Affleck Set to Host `SNL' Season Opener
NEW YORK - He's not former President Bill Clinton, but Ben Affleck will do.
Although Clinton was invited, Affleck will host the 30th season premiere of "Saturday Night Live" with musical guest Nelly on Oct. 2, NBC announced Wednesday.
Clinton had been invited to host the not-ready-for-prime-time show but turned down the offer, NBC said last month. No reason was given for Clinton rejecting the offer.
The former president has since undergone open-heart surgery.
Affleck, 32, recently made headlines when he boisterously appeared throughout the Democratic National Convention in Boston, his hometown. His films include "Jersey Girl" and "Paycheck." The actor's latest movie, the holiday comedy "Surviving Christmas" with James Gandolfini and Christina Applegate, is due in theaters Oct. 21.
Rapper Nelly will perform songs from his new CDs, "Sweat" and "Suit."
The hosting gig marks Affleck's third appearance on the live sketch-comedy show. It's Nelly's second.
Kalan Porter Conquers Canadian Idol Competition
Toronto, Ontario (September 16, 2004) - Kalan Porter has triumphed over 8,977 other competitors to become Canada's next Canadian Idol, it was announced live on CTV Thursday night.
The 18-year-old Medicine Hat, Alberta native bested runner-up Theresa Sokyrka after receiving the majority of 3.6 million votes cast last night following their final performance showdown. Immediately following the broadcast, Porter signed a recording contract with Lisa Zbitnew, President, BMG Canada Inc.
Porter's first single, Awake in a Dream, will begin airplay on radio stations across the country Friday morning. Porter begins preparation next week on an album to be released this fall.
Wednesday's final performance episode was the most-watched Canadian Idol episode ever, with a record audience of 3.3 million viewers. The votes also pushed the final vote tally to over 32 million, an increase of 57 per cent compared to last year.
Porter's win tonight is the culmination of a process that began February 13 in Ottawa and took producers across the country this winter and spring on a nine-city tour in search of Canada's best and brightest young singers. In May, 155 "gold ticket" winners from across the country journeyed to Toronto with the hope of making it to the coveted "Top 32." In June, the Top 32 took to the stage and viewers took to the phones, reducing the 32 semi-finalists to a diverse group of ten competitors. As the show progressed through the summer, these ten, formerly unknown, amateur singers would become household names.
The Top 10 returned to the stage for the final two-hour broadcast. The group performed three times: "Share the Land" by the Guess Who; a brand new medley of Canadian hits; and a brand new medley of rock and British Invasion hits. The Top 8, minus Porter and Sokyrka, performed a "Greatest Moments" medley - a reprise of songs they performed in competition.
In addition, previous winner Ryan Malcolm performed for the first time on the Canadian Idol stage since his win exactly one year ago. The final show also featured an emotionally riveting duet by Porter and Sokyrka, Cyndi Lauper's "True Colours."
Also attending the finale were a handful of political dignitaries including the Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of Finance; the Honourable Lorne Calvert, Premier of Saskatchewan; Medicine Hat MP Monte Solberg; and Palliser (Saskatchewan) MP Dave Batters.
TV war: 'Idol' vs. 'Survivor'
Tonight, CTV and Global battle for the title -- Canada's top-rated series
Fire up the Tiki torch and pass the Doritos: Survivor returns tonight and faces its biggest challenge yet -- the finale of Canadian Idol.
At stake is the undisputed title of Canada's top-rated TV series.
The showdown of the two TV titans is Canadian broadcasting's battle of the network stars. It's like the Super Bowl going against the Oscars. In one corner, you have Survivor: Vanuatu -- Islands of Fire (8 p.m., Global/CBS), the ninth instalment of Mark Burnett's island adventure reality series. In the other is the summer's hottest ticket, Canadian Idol (8 p.m., CTV), with Alberta's Kalan Porter or Saskatchewan's Theresa Sokyrka finally winning the karaoke crown.
Host Ben Mulroney will read off the TelePrompTer for the umpteenth time that your Canadian Idol is Canada's No. 1 show. But is it? The simple answer is no. By any measure (Nielsen or BBM media services), in total households or in demo most prized by advertisers, the 18-49-year-olds, Survivor wins. It's not even close: Across Canada, Survivor averages almost a million more viewers per episode.
Idol, however, won its second straight summer, holding its popularity nationally from the summer before.
And no wonder: In the past few weeks, the ubiquitous Idol finalists have made Paris Hilton look press shy. There is a noisy reminder about tonight's two-hour finale every eight minutes on CTV.
