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Monday cable ratings were not unlike every Monday.
At 9pm MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow easily beat Hannity by 400,000 viewers. At 10pm, Lawrence O’Donnell took Greg Gutfeld.
The Maddow-O’Donnell combo on Monday continues to play a winning hand. They also sweep when there’s a big actual news story.
The rest of prime went to Fox News over MSNBC. I hate to say it but Chris Hayes and Joy Reid have have the weakest numbers even if their shows are eminently watchable.
Jesse Watters on Fox had th highest key demo numbers of the night. I guess his audience dug it when he declared last week that Trump looked “hard” in his mugshot. Watters admonished his fans that was also straight. I just read these things, I have no idea what is going on there.
MSNBC needs Maddow more and more. Next week I’m sure we’ll see her on September 6th for the group arraignment in Atlanta.
The five late night all stars of TV have gotten together for a podcast on Spotify.
Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, and Seth Meyers hit the streaming platform tomorrow with a daily show. All proceeds will go to funding their respective writers who are now on strike.
I’ll be listening. Everyone will be. What a great idea!
This, despite facing arraignment in Atlanta on September 6 after his arrest and indictment on election interference charges. There are four felony counts against him.
Trump and 17 other co-defendants — some of whose lives he’s destroyed — will be arraigned together.
Nevertheless, he writes on social media: “Big win in Georgia for President Trump! Georgia, which is absolutely a Republican State, is showing up BIG. They demand accountability, and demand it now. So sad what has happened to one of the greatest places on Earth—But we will win in 2024, Georgia will lead the way, and we will Make America Great Again!”
He calls himself President Trump. He lost the 2020 election and is not president. Joe Biden is President of the United States. That is, in the real world.
Are his people stupid enough and gullible enough to believe that he’s had a Big Win? Is Trump demented? He calls Georgia a Republican state, also. They have two Democratic US Senators.
Lea Michelle doesn’t mind raining on the parade of her fans.
Less than a week before “Funny Girl” closes, Michelle is out of the show tonight. She’s “under the weather,” her usual excuse. Except, of the course the weather is pretty good right now.
In the year of Michelle’s run as Fanny Brice, she’s missed dozens of performances despite already having Thursday nights off. Julie Benko, the busiest understudy in history, will fill in tonight. She already does Thursdays and filled in dozens more times when Beanie Feldstein was playing Fanny Brice.
“Funny Girl” made $2.1 million last week — the highest in its year long history — based on fans rushing in to see Lea Michelle at the last minute. What a drag if she’s out during the final week.
Lea Michele is under the weather and will be out of tonight’s 7pm performance, Tuesday August 29th. Julie Benko will be on as Fanny Brice. pic.twitter.com/23uOJhmx4C
Apple Studios already has a Best Picture Oscar for “CODA.”
They obviously want another one. They have a chance with Martin Scorsese’s spectacular drama, “Killers of the Flower Moon.” So now they’ve changed their game plan.
Seeing that “Oppenheimer” has made $300 million for Universal, Apple will go for it big time with “Killers.” They’ve scrapped plans for an October 6th limited theatrical release. Instead they will go wide to theaters on October 20th, worldwide, and make a big deal of this one. There is no streaming date set yet. Kudos to them.
“Killers” stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone, all of whom will be nominated for Oscars, not to mention Scorsese as Best Director and all the below the line categories as well.
The massive new epic Bob Dylan project called “Mixing Up the Medicine” is getting a preview this Friday in the Hamptons.
No one has yet seen the 608 book coming from Callaway Editions so the Friday event has taken on an air of excitement.
Nicholas Callaway says the book — approved and encouraged by Dylan’s offices — spans the poet-singer-Nobel Prize winner’s entire career with 1,000 pictures from photographers and filmmakers, many previously unseen. It also boasts 30 essays from esteemed writers like Douglas Brinkley and Sean Wilentz.
Very astutely, Callaway tells me he acquired world print, eBook and audio rights for a portion of the archival materials from the Bob Dylan Center (BDC) in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The book, which is selling on amazon at a discounted $90, was put together by Mark Davidson, Curator and Director of the Bob Dylan Archive, who wrote and edited the book along with archivist Parker Fishel. Among the essayists are Peter Carey, John Doe, Raymond Foye, Joy Harjo, Richard Hell, Clinton Heylin, Alan Licht,Greil Marcus, Allison Moorer, Michael and Griffin Ondaatje, Gregory Pardlo, Amanda Petrusich, TomPiazza, Lee Ranaldo, Alex Ross, Robert Rubin, Ed Ruscha, Lucy Sante, Jeff Slate, Greg Tate.
