Monday, December 22, 2025
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CNN Biden Town Hall Beats All Cable News Tuesday Night, Then CNN Fact Check Says 4 Big Mistakes

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CNN’s Town Hall with Joe Biden was the biggest ratings getter Tuesday night.

With Anderson Cooper hosting, the Town Hall at 9pm beat all cable news including Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. The show scored 3.6 million viewers, also drawing more eyes than Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show from 8pm.

The Town Hall doubled CNN’s 8pm draw with Chris Cuomo, which had 1.8 million viewers.

The program was a success. But then, just in case you thought CNN was just letting Biden say whatever he wanted, they fact checked the Town Hall and decided he made four big errors.

Beach Boys Cash Out: Brian Wilson, Rest of Group, Sells Rights to Everything to Irving Azoff Company

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No touring in 2020 and 2021 has put a large crimp in the Beach Boys organization. There’s no money coming in.

So rock and roll’s most entrepreneurial maestro, Irving Azoff, has swept in and bought everything from them, lock, stock, and sandbox.

Azoff, already the top manager in rock with Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, and Earth Wind & Fire on his roster, also has a company called Iconic Artists Group with Olivier Chastan. They announced today that they’ve bought the rights to the Beach Boys master recordings, controlling interest in their intellectual property, including their sound recordings, the brand, select musical compositions, and memorabilia.

And surfboards, of course.

The Beach Boys and their heirs will retain an interest in their assets to “participate in the upside Iconic expects to create by actively marketing and promoting the Beach Boys.”

No dollar amount is mentioned, but it’s got to be in the $100 million range. Beach Boys’ songs like “God Only Knows,” “California Girls,” “Wouldn’t it Be Nice,” and “Good Vibrations” remain huge staples on radio and in commercials, with plenty of opportunities to monetize them into infinity.

“The Beach Boys are an American treasure,” added Azoff, Chairman and CEO of The Azoff Company. “I am honored that the Beach Boys have entrusted Iconic to preserve and grow their legacy. And I’m thrilled that the Beach Boys want to stay invested in the growth of the incredible cultural brand they created.”

The fact that Azoff was able to get Brian Wilson on the same page with Al Jardine, as well as the much loathed Mike Love, not to mention the estates of his two brothers, Carl and Dennis, is really a tribute to the famed manager.

Not mentioned is who gets to keep John Stamos. But I’m sure they’ll work that out!

The Beach Boys official statement:

“The Beach Boys and our songs have been one of the great joys of our lives. For more than half a century, we’ve witnessed generations of fans from all corners of the world come together to celebrate our music, dancing and singing along to the songs that we have loved and performed for decades. As we look towards the upcoming 60th anniversary of The Beach Boys, we wanted a partner to help expand opportunities for our brand, while continuing to preserve our tradition as a band whose music transcends the test of time. We are confident that Irving and Iconic are the ideal partners and are confident that The Beach Boys’ ongoing legacy is in the best possible hands. We are very proud of what we have achieved as The Beach Boys and how our songs continue to resonate with our fans.”

 

 

Liza Minnelli All Star 75th Birthday Tribute Special With Joel Grey, Chita Rivera to Stream March 12th

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Liza Minnelli is turning 75, how do you like that?

For her 75th Birthday,  Liz will get an all star virtual celebration called “Love Letter to Liza: A 75th Birthday Tribute Celebration,” on  Friday, March 12 at 8:00 PM EST on the streaming platform Stellar.

It looks like Alan Cumming, who starred in “Cabaret” a generation after Minnelli made the show her signature hit. is one of the producers.

The show features this list of stars, and, I assume, Liza’s singing sister, Lorna Luft. Look at this list of people who will perform and give tributes:

 Joel Grey, Lily Tomlin, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chita Rivera, Joan Collins, Harry Connick, Jr., Ben Vereen and the dancers from the Verdon-Fosse Legacy, Ute Lemper, Billy Stritch, Charles Busch, Kathie Lee Gifford, Lea Delaria, Jim Caruso, Jonathan Groff, Sandra Bernhard, Andrew Rannells, Nathan Lane, Mario Cantone, Tony Hale, Coco Peru, John Cameron Mitchell, Michele Lee,  Andrea Martin, Seth Sikes, Neil Meron, and more.

Tickets, priced at $30.00, are now available at stellartickets.com and clubcummingnyc.com.       

 “Liza is a total entertainer, a show person the likes of which is hard to find these days. Liza’s talents have known no bounds, and her contribution to Broadway, film and even a hilarious stint on television’s “Arrested Development,” make her so deserving of this, a glorious celebration of her 75 years on Earth, said producer Daniel Nardicio. “I’m thrilled to be able to do this for Liza, and for her friends and fans in a safe, socially distant way to say we all love you Liza—Happy Birthday Darling!”

