as an individual.”

Clark began his career in the mailroom of a Utica, N.Y., radio station in 1945. By age 26, he was a broadcasting veteran, with nine years’ experience on radio and TV stations in Syracuse and Utica, N.Y., and Philadelphia. He held a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University. While in Philadelphia, Clark befriended Ed McMahon, who later credited Clark for introducing him to his future “Tonight Show” boss, Johnny Carson.

In the 1960s, “American Bandstand” moved from black-and-white to color, from weekday broadcasts to once-a-week Saturday shows and from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. Although its influence started to ebb, it still featured some of the biggest stars of each decade, whether Janis Joplin, the Jackson 5, Talking Heads or Prince.

But Clark never did book two of rock’s iconic groups, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Elvis Presley also never performed, although Clark managed an on-air telephone interview while Presley was in the Army.

When Michael Jackson died in June 2009, Clark recalled working with him since he was a child, adding, “of all the thousands of entertainers I have worked with, Michael was THE most outstanding. Many have tried and will try to copy him, but his talent will never be matched.”

Clark kept more than records spinning with his Dick Clark Productions. Its credits included the Academy of Country Music and Golden Globe awards; TV movies including the Emmy-winning “The Woman Who Willed a Miracle” (1984), the “$25,000 Pyramid” game show and the 1985 film “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.” Clark himself made a cameo on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and a dramatic appearance as a witness on the original “Perry Mason.” He was an involuntary part of Michael Moore’s Academy Award-winning “Bowling for Columbine,” in which Clark is seen brushing off Moore as the filmmaker confronts him about working conditions at a restaurant owned by Clark.

In 1974, at ABC’s request, Clark created the American Music Awards after the network lost the broadcast rights to the Grammy Awards.

He was also an author, with “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand” and such self-help books as “Dick Clark’s Program for Success in Your Business and Personal Life” and “Looking Great, Staying Young.” His unchanging looks inspired a joke in “Peggy Sue Gets Married,” the 1986 comedy starring Kathleen Turner as an unhappy wife and mother transported back to 1960. Watching Clark on a black-and-white TV set, she shakes her head in amazement, “Look at that man, he never ages.”

Clark’s clean-cut image survived a music industry scandal. In 1960, during a congressional investigation of “payola” or bribery in the record and radio industry, Clark was called on to testify.

He was cleared of any suspicions but was required by ABC to divest himself of record-company interests to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. The demand cost him $8 million, Clark once estimated. His holdings included partial ownership of Swan Records, which later released the first U.S. version of the Beatles’ smash “She Loves You.”

In 2004, Clark announced plans for a revamped version of “American Bandstand.” The show, produced with “American Idol” creator Simon Fuller, was to feature a host other than Clark.

He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1994 and served as spokesman for the American Association of Diabetes Educators.

Clark, twice divorced, had a son, Richard Augustus II, with first wife Barbara Mallery and two children, Duane and Cindy, with second wife Loretta Martin. He married Kari Wigton in 1977.

Britney to ‘X Factor’?

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As the hunt for the next “X Factor” judges continues, Simon Cowell continues to play coy on who will replace Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger at the judges table.

As The Hollywood Reporter first reported, Britney Spears could be nearing a deal to make her reality series debut as a judge on the buzzworthy U.K. import. A well place source told THR that Spears’ fiancé, agent Jason Trawick, is negotiating her contact, which could be signed as soon as this week.

“You’ll have to wait and see,” Cowell teased during an appearance on Good Day New York.

When asked about Spears’ potential involvement, the showrunner replied, “I can’t confirm or deny anything right now. The truth is, we are talking to a number of people. It changes on a daily basis to be honest with you.”

Cowell also admitted that two new names have come forth in the last 24-hours, including one “very famous singer” and one “very famous actress.”

“You’ve gotta talk to everybody,” he said.

Addressing the shocking firings of Abdul, Scherzinger and host Steve Jones, Cowell quipped, “They weren’t fired, darling. They just weren’t invited back.”

“With the host,” he added, “too many Brits on the show, if I’m being honest with you. One Brit allowed.”

“I always wanted a boy and a girl to host the show,” Cowell said. “And I like hosts who don’t kind of have a hosting background, you know. I like them when they’ve done acting and stuff like that. It’s a different kind of dynamic.”

Speaking with The Voice mentor Miranda Lambert at The Hunger Games premiere, THR asked the country singer what she thought of Spears joining the X Factor roster.

“Why not? I mean, she’s an icon,” Lambert said. “It’s a smart choice.”

“I think it’d be awesome,” added her Pistol Annies bandmate, Angaleena Presley.

Double dose of American Idol Talentless Show

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What’s better than watching people with no talent on tv? Watching the same talentless people live- on a Holiday.

Thanksgiving was not a great day for American Idol’s latest winner and runner-up. Scotty McCreery, the 18-year-old country crooner, missed his cue to start lip-syncing during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, alerting some less observant viewers to the fact that no one is actually singing.

Meanwhile, the even younger Lauren Alaina had some live singing troubles when she forgot the words to the national anthem at the Lions/Packers game.

“I’m not a robot. I have no excuses. I messed up. You know what can ya do. At Least didn’t fall down again,” she tweeted.

STEVEN TYLER HOSPITALIZED IN PARAGUAY

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Steven Tyler has been hospitalized in Paraguay after suffering a nasty fall in his hotel bathroom.

The rocker was taken to the emergency room in Asuncion on Tuesday after slipping in the shower and cutting his face. He also received dental implants for two teeth lost in the accident.

Tyler spent three hours under the care of doctors before returning to his hotel to recover, according to an ABC report.

An Aerosmith concert planned for Tuesday was postponed by one day.

The news has left fans more than a little concerned because Tyler underwent a rehab stint in late 2009 for pain management.

The last time he took a tumble — from a stage in South Dakota — the band was forced to scrap a 2009 summer tour. He later quit the band to pursue a solo career.

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