There’s also a newly updated Greatest Hits coming from Sony Legacy that includes songs like “Make You Feel My Love,” “Forever Young,”Hurricane,” and “Things Have Changed.” For most of the last 50 years, Dylan’s greatest hits didn’t go beyond 1972. Now “Tangled Up in Blue” finally gets the proper status. I feel they should have included a couple more, but no one asked me!
PS What does the title mean? It’s from the famous opening line of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” — Johnny’s in the basement/mixing up the medicine — made even more famous by DA Pennebaker’s immortal card throwing video of the song from his movie, “Don’t Look Back.” There have been countless knock offs since then, but there’s only one original!
Emmy voting ends in a few hours, so here’s a fun fact: legendary Queen guitarist Brian May plays on the Emmy nominated song from “Ted Lasso.”
British music artist Sam Ryder is nominated for Best Music and Lyrics. He co-wrote, with Jamie Hartman and Tom Howe, the Emmy Nominated song “Fought and Lost” from Apple TV+’s mega hit “Ted Lasso.”
No less than Brian May from “Queen” plays guitar on the track. Sam has been known for a while over the pond; he’s a Eurovision winner, TikTok sensation, played at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and at tribute concert for Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins at Wembley Stadium. Now people here are discovering him in a big way, songwriters Diane Warren and Carroll Connors welcomed Sam at a recent event in Hollywood. Sam has said that the most important attributes for him to maintain as an artist is “my gratitude and enthusiasm.”
When you meet Sam, and hear him sing, rest assured, he has both.
HBO has cancelled “The Idol” starring The Weeknd and Lily Rose Depp.
The short lived series garnered terrible ratings and atrocious reviews. Sam Levinson, creator of “Euphoria,” originated this show with The Weeknd.
But the show had problems from the get-go. The original writer left amid accusations of a toxic backstage atmosphere. Levinson replaced her, and amped up all the grim sex scenes. There was also no understanding of the music business, and less about how a pop star would be developed and survive.
What a mess. Levinson will go on to “Euphoria” and other projects. Depp could still have a very good career. But The Weeknd really imperiled his pop star career. He released a lot of bad music no one wanted, and his participation in those sex scenes revealed that he couldn’t — and shouldn’t — do any more acting.
HBO, meantime, has plenty of terrific shows like “The Gilded Age” coming up on its 2nd season. They would be smart just to put “The Idol” in a drawer somewhere– no streaming. Just forget it.
Scooter Braun is living a carefree life and he wants us to know it.
The now ex manager of Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Idina Menzel, and likely Justin Bieber has posted videos of himself and pals partying on a yacht and singing karaoke Journey songs.
I guess rumors are right. He doesn’t want to manage anyone, and he’s not. I wonder what it’s like to work at his SB Management company. It must be demoralizing to see your boss acting like this. Email me in confidence at showbiz411@gmail.com. I’d love to know.
What will Justin Bieber think when he sees this? It’s one for thing Scooter to have fun but this is a Big F U to everyone around him. Party on!
Wow, this is a headscratcher. Jon Batiste released a new album last week, his first one since he won the Grammy in 2021 for his album, “We Are.”
The new album, called “World Music Radio,” sold just 15,118 streaming equivalent copies. In paid downloads and CDs, that number was just 8,283. The album is not on the iTunes Top 200 Albums.
This would seem strange since “We Are” did win that Grammy for Album of the Year and four other statues that night.
But “We Are” sold in total just 4,275 CDs and downloads. Total sales including streaming came eventually to 152,569. The album got no sales bounce from the Grammys. Usually an album of the year would take off like a rocket. In this case, it did not.
And so we have the follow up effort, already a non event.
What happened? In the case of “We Are” — an ebullient celebration of R&B and world music — Batiste had something big going for him. He was the bandleader every night on CBS’s “Late Night with Stephen Colbert.” He was omnipresent. Everyone was in love with him, especially CBS, which also broadcasts the Grammy Awards.
Batiste left Colbert soon after winning, which wasn’t a shock. I’m sure if Colbert were on right now, Batiste would be invited back. But the strikes have left the talk shows dark, meaning Batiste hasn’t had a lot of outlets to plug the new music. Second, the album was only announced a short time ago and had no real advance marketing from Verve Records.
PS “We Are” beat albums by Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Olivia Rodrigo and even Tony Bennett’s second collaboration with Lady Gaga.