A portion of ticket sales will be donated to The Actors Fund, the national human services organization for everyone in performing arts and entertainment. Through offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, The Fund serves everyone in film, theater, television, music, opera, radio and dance with programs including social services and emergency financial assistance, health care and insurance counseling, housing, and secondary employment and training services.

 

In addition to the March 12 showing, repeat airings will take place on March 13 and 14 on Stellar Video on Demand.

We Were Right: “NCIS New Orleans” Is Coming to An End Thanks to Low Ratings, Scott Bakula Star Trek Bound?

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I said the other day in this space that “NCIS New Orleans” was coming to an end. And tonight, I was proven right. This will be its last season.

Never a ratings maker, this iteration of the “NCIS” franchise ran for seven seasons and starred Scott Bakula. But once it was leaked that Bakula might be returning to the “Star Trek” franchise, we knew the gig was up.

CBS is replacing this show with a new iteration of “CSI” just to fool viewers who are dyslexic with initials.

As for Bakula, rumors abound that he will join the current “Star Trek” shows on CBS All Access, er, Paramount Plus, where there are now two series. He played Captain Jonathan Archer on the “Star Trek Enterprise” series.

The only other big star of “New Orleans” is the great CCH Pounder, who can do anything and should be on a show where she can get the Emmy she deserves. I don’t know what happened to Shalita Grant, but I hope she goes back to doing comedy. On Broadway, she was hilarious.

Allison Janney Sitcom “Mom” Ending After This Season Thanks to Anna Faris’s Mysterious Exit Last September

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Say goodbye to “Mom.”

By Mother’s Day, the Allison Janney sitcom on CBS will be a thing of the past.  The network announced the end is coming after 8 seasons.

“Mom” starred Emmy winner Janney as the Mom, and Anna Faris as the daughter. But at the end of last summer, Faris suddenly announced she wasn’t coming back, and the show’s premise was left in the lurch.

Producer Chuck Lorre filled the vacancy with excellent secondary characters, but without a daughter there was no “Mom.” Frankly, they should have recast Faris’s part or had Janney announce a child she’d given away or something.

The ratings have been disappointing. Last April, the season finale had 7.1 million viewers. The season average was 6.2, excellent for such an old show. But this year, the average has been 5 million. Ironically, the last first run episode scored a 5.4 million, the highest so far.

Janney has an Oscar, several Emmys, she deserved a Tony for her “Six Degrees of Separation.” She is versatile and entertaining, one of our best actresses with a lot of great things ahead. Faris, however, has been silent since her announcement. There was speculation that she had personal issues that precluded being on camera, but no one knows what happened.

PS too bad– those secondary characters, played by Mimi Kennedy, Jaime Pressly, Kirsten Johnson, Bill Fichtner, and Jane Curtin, are the ones that suffer. Faris really wrecked things for them.

 

Ken Jennings in No Jeopardy of Not Being Permanent Host: Ratings for 4th Week Were Up from Last Week

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You know Ken Jennings is going to be the permanent host of “Jeopardy!” It’s just a matter of time.

For the week of February 7th, Jennings’ fourth week of shows were up in the ratings by 2 percent, 6.1 million. Ken is rocking. On the show he’s personable and relaxed and totally engaged with the contestants.

Next week we’ll see the show’s executive producer take a crack at hosting, and then a few celeb fill ins like Katie Couric and quarterback Aaron Rodgers. There will be more, through the spring, and then Jennings will likely be named permanent host in May.

“Jeopardy” remains the number 1 show in syndication, which is a tribute to Alex Trebek.

The sad news is that December’s winning contestant, 24 year old Brayden Smith, died in January after a brief hospitalization. This is tragic. The kid seemed so happy, and he won $115K!

Other syndication news: “The Ellen Show” was down to 1 million, but “Live with Kelly and Ryan” remains a powerhouse with 2 million. Amazing. And that’s tribute to Regis Philbin, who invented the show.

 

Demi Lovato Says in Doc She Had a Heart Attack and Three Strokes: “I’m on my ninth life”

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Demi Lovato’s got a documentary coming on March 23rd to YouTube. Plagued with drug dependency, Demi says that after her last overdose she had a heart attack and three strokes. Her doctor told her she had “five to ten minutes” left to live.

“I’m on my ninth life,” Demi says in the trailer.

What a story. She has a great voice and a vibrant personality. But I went to a small event a couple of years ago to meet her, and she was a rude nightmare. I think now we’ll see why. Let’s hope she i better now. I really admired her “Commander in Chief” song. She has a big career still ahead of her.