CTV can smell blood and they see an opening. If tonight's Idol ender can top Global's Survivor opener, they lay claim to the one ratings prize that still eludes them: Canada's No. 1 show.
After importing every hit but The Apprentice the past three or four years, CTV has become Canada's dominant network. They are by far Canada's leader in prime-time, daytime and nighttime viewers. They win six out of seven nights a week - and are poised to go seven for seven with hockey benched Saturdays on CBC.
Still, Global can tell advertisers that they have Canada's top show and are therefore the most watched network. It drives CTV nuts.
CTV could have sidestepped the showdown (Global is locked into a CBS Survivor simulcast) but deliberately chose to go head-to-head. It's the hot new strategy in TV programming: Take out the other guy's big gun.
Fox has taken this to a nasty new level in the U.S., rushing copycat reality shows on the air as soon as they get wind of a rival network's plans. Sometimes it works (the early success of Fox's Trading Spouses has chased ABC's Wife Swap right off the fall schedule). Sometimes it doesn't (Fox's The Next Great Champ is a chump, a distant fourth-place finisher that is either no match for NBC's upcoming The Contender or means reality boxing is a bust).
Will it work tonight? My guess is that both shows will draw at least three million viewers. When big shows do go head to head, as they did last week when Joey and The Apprentice premiered against the second last week of Canadian Idol, they all gained viewers. More people just turn the set on.
Two more predictions: Neither show will draw more than CBC got with Tuesday's World Cup hockey final at 3.83 million (peaking at 4.9 million at 9:30 p.m.).
My other prediction: Both CTV and Global, who use rival ratings services, will produce numbers Friday that will allow each of them to claim victory. Funny how that works.
Why Idol will win:
* Survivor is due for a post-All-Stars slump. The show has already slipped out of the Top-5 in the U.S. How long can it continue to be dominant in Canada?
* Idol's second hour won't have Survivor to contend with. (Although it will go up against Episode 2 of The Apprentice). Idol's numbers always spike in the final 10 minutes when the winner's name is announced.
* Two sweet, talented kids, plus a "special" appearance by Ryan Malcolm.
Why Survivor will win:
* Everyone already knows the curly-haired kid wins Idol. There's not much drama to tonight's anti-climactic finale.
* No big market Canadian kids in the Idol finale. Saskatoon vs. Medicine Hat? Is it a curling playoff?
* Burnett has crafted another entertaining hour, revisiting the guys vs. gals tribal twist.
* Joey got off to a fast start last week and, like Friends before it, will lead in to Global's Survivor coverage.
* Two words: Ben ... Mulroney
National Hockey League Locks Out Players
NEW YORK - No shots, no saves, no goals. The National Hockey League locked out its players Thursday, threatening to keep the sport off the ice for the entire 2004-05 season and perhaps beyond in an effort by management to gain massive economic change.
After the long-expected decision was approved unanimously Wednesday by NHL owners, commissioner Gary Bettman repeatedly belittled the union's bargaining position, talked about the possibility the confrontation could extend into the 2005-06 season and said the conflict has jeopardized the NHL's participation in the 2006 Winter Olympics.
"When we ultimately make the deal that has to be made, we will then see whether or not there is time for a season or some semblance of a season," he said. "If there is, great, and if there isn't, then we'll deal with the next season when it comes along."
Bettman claimed teams had combined to lose more than $1.8 billion over 10 years, and said management will not agree to a labor deal that doesn't include a defined relationship between revenue and salaries.
"Until he gets off the salary-cap issue, there's not a chance for us to get an agreement," union head Bob Goodenow said in Toronto, adding that players "are not prepared to entertain a salary cap in any way, shape, measure or form."
Far apart on both philosophy and finances, the sides haven't bargained since last Thursday and say they are entrenched for the long run, echoing words of baseball players and owners at the start of their disastrous 7 1/2-month labor war of 1994-95.
There is almost no chance the season will start as scheduled on Oct. 13, and Bettman told teams to release their arenas for other events for the next 30 days. Bettman said the season can't extend past June, and the lockout threatens to wipe out the Stanley Cup final for the first time since 1919, when the series between Montreal and Seattle was stopped after five games due a Spanish influenza epidemic.
"The union is trying to win a fight, hoping that the owners will give up. That will turn out to be a terrible error in judgment," Bettman said. "They are apparently convinced that come some point in the season, the owners' resolve will waver, and I'm telling you that is wrong, wrong, wrong."
NHL management claims teams combined to lose $273 million in 2002-03 and $224 million last season. Bettman said the union's proposals would do little for owners, and said the six offers rejected by the union would lower the average player salary from $1.8 million to $1.3 million.
