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Monday’s cable news ratings were fairly predictable.
On the serious side, Rachel Maddow, Ari Melber, and Nicolle Wallace won their time slots easily. Maddow took down Sean Hannity. Ari Melber tied Bret Baier but beat him in the key age demo.
On the comic side, Fox News’s Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld took their hours. They were lucky nothing serious was happening in the news. When Trump and and his 18 co-defendants show up on Thursday in Atlanta, all eyes will be on MSNBC.
At 10pm, Lawrence O’Donnell tied with Gutfeld, but the surprise was Gutfeld’s huge jump in the key demo. Fox News’s older audience must have left their TVs on when they went to bed.
Stay tuned for this Thursday’s numbers. Even the Fox News viewers will have to watch something else to get the real story when their ‘hero’ is fingerprinted….
Sean Combs — aka Diddy, Puff Daddy, and Love — has announced a new album. It’s the same one he promised two years ago but never produced.
Now comes “The Love Album– Off the Grid.” Who’s on it? Who knows? One site has just seven songs listed. The Weeknd may be involved. After his HBO debacle, The Weeknd needs a hit big time.
So does Puffy. Not financially — just for his ego. Combs is loaded thanks to Ciroc Vodka and other brands he’s associated with. But he’s never had hits like he did in the early 90s with Bad Boy Records. He’s still paying Sting every day for “Every Breath You Take.’
So will “The Love Album” really drop on September 15th? Stay tuned…
I present to you my new album.
The Love Album: Off The Grid
September 15, 2023 R&B is alive! LOVE 🖤 #OTGpic.twitter.com/aZ2nJZ3xub
update: The Hollywood Reporter says Idina Menzel and J Balvin have also decamped from Braun’s management.
EARLIER The record business is fickle, and so is the audience. Back in the 70s and early 80s, superstars were born because they released a lot of music in a concentrated time, hitting generations of high schoolers who remained nostalgic for their hits.
But the new generations of pop stars take five, six, seven years to release new music — and then the fans have moved on.
Demi Lovato must be feeling the pain. Once a top seller, her last album — titled “Holy Fvck” — has sold just over 300,000 equivalent copies. But just the CDs and downloads came to 123,000. That’s not enough to sustain any lifestyle.
Yesterday, Lovato left her manager, Scooter Braun. Holy fvck indeed! Their time together has not produced any hits. (Of course, that album title is maybe one of the worst ideas in history!)
Justin Bieber may have left Braun as well. He has his own problems. Bieber hasn’t released a new album since “Justice” in 2021. He occasionally is featured on other artists’ songs, and in some cases – – like his own song, “Peaches” — he’s among the featured artists.
This year, Bieber has sold just 10,000 CDs and downloads. His streaming numbers are still high– his sales equivalent, according to Luminate, is 800,000 so far this year. But without touring — and Bieber may be off the road for good — no money is coming in. He may be blaming Braun and looking now to see how much money he’s got after a decade of working hard.
Braun’s imminent collapse as a power in the industry may be coming as his own hubris has rocketed. His Instagram page is not full of pictures of artists. It’s him, on private planes, helicopters, jet skis, and boats at posh parties in exotic locales, having a great time.
The artists, with falling sales and diminished incomes, are most certainly asking questions. Braun is promoting himself, not the acts who depended on him.
Without Lovato, Grande, and certainly Bieber, Braun’s SB Projects is left with a lot of B and C acts, not the kind that can fund a lavish lifestyle. The one act Braun has made the most off of is Bieber, although even may be asking questions since he’s only 29 and giving off the vibe of a has-been.
Under the terms of Donald Trump’s $200,000 bail agreement, the loudest mouth in the world isn’t communicate with any co-defendants in the case except through his lawyers. He was also directed to “make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community,” including “posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual.”
Nevertheless, there he is, back on social media, waging a war of words against DA Fani Willis, calling her names, claiming a “witch hunt,” and attacking Joe Biden. and so on.
All this gabbing has put Trump back in trouble with E. Jaan Carroll, who he attacked verbally after a jury found him guilty of rape. He’ll be back in court again soon with Carroll for allegedly libeling her. Now this judge should put him behind bars for contempt after violating the bail agreement.
UPDATE Now Matt Belloni says on Twitter that Ariana Grande has left as well. My guess is we will see lawsuits shortly.
EARLIER Demi Lovato says she’s left manager Scooter Braun and it’s all amicable.
Lovato has had one flop after another for the last couple of years, with no help from Braun. The manager of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande was supposed to have the magic touch. But he’s never been able to do much with singer Tori Kelly, and the Demi Lovato chapter was a disaster.
On top of that, I echoed other reports last week that Bieber and Braun are likely split, as well. Bieber has mostly disappeared from social media, hasn’t released any solo music in over a year, and has two cancelled tours on his resume.