Flashback: Listen to Dory Previn’s Famous Song “Beware of Young Girls” About Mia Farrow Breaking Up Her Marriage

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Dory Previn was a pretty famous folk singer in the 60s. In 1959 she married composer-conductor Andre Previn and would have remained so but in 1968 Previn, who was 40, started having an affair with Mia Farrow, who was 23 and just divorced from Frank Sinatra. Previn divorced her and married Farrow.

Dory wrote and recorded a famous song about Mia called “Beware of Young Girls.” Now that Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering are busy making Mia into a saint, I thought it was good time to get out the acoustic guitar and sing along.

Dory died in 2012 at age 86. She had a long, happy second marriage, by the way.

Beware of young girls
Who come to the door
Wistful and pale of twenty and four
Delivering daisies with delicate hands
Beware of young girls
Too often they crave to cry
At a wedding and dance on a grave
She was my friend, my friend
My friend, she was invited to my house
Oh yes, she was and though she knew
My love was true and no ordinary thing
She admired my wedding ring
She admired my wedding ring
She was my friend, my friend
My friend, she sent us little silver gifts
Oh yes, she did, oh, what a rare
And happy pair
She inevitably said as she glanced
At my unmade bed
She admired my unmade bed, my bed
Beware of young girls
Who come to the door
Wistful and pale of twenty and four
Delivering daisies with delicate hands
Beware of young girls
Too often they crave to cry… More
Source: LyricFind

HBO Doc About Woody Allen & Mia Farrow Ignores Mia’s 3 Dead Kids, Her Child Molester Brother, Other Family Tragedies

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Three of the 11 children Mia Farrow adopted over time have died young. One committed suicide. (Actually, two.)

Mia’s brother, John Charles Villers-Farrow, was sentenced in 2013 to 25 years for child molestation in Maryland. He had over 20 child charges of child abuse against him, but went to jail on just two. Taking an Alford plea, he was required to serve 10 years. He was released a year ago, after serving just seven years.

When Mia Farrow married Frank Sinatra, how old was she? She was 21. Frank was 50. That short marriage was followed by one to composer and conductor Andre Previn. She was 25. He was 41. And married to singer songwriter Dory Previn, who wrote a famous song about Mia breaking up her marriage.

None of these things is mentioned even briefly in the HBO doc series coming Sunday called “Allen v. Farrow” in which Mia is portrayed as a saint, and Woody Allen as Satan. Disingenuous to a fault, “Allen vs. Farrow” is not a documentary. It’s an Op Ed piece, and a toast to Mia, who gives the performance of her life, worthy of an Oscar. (The marriages are recounted as if they were just happy adventures.)

Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick made this series, and it’s a disappointment that they’ve been sucked into Farrow’s now almost 30 year vendetta against Woody Allen. But what you get out of it, surprisingly, is how much Mia hates Soon Yi, the girl she adopted who took up with Woody at age 18 and is still with him three decades later. Mia’s scorched Earth approach to Soon Yi should be the takeaway here. Soon Yi and Woody have been together since 1992. They have raised two daughters, now in college. And yet Mia will do anything she can to destroy Soon Yi. Mia Farrow is the most scorned lover in history. And don’t you forget it.

I’m not so clear how she really feels about adopted daughter Dylan. For years Dylan was too young to be weaponized by Mia in this war. But now Mia’s got son Ronan Farrow placed well in the media as her assassin. She’s been able to trot out Dylan, a sensitive and bright young woman who’s listened to three decades of brain washing and alternative facts.

If you go back to 1992, it would have been hard to imagine that Woody and Soon Yi would last and raise a family. But that’s what happened. Most child molesters we’ve heard about have dozens of victims. In Woody’s case, there was simply one allegation, and it came after his affair with Soon Yi was revealed, and his “family” structure was coming apart. There has never ever been a suggestion of any other impropriety. The story of Dylan’s abuse was Mia’s one last act of revenge, to try and destroy their lives. It hasn’t worked.

The big deal of this series is that Dylan talks. We meet her, and she’s lovely. She has no idea if what she’s saying is true, she just believes it. But the series has no counterbalance. It’s just a given to her that Woody molested her at age 7, that Mia filmed her afterward appearing to describe what happened, and everything Mia has said since then is true. If Dylan were to look at this series with an objective eye, she might see the holes in the story. There is no “evidence” of wrongdoing. It’s just anecdotal smears from Mia’s friends– “Woody was too close to Dylan.” “He was obsessed.” What utter hogwash. The reality is he was an older father, and he loved his kids. Period.

Luckily, Mia was quite the little filmmaker back then. “Allen vs. Farrow” is full of home movies made by…her!  Ziering and Dick make it seem like there was some omniscient presence filming Woody with the kids. But it was Mia! She was right there! She saw everything that was going on. And no matter how the home movies have been edited to make Woody look sinister, he’s not. He’s as attentive to little Ronan (then called Satchel, not explained in the series how Mia changed the kids’ names) as he is to Dylan (whom she briefly re-named Eliza, also not discussed).