Goodenow said players had offered more than $100 million in annual concessions.
"The notion that we don't have competitive balance is absurd," said Vancouver center Trevor Linden, the union's president.
Bettman made clear that declaring an impasse under U.S. labor law and imposing new work rules unilaterally was an option, but said it had not yet been considered.
"I think it's pretty fair to say that we're at an impasse right now, and my guess is that we've probably been at impasse for months, if not a year," he said. "At some point when we're at impasse, we could simply say, `We're going to open, and here are the terms and conditions. Let's go.' It's that simple."
Goodenow said attempting to impose terms would be a "very, very ill-advised strategy" and predicted "the results of it could be catastrophic." Bettman said the use of replacement players is not contemplated.
The 30 teams — 24 in the United States and six in Canada — had been set to start opening training camps on Thursday, the day after the expiration of the current labor contract. The deal was first agreed to in 1995 and extended two years later through Sept. 15, 2004. Bettman termed the extension "a mistake, in hindsight."
"It of kind stinks, packing up and moving out of here," Philadelphia right wing Tony Amonte said at his team's practice rink. "I can't say they weren't preparing us for it."
Some players are expected to sign with European leagues, and others could join a six-team, four-on-four circuit called the Original Stars Hockey League, which is set to start play Friday in Barrie, Ontario. Others could go to a revived World Hockey Association, which plans to open Oct. 29 with eight teams playing 76 games apiece.
Bettman said more than 100 employees from the NHL's central staff of about 225 will be terminated, most on Monday.
The stoppage is the first for a North American major league since the 1998-99 NBA lockout canceled 464 games, cutting each club's regular-season schedule from 82 games to 50.
It is the third stoppage for the NHL following a 10-day strike in 1992 that caused the postponement of 30 games and a 103-day lockout in 1994-95 that eliminated 468 games, cutting each team's regular-season schedule from 84 games to 48. That lockout ended on Jan. 11, five days before the deadline set by Bettman to scuttle the season.
John Fogerty Making Good on Vow to Himself
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Guitarist John Fogerty first realized he was a failure about a decade ago.
Sure, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 for his work as the singer/songwriter with Creedence Clearwater Revival, one of the great American bands to emerge in the late 1960s.
But when Creedence fell apart in 1972 after a string of top 10 hits like "Proud Mary" and "Born on the Bayou," he spent his time putting out albums he hopes people have forgotten, feuding with his former bandmates (including late brother Tom) and in endless litigation with the boss of his old label.
Disappointing fans and critics was one thing, disappointing himself was something else. It was about 10 years ago when he recalled a vow he had made to himself as a youngster.
"I (had) promised myself I was going to be one of the greats, one of the really good guitar players, like Chet Atkins, when I was a kid," he recalled in a recent interview.
"When I was about 48 years old, I realized I wasn't ... The revelation to myself was, 'John, you were supposed to be really good, and you're not.' That was a shock to actually face it down and admit it."
Slightly angry with himself for wasting so many years, he got busy. The latest step in the rehabilitation process is "Deja Vu (All Over Again)" (Geffen Records), which comes out in the United States on Sept. 21. It is a belated follow-up to 1997's "Blue Moon Swamp," for which he won his first Grammy Award.
Now happily remarried with four children and building a new house in suburban Los Angeles, Fogerty, 59, still doesn't feel totally satisfied professionally. But he believes he's getting there through dedication and practice.
CATCHING UP WITH HEROES
"It's a very high level, and it's taken a long, long time, and I'm just about getting into the same room -- I'm not sitting in the chair yet -- but I'm getting into the same room with some of the people I really admire. And it's taken over 10 years. It's mind-boggling how long that takes," Fogerty said about his guitar-playing skills.
Some of those "other people," in addition to Nashville icon Atkins, include former Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler, who appears on the new album, dobro player Jerry Douglas and bluegrass picker Ricky Skaggs.
He had also dreamed as a youngster of being a businessman like Gene Autry, the singing cowboy who also owned radio stations and a baseball team. But, after signing away his Creedence copyrights as part of an onerous deal with Fantasy Records, he realized business was not his strong suit.
Ensuing litigation with Fantasy boss Saul Zaentz lasted for decades. Zaentz used his label profits to make even more money as the producer of best-picture Oscar-winners "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Amadeus" and "The English Patient."