Grande could be next. She’s spent the last year working on the “Wicked” movies. She also has no new solo releases in a long time.
At one point, Braun was doing everything to cross-hype Bieber and Grande, but it didn’t really work.
Braun merged his management company with the Korean group behind BTS. As he used to tour Bieber, his own social media — when it’s not full of his own vacation pictures — riffs on KPop singers from Hybe.
Every run comes to an end, so Braun’s is no surprise. In the case of Demi Lovato, she needs management help pronto. She’s about to release a rock version of her last album. She’s turned herself in to Joan Jett, which her audience doesn’t want and is a waste of her talents.
Jay Z is having such a tough time booking a musical guest for the Super Bowl he may have to do it himself.
So far, no one wants to do it. In one case, with Lizzo, her scandals immediately cut her from the running.
Taylor Swift has declined to do nine times in a row, they say.
This year, Harry Styles — always on the road — is too pooped.
Miley Cyrus would be a good choice. But the Grammys are on February 4, 2024 — just a week before the Super Bowl. Miley’s going to be singing “Flowers” and rushing to the podium a lot. It would be crazy to go from there to a Super Bowl rehearsal.
Lady Gaga’s done the half time show too recently. Bruce Springsteen? Rolling Stones? Paul McCartney? Unlikely.
Jay Z just put on a big hip hop show two years ago, but maybe this time can appear as the star. Beyonce would be welcome to join. But nothing can top pregnant Rihanna from last year.
The 2024 Super Bowl will take place in Las Vegas. We’ll have to wait and see who Jay Z makes a bet on.
Actors are prohibited from promoting their movies at film festivals because of the SAG AFTRA strike.
Sylvester Stallone however will appear next month at the Toronto International Film Festival. He’ll promote his Netflix documentary at a talk event moderated in front of an audience. TIFF will have other talks but not with union members. They include director Pedro Almodovar.
Stallone is a member of both the writers and actors guilds, each of which are on strike.
The “Rocky” star had voiced support for the WGA strike last spring when it began. But he’s yet to be seen on a picket line and hasn’t said anything about the actor’s strike.
Stallone has been ardent on campaigning for his own rights. Last year he complained — without basis — that he couldn’t get the rights back to “Rocky.” He didn’t own them in the first place, so that was an obstacle.
Should sly appear at TIFF? Probably not. He’s sending out a message and it’s a good one. Of course, the maybe the strikes will be settled by then, although it seems unlikely.
Miley Cyrus is dropping a whole new single on Thursday night.
This seems odd since Miley’s “Flowers” was the biggest hit on 2023, from her album “Endless Summer Vacation.” It’s sold the equivalent of 5.3 million copies including streaming.
But while “Flowers” is still on the charts since the beginning of the year, the album is not. “Endless Summer Vacation” sold the equivalent of 850,000 copies and just 110,000 actual paid downloads and CDs. The album never produced a big follow up single, either. “Flowers” — even though it’s by an established artist– has acted more like a one off hit, a la (for example) Carly Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe.”
So Miley will try to revive the album this week by releasing a new song, “Used to Be Young,” which will be added to “Endless Summer Vacation” and added to an updated documentary that will air on ABC this Friday. The documentary without “Used to Be Young” ran back in April on Disney Plus. The updated version will have a new interview with Miley plus the video for the new song.
It’s a head scratcher why radio didn’t give a follow up hit to “Flowers.” The same thing happened to Adele’s “Easy on Me.” The record company (in both cases, Sony) kind of just the first hit go very big and didn’t put a lot of elbow grease into a successor. In the old days of the biz you could get two or three hits out of an album. These days, with streaming milking all the tracks simultaneously, it’s a nearly impossible task.
No word yet on who wrote “Used to Be Young” but the snippet of lyrics released last week could be sung to the tune of “Flowers” in that cadence. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.
Warner Bros. can only be happy. They have the number 1 and 2 movies of the weekend.
Audiences chose Blue over Pink.. “Blue Beetle” beat “Barbie” by $4 million.
The Beetle had the worst debut ever for a DC Comics movie with $25 million. This was $5 million lower than estimates. But the film had no stars or publicity — the latter thanks to the strikes, which meant no talk shows or interviews.
“Barbie” is booming away, closing in on $600 million perhaps for a final domestic total, $1.2 billion worldwide.
“Oppenheimer” has done better than anyone could have hoped for. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is closing in $90 million.
“Strays” stayed in the pound, with no one to adopt it at $8.2 million.
Britney Spears she’s doing pretty damn good in a happy post-split divorce post on Instagram. Britney is ditching husband number 3, Sam Ashgari, who was 13 years her junior and obviously looking for a payday. The tabs say he probably won’t get it, plus he signed an NDA.
Britney is twirling around, looks blissfully happy, and also says she’s buying a horse. It’s just another day in the metaverse.