The perfect Farrow family is a continuing theme throughout the four episodes. But that’s been scotched in real life by Moses, who was older than both kids when all this went down. At first Moses took Mia’s side. But then as time unfolded, he came to Woody’s side. You can read his 2018 essay here. But Moses’s adult evaluation of his family, and of the whole scandal, is just dismissed by Mia, Ronan, and Dylan. It doesn’t fit in with their modus operandi, their raison d’etre.

UPDATED Ziering and Dick also ignore the deaths of three of Mia’s adopted children: Lark, Tam, and Thaddeus, who shot himself to death in 2016. Tam, Mia claimed, died from heart failure at age 19 in 2000. But Moses, in his essay, says it was suicide. Lark died in 2008 from pneumonia after struggling with AIDs and drug addiction.

And what about Mia’s siblings? In addition to jailbird sexual fiend John, there’s Patrick. He committed suicide in 2009, shooting himself in his New England art galley.

Moses Farrow concluded his essay — also omitted from the series — with a note to Mia:

“I’m guessing your next step will be to launch a campaign to discredit me for speaking out. I know it comes with the territory. And it’s a burden I am willing to bear. But, after all this time, enough is enough. You and I both know the truth. And it’s time for this retribution to end.”

Before you buy into “Allen vs. Farrow” consider the sources, do the research. And take this mini series as a fictional account by a clever actress giving the performance of her life.

Here is Dory Previn’s 1969 song, “Beware of Young Girls,” written about Mia breaking up her marriage to Andre Previn.

 

Brooke Baldwin Out at CNN After 13 Years, Replaced by Brianna Keilar: “Yes, I’m feeling very vulnerable”

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I really liked Brooke Baldwin on CNN. She’s been there since 2008, working her way up to hosting the 1 to 3pm slot. But before the election she got edged out by Flavor of the Month Brianna Keilar. And now, Brooke is leaving the network. The television business is gruesome, isn’t it? Back in October, when Natalie Allen left, Brooke knew what was coming. She wrote on Instagram: “It’s been a dream of mine to work at CNN… I’m a home town girl (ATL 🍑), and this has always been my hometown network. In the last ten years, we’ve witnessed history together. I’ve laughed and cried with you… I’ve rung in many a New Year with you 🥂. I’ve been sick with you. I have GROWN with you.”

Little by little, CNN is remaking the mid afternoon. Jake Tapper has now cornered Wolf Blitzer, whose time has shrunk. It’s clear they’re trying to retire Wolfie, even though he will always be my guy. Wolf is almost 73, and TV is no country for old men. (Jake has stopped dying his hair and has a big gray wave in front. He’d better think about that.)

Brooke leaves officially in April, although we’ll probably see less and less of her. That’s what they do on soaps before they kill you off.

Here’s her statement:

“I will be leaving CNN in April. Let me back up. After most of my 20s working my way up in local news, I came to this network in 2008 – in the midst of the Great Recession as a freelancer. I remember I scribbled my name on a Post-It note and stuck it outside of this temporary office, determined to fulfilling my dream of becoming a full-time CNN correspondent.

“I wanted to be part of the best of the best in cable news and journalism, and, as a native Atlantan, this would be my hometown dream. Little did I know, I would not only go one to fulfill that dream, I would flourish in this environment and land my own two-hour show in the afternoon at the age of 31.

“For a decade I’ve never taken for granted the enormous responsibility and privilege I’ve had to work with some of the most talented producers and photojournalists and correspondents and anchors out there as we have covered our era’s most urgent and important stories, conflicts, terrorism, environmental and natural disasters, the wrath of gun violence, royal weddings, my American Women series, the social justice movement that defines our culture and a pandemic that changed the world and politics – lots of politics.

“You have been with me every step of the way – never more so than when I was incredibly sick with Covid last year. I am so grateful for your loyalty and passion for the world we cover. I am so grateful to my show team – you know who you are. You know who you are. To Jeff Zucker, to my very large CNN family and to you. To you.

“The next chapter of my life will be focused on what I love most about my work: amplifying the lives of extraordinary Americans and putting my passion for storytelling to good use. For the last two years, I’ve been working on my first book; it’s called Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power, and, you know, there’s just more I need to do – more I need to do outside of this place, outside of the walls of this place, a place I have been privileged to call home now for 13 years.

“And, yep, we still in a pandemic, and nope, I don’t have a job I’m jumping right into, and yes – yes, I’m feeling very vulnerable. But what is it Brene Brown says? ‘Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change,’ and I am so excited about what is to come. So, here it goes: I really do hope you’ll join me, and in the meantime, I’ll be right here with you, right her until mid-April. Now, to the news.”