Fogerty once immortalized Zaentz in a song called "Zanz Kant Danz," while Zaentz countered with a plagiarism lawsuit, claiming that Fogerty's solo song "The Old Man Down the Road" ripped off the Creedence hit "Run Through the Jungle." The litigation went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fogerty says he is now at peace and even enjoyed one of the recent "Lord of the Rings" films despite the fact that Zaentz owns the movie rights to the underlying J.R.R. Tolkien books.
"Years and years ago, there was a really bad Lord of the Rings (cartoon), and I remember thinking, 'Yeah, I paid for that!'
"But the one thing that is way more precious than money in our world is time, and I probably have a lot more time than he does," Fogerty said of the 83-year-old Zaentz.
CELL PHONE FOE
On his new album, which took about 2-1/2 years to write and record, Fogerty deals with more pressing issues, such as the 2001 birth of daughter Kelsy ("I Will Walk With You"), and crazy women ("She's Got Baggage").
Two songs touch on socio-political themes: the anti-war title track "Deja Vu (All Over Again), and "Nobody's Here Anymore," which sounds like a Dire Straits song in part because Knopfler is playing on it. The latter tune deals with the disconnect in society. Fogerty partly blames it on his pet peeve, cell phones, but managed to restrain himself when both his wife's and the interviewer's phones rang during the interview.
That the man who wrote the searing 1969 anti-war anthem and Creedence hit "Fortunate Son" should have something to say about current hostilities in Iraq and elsewhere is not surprising. What seems odd is the restraint and resignation throughout "Deja Vu," which focuses on the devastation that war brings to families.
"I can get political and be all angry. That's fine," he said. "I thought that talking about the war and the emotion about what war does to people was enough in this case. That's my protest."
Fogerty will take a break from driving his kids to school when he hits the road in October with Bruce Springsteen for a handful of dates on the anti-President Bush "Vote for Change" tour, though he hopes the music will take precedence over politics. He suffered, he said, through enough politically themed concerts during the Vietnam era to be wary of a deja vu feeling.
Ramones Guitarist Dies at 55 in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Johnny Ramone, the lead guitarist with the influential U.S. punk rock band the Ramones, died on Wednesday after a five-year battle with prostate cancer, a long-time associate told Reuters.
Ramone, 55, who was born John Cummings, died in his sleep at his Los Angeles home on Wednesday afternoon, said Arturo Vega, the Ramones' creative director.
The Ramones, famed for playing their high-energy, unpolished songs at breakneck speed, rose to fame in New York City in the 1970s, paving the way for such British punk rock icons as the Sex Pistols and the Clash.
But unlike most punks, Ramone was an outspoken Republican who once declared Ronald Reagan the best U.S. president of his lifetime.
Ramone becomes the third member of the band to die in recent years. Singer Joey Ramone, born Jeffrey Hyman, died in 2001 of lymphatic cancer. Bassist Dee Dee Ramone, born Douglas Colvin, died from a drug overdose the following year.
At Johnny Ramone's bedside were his wife, Linda, as well as rock stars such as Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante and hard-rocker Rob Zombie, Vega said.
Ramone will be cremated in a private ceremony on Thursday, and plans are being made for a public memorial, including the unveiling of a statue, at some stage, Vega said.
BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT
The band has recently crept back into the spotlight. Vedder, Zombie, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed at a tribute concert in Los Angeles on Sept. 12 marking the Ramones' 30th anniversary. Ramone, too sick to attend, spoke to the fans by telephone.
A documentary, "End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones," has just been released in theaters, and former Ramones drummer Marky Ramone has overseen the recent release of a DVD called "Ramones Raw."
The band made its mark with nihilistic tunes like "Blitzkrieg Bop," "Teenage Lobotomy," "I Wanna Be Sedated" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," but never achieved the commercial success of groups that followed in its wake.
The Ramones officially broke up in 1996, after releasing 21 studio and live albums.
Johnny Ramone and his future bandmates were raised in the largely middle-class New York neighborhood of Forest Hills in Queens. They knew each other as youngsters, and shared an interest in pioneering punk bands like the New York Dolls.
After attending a military academy -- an experience that would make him the group's task master and most-focused member -- Johnny Ramone started playing guitar at 22.
The Ramones, rounded out by drummer/producer Tommy Ramone (born Tommy Erdelyi) performed publicly for the first time in March 1974 and recorded a self-titled debut album in 1976.
Their songs, famously brief and counted in with a frenzied "one-two-three-four!" introduction, mixed their daily frustrations with a dark sense of humor.
"We couldn't write about love or cars, so we sang about this stuff, like glue-sniffing. We thought it was funny. We thought we could get away with anything," Johnny Ramone once said.