NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana --
Forget a Hollywood hot spot or the bright lights of Las Vegas – to ring in 2009, Britney Spears opted for a very special New Year’s Eve with her family in Louisiana, watching her brother, Bryan, tie the knot.
Bryan, 31, and Graciella Sanchez, 36, wed on New Year’s Eve in a private ceremony in New Orleans, according to People.
“It was beautiful,” a source told People. “It was only close family – very small and intimate.”
The entire Spears family was in attendance at the wedding, including Britney and her sons Jayden James and Sean Preston; Jamie Lynn, her daughter Maddie and fiance Casey Aldridge; as well as the kids’ parents Lynne and Jamie.
While Bryan and Graciella have known each other for years, they only began dating a short while ago. Graciella is little Spears sister Jamie Lynn’s longtime manager.
The bride wore a stunning beige-white Carolina Herrera dress for the nuptials, while the groom donned a dapper Marc Jacobs suit, according to People.
MIAMI, Florida --
Cincinnati football coach Brian Kelly thinks his team has figured out how to beat Virginia Tech – but he knows the Bearcats can’t beat Diddy.
Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs moved into the Miami Beach oceanfront resort where Kelly’s Bearcats were staying, so Cincinnati moved out for their final night before taking on Virginia Tech in Thursday’s Orange Bowl.
Diddy was headlining one of several New Year’s bashes at the ritzy, celeb-favored Fontainebleau — each cost $400 to get in, far more than most Orange Bowl seats. So while some of Cincinnati’s support staff remained behind to enjoy the fun (including hearing Maroon 5 jam by the pool), the Bearcat players were moving to quieter digs.
“See, I don’t know how you’ve got ‘P. Diddy,”’ Kelly said, gently and comically chiding a reporter Wednesday for not knowing the superstar’s most current moniker. “To me, he’s Diddy.”
Truth be told, Kelly might not have recognized Diddy.
Kelly had to acknowledge his celeb sighting shortcomings to some players earlier this week when actor Jamie Foxx strolled through the lobby and got mobbed, just as he did Tuesday night when he sat behind some of LeBron James’ cohorts at a Miami Heat game.
“I need to get out and get a life. I think that’s really what this is about,” Kelly said. “You know, it’s the Orange Bowl. It’s exciting. You’re going to have those kinds of things. But I won’t get a chance to see the show.”
Neither will Virginia Tech.
The Hokies are staying in another waterside hotel near Fort Lauderdale, and coach Frank Beamer moved his team out Wednesday, as well. It’s one of many switches Virginia Tech has made this season from past bowl schedules, as the Hokies are trying desperately to minimize the risk of any distraction leading up until kickoff.
“Where we’re staying is a great, great hotel, and there’s a lot of great Hokie fans around there, but I want to get it more like a normal Friday,” Beamer said. “So we’re going to change hotels.”
That’s consistent with what college teams do before regular-season games: Find a hotel for Friday night; seclude players and coaches from the rest of the world as much as possible, and get down to business until kickoff on Saturday.
Beamer didn’t say where the Hokies were crashing, but clearly, he wasn’t headed anywhere near Diddy’s bash.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. --
Millions of Time Warner Cable customers won’t lose their access to MTV and 18 other channels after the cable giant reached an agreement early Thursday with media conglomerate Viacom Inc.
The two sides, citing disagreement over fee hikes, had threatened a damaging blackout at a minute past midnight Thursday that would have cut off shows such as “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The Colbert Report” to about 15.7 million subscribers.
“We are pleased that our customers will continue to be able to watch the customers will continue to be able to watch the programming they enjoy on MTV Networks,” said Glenn Britt, president and CEO of Time Warner Cable Inc. “We are sorry they had to endure a day of public disagreement as we worked through this negotiation.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Details must still be finalized over the next few days, the companies said.
Viacom president and CEO Philippe Dauman said the company was happy a deal was struck. Viacom had mounted an advertising onslaught warning customers of the possible blackout, taking out ads in major newspapers and Web sites from The New York Times and TVGuide.com featuring a tearful “Dora the Explorer” crying and clinging to her monkey pal, Boots.
“Why is Dora crying?” the ad read. “Tonight you will lose Nickelodeon and 18 other channels from your TV.” It then prompted people to call their cable company to complain.
The dispute would have affected some 13.3 million Time Warner Cable subscribers, mainly in New York state, the Carolinas, Ohio, Southern California and Texas; and 2.4 million customers of Bright House Networks in Michigan, Indiana, California, Alabama and Florida.
Time Warner Chief Executive Glenn Britt on Wednesday had called Viacom’s demand for a 12 percent increase in fees — an extra $39 million on top of the estimated $300 million it pays Viacom annually — extortion and outrageous given the recession. Viacom countered that the requested increase amounted to an extra $2.76 annually per subscriber.
Viacom had argued that Americans spend a fifth of their TV time watching Viacom shows but its fees made up less than 2.5 percent of the Time Warner cable bill.
Spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew said that despite ranking high in the ratings, Viacom’s cable networks’ average daily license fee was 65 percent lower than that of networks run by The Walt Disney Co., News Corp.‘s Fox, Time Warner Inc.‘s Turner Broadcasting System and Discovery Communications Inc.
Analyst Michael Nathanson with Bernstein Research said Viacom’s channels had been “underpriced relative to their peers.”
Public carriage fee disputes of this scale between a programmer and a cable operator are not that common, especially when there’s a threat of a blackout, said Derek Baine, senior analyst at SNL Kagan in Monterey, Calif. Typically, both sides agree on contract extensions as they negotiate on terms, he said, and any blackouts don’t last long because TV operators get calls from outraged customers.
