Singer Melissa Etheridge diagnosed with breast cancer, cancels tour
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Singer Melissa Etheridge has been diagnosed with breast cancer and has cancelled upcoming tour dates to undergo treatment, her publicist said Thursday.
Etheridge, 43, will undergo surgery and a "speedy and complete recovery" is expected by her doctor, publicist Marcel Pariseau said in a statement. The cancer was detected early and Etheridge has been receiving treatment, Pariseau said. "I am fortunate to be under a wonderful doctor's care and thankful that this was caught early," Etheridge said in the statement. "I am looking forward to a quick and full recovery."
Etheridge and actress Tammy Lynn Michaels held a commitment ceremony in September 2003. The musician, who lives in Los Angeles, shares custody of a daughter and son with former partner Julie Cypher, who had the children through artificial insemination using a sperm donation from rocker David Crosby.
Etheridge's latest album, Lucky, was released in February. Refunds for tickets to her upcoming shows will be available where they were bought; the entertainer's website says she had been scheduled to play 11 dates in seven cities this month.
Letterman Narrows Late-Night Ratings Gap with Leno
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rival talk show hosts Jay Leno and David Letterman are fighting again, turning up the heat on the serious business of late-night comedy ratings.
Nearly a year after NBC chieftain Jeff Zucker proclaimed Leno was so far ahead in the ratings that "there is no more late-night war," CBS boasted on Thursday that Letterman was on the comeback trail, narrowing the gap against a fading Leno.
To be sure, NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" remains the No. 1 choice of viewers by every measure over the CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman," a dynamic that has held sway since 1995. So precious to NBC is "The Tonight Show" franchise that the network last week gave the world five years' advance notice that Leno would be stepping down in 2009 to make way for Conan O'Brien.
But in a trend that began during the summer, Letterman has cut Leno's overall viewer advantage by more than half to less than 1 million viewers a night so far this season, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research.
For the first two weeks of the season, Letterman is averaging 4.64 million viewers nightly, up 10 percent from the same period a year ago. Leno, meanwhile, is off 6 percent in total audience to 5.59 million viewers. Last year, "Tonight" enjoyed a 2 million-viewer margin over "Late Show."
Moreover, "Late Show" is up 14 percent in the benchmark audience demographic of viewers aged 18-49 -- the group most prized by advertisers -- compared with the first two weeks of last season, while "Tonight" is down 13 percent.
"What was once an insurmountable lead is clearly shrinking," a CBS spokesman told Reuters, citing the network's early dominance in prime time as a key factor in driving up ratings for its late-night audience.
NBC executives, however, were quick to assert that two weeks does not a trend make.
They acknowledge that Letterman posted exceptionally strong numbers the first week of the season, with guest appearances by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and self-help guru Dr. Phil McGraw drawing hefty audiences. But they said Leno returned to a wider margin of victory last week.
NBC also said that year-to-year comparisons favor Letterman because he was still in a relative slump this time last year following an unplanned hiatus of several weeks in the spring of 2003 due to a bout with shingles.
CBS insists that Letterman has been steadily gaining ground since early summer.
From May 31 through Aug. 6, "Late Show" cut "Tonight" to its slimmest summertime lead since 2001 among young adults and since 1996 in overall viewership, according to Nielsen. At the same time, Leno experienced his lowest standings since Letterman premiered on CBS opposite his program in 1993.