One prominent carriage fee fight in recent years was in 2004, between Viacom and EchoStar, the former name of Dish Network Corp. Shows were dropped for two days.
In October, Time Warner Cable wrestled with LIN TV Corp., which operates local TV stations affiliated with NBC, CBS, Fox and CW. But this time, Time Warner Cable faced Viacom, the largest cable programmer, not a small independent with a handful of channels.
The channels in the dispute were Comedy Central, Logo, Palladia, MTV, MTV 2, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, MTV Tr3s, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Nick 2, Nicktoons, Spike, The N, TV Land, VH1, VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul and CMT: Pure Country.
Viacom shares rose 88 cents, or 4.5 percent, to close at $20.12 on Wednesday, while Time Warner Cable shares fell 31 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $21.45.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. --
Music sales have continued to slump in 2008 as the increased number of downloads of digital tracks failed to make up for a plunge in the sale of compact discs.
Year-end sales figures released Wednesday by The Nielsen Co. show total album sales, including album equivalents made up of single digital tracks, fell to 428.4 million units, down 8.5 percent from 500.5 million in 2007.
Physical album sales fell 20 percent to 362.6 million from 450.5 million, while digital album sales rose 32 percent to a record 65.8 million units.
Digital track sales, such as those conducted in Apple Inc.‘s iTunes Music Store, were up 27 percent from last year, breaking the 1 billion mark for the first time at 1.07 billion.
The report continues a troubling trend for the recording industry, which has a harder time maintaining profits when consumers buy single songs instead of albums. The number of transactions rose 10.5 percent to 1.5 billion, although the figure treats single track and whole album purchases the same.
“You can see the overall unit sales as a positive, but their model is really built on album sales and that just continues to decline,” said Silvio Pietroluongo, director of charts for Billboard magazine.
“Music consumption has never been at a higher clip, it’s just a matter of trying to turn it into revenue,” he added.
Some record labels are making progress. Craig Kallman, chief executive of Warner Music Group Corp.‘s Atlantic Records, whose artists include Kid Rock and T.I., said his label passed a milestone in the year to September by having its digital revenue exceed that from physical CD sales.
The label, the top-selling in the U.S. in 2008, has had to become more careful in choosing which artists to promote and more patient in waiting for their songs to break out, he said.
“You have to really be right about your hits. If you’re going to invest that amount of time in them and not run as many records, you have to be way more right today than wrong,” Kallman said.
Nielsen SoundScan said album sales fell in every genre. Classical music saw the biggest drop at 26 percent, followed by country at 24 percent and Latin at 21.1 percent.
Taylor Swift was the year’s best-selling artist with more than 4 million albums sold, followed by AC/DC, Lil Wayne and Coldplay. Sugarland finished No. 8.
Swift had two albums on Nielsen’s Top 10 sales list: her self-titled debut at No. 6 and her sophomore album “Fearless” at No. 3.
“Taylor Swift is a great artist development story that started as organically as you can in the digital age,” said Scott Borchetta, president and CEO of her label, Big Machine Records. “It involved online, non-stop radio tours and strategic TV opportunities which led to non-stop touring. But — most importantly — Taylor connected with her fans like no other artist in 2008.”
Lil Wayne had the year’s top-selling album, “Tha Carter III,” with 2.87 million units sold, with Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” (2.14 million) and Swift’s “Fearless” (2.11 million) rounding out the top three.
The top selling digital artist was Rihanna with 9.94 million tracks sold, followed by Swift and Kayne West.
Ironically, as digital downloads grew, vinyl album sales also climbed. In 2008, more vinyl albums were purchased (1.88 million) than any other year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991.
More than two of every three vinyl albums were purchased at an independent music store during the year, the company reported. The top selling vinyl albums were Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” (26,000 units), the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” (16,500) and Guns ‘N Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” (13,600).
Nielsen also reported that music sales exceeded 65 million in the final week of 2008, representing the biggest sales week in the history of Nielsen SoundScan. The previous record was Christmas week of 2007 with 58.4 million music purchases.
Those are just a few of the things The Jonas Brothers are thankful for in 2008.
The brothers – Nick, Kevin and Joe – took to their MySpace blog to offer up a list of the things they are most thankful for over the past 12 months, which saw the boys shoot from tween sensations to full fledged global superstars.
“What a year this has been. There are probably not enough words to describe what an amazing year we have lived in 2008,” they wrote. “It feels like we were just sitting here writing a blog for the end of 2007. Time has really moved faster than we could have imagined.”
Besides worldwide success, 2008 was also a year full of accolades for the brothers – all of which they expressed thanks for.
“Our first ever Kids Choice Award for Best Group… Our first ever Teen Choice Awards… We won an award for Best English act in Mexico… We won our first American Music Award (AMA) for Breakthrough Artist. It was your votes that allowed us to win,” the blog continued. “At the end of the year we were nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy. We don’t even know what to say about this honor. It is a complete shock and thrill all at the same time.”
The brothers Jonas also gave a shout out to fellow Disney star Miley Cyrus, nothing they were thankful for “the opportunity to be on the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus tour” and were appreciative of pop rocker Avril Lavigne, who provided the band their “first opportunity to tour outside the U.S.” opening up for Avril in Europe.
Looking forward, the band said they are excited for what’s to come in 2009, including their new show for the Disney Channel, “JONAS.”
“We can’t wait for you to see it,” they said of their new TV series. “We have been working had on this since September.”
In concluding their final blog post of 2008, the Jonas brothers offered thanks to Disney, their record label and, most importantly to them, their fans.
“This has been one of the best years of our lives. None of this would have been possible without you. You have made our dreams come true,” they added. “You are the best fans in the world. Thanks for allowing us to live our dreams.”