CBC Radio blasted over fundraiser
CBC Radio was blasted yesterday for spending an undisclosed amount of taxpayers' dollars to throw a concert in New Orleans.
The Maple Leaf Mojo benefit concert on Saturday night will feature 14 Canadian artists -- including Daniel Lanois and The Mighty Popo -- who will fly down to the Big Easy today along with five CBC staff members.
The show, which was originally described by the CBC as a fundraiser for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, will be broadcast live by satellite on Radio 1 from 7:05 to 11 p.m.
With 1,000 tickets selling for $10 each, the $10,000 a sell-out would generate would pale in comparison to the costs of hosting the event, a price the CBC won't divulge.
"Their lack of accountability is offensive and flippant behaviour," said NDP MP Pat Martin. "You'd think that after the stink with (Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson's) junket with journalists to Scandinavia, you'd think that the CBC would be careful about even the perception of a junket such as this."
Martin, a card-carrying member of the Friends of the CBC, questioned why the same concert couldn't be held at home and then the money sent to the New Orleans cause.
"Couldn't they go to The Black Sheep or record portions of the Bluesfest?" he asked. "I recommend they scrap the remote immediately."
In the crosshairs
Martin went on to predict that if the CBC doesn't rethink its spending policies, the new Heritage Minister Bev Oda will.
"CBC is in the crosshairs of the Conservative budget trimmers," he said.
A spokeswoman for Oda's office said while the minister saw the story about the trip in yesterday's Sun, she would not be making any comment on it until next week after she gets settled into office.
Ruth Ellen Soles, CBC director of media relations, refused to say how much the trip will cost.
"We don't discuss budgets of individual programming initiatives. We never have," Soles said.
No one-off
When asked how much the CBC hoped to raise from the event, Soles responded: "Does any fundraising event cost out how much they're going to raise before they go?"
Soles said the concert is not a one-off fundraising event but a major investment in future radio programming.
"This concert is a benefit concert, so there will be funds raised, but this is also a programming initiative," Soles explained. "It's a part of our regular remote programming budget for the fiscal year.
"What we're getting is eight hours of live broadcasting on Saturday as well as live concert recordings we can use for one year. There will be news stories, documentaries done, items for Sounds Like Canada and programming for Definitely Not the Opera and Jowi Taylor's Global Village.
"It's a very sound programming decision as far as we're concerned."
Adam Taylor, a spokesman for the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation, was "embarrassed" by the details of the junket.
"How can they justify sending so many people at taxpayers' expense?" he asked.
"Accountability and transparency are major buzzwords in Canadian politics. It's the height of arrogance for a Crown corporation like the CBC to spend tax dollars with little to no concern for accountability to the public.
"I'm dumbfounded. We have the right to know (how much is being spent)."
Great Big Sea unhurt after bus crash
VANCOUVER (CP) - A tour bus carrying members of the band Great Big Sea ended up on its side Thursday after its driver pulled over to avoid stopped traffic on a highway outside the city.
The musicians weren't hurt in the accident, shook off the scare and were ready to perform in Vancouver on Thursday night, said their concert promoter, House of Blues.
"It's all good, everyone's OK. They're good hearty people. The show's going on," said general manager Paul Haagenson of House of Blues.
Great Big Sea's tour bus was travelling on the Trans-Canada Highway from Calgary when it went off the road near Abbotsford, about 80 kilometres east of Vancouver.
"In an attempt to avoid a collision with a line of cars stopped on the highway the driver moved to the shoulder of the road," the band's Halifax-based manager, Louis Thomas, said in a statement.
"Once the bus had come to a full stop, it tipped."
It was clear and bright when the accident happened at mid-day Thursday.
Thomas said the despite the accident, Great Big Sea wanted to perform.
"Everyone is OK and the priority is to make the show happen in Vancouver tonight. The band is looking forward to playing in the concert tonight," he said.
The band declined an interview request about the accident.
A police spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Adam Sandler & Kevin James Pronounced "Chuck & Larry"
Universal Pictures plans to feature Adam Sandler and Kevin James as a couple of guys who get married, in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry." Variety reports the upcoming comedy will be directed by David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers), from a script written by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor (Sideways). The story will follow two straight firemen who try to qualify for their fire department's domestic partner benefits by posing as a gay married couple. The project seems to have been a long time in the making, as the film is apparently being produced by Bruce Almighty director Tom Shadyac, after previously planning to direct the film, which then had Nicolas Cage and Will Smith considering the roles.
CBS Cages "Love Monkey"
Looks like Love Monkey's ready to be put down.
CBS has shelved the critically praised hourlong dramedy series, following the adventures of four single thirtysomethings in New York, after just three episodes. And the prospects for its future seem glum.
"Love Monkey is on hiatus and there's no scheduled return date," a network spokesperson says. However, sources close to the show tell E! Online's TV columnist Kristen Veitch that Love Monkey won't be coming back.
Love Monkey's Tuesday time slot will be the latest edition of The Amazing Race, whose two-hour premiere 9-11 on Feb. 28 was already scheduled to preempt the series.
Beginning Mar. 7, Race will move to the 10 p.m. slot previously occupied by Love Monkey to make room for The Unit. The high-octane action drama from producers Shawn Ryan (FX's The Shield) and David Mamet stars Dennis Haysbert (24) and Robert Patrick (T2, The X-Files) as covert special forces operatives on secret missions and the wives who protect their identities.
Based on the book of the same name by Kyle Smith, Love Monkey starred Tom Cavanagh as a record company executive who loses his job and his girlfriend all in the same day. With a little help from his buddies, including Jason Priestley as his brother-in-law, Cavanagh's character manages to bounce back, not only finding a new woman, but also a new record company job.
CBS had ordered seven episodes, plus the pilot, as a midseason replacement from producers Sony Pictures Television and Paramount Network Television.
But ratings for the show have been underwhelming. Monkey shed viewers with each airing, and averaged just 8.1 million for its run, about 6 million fewer viewers than NBC's time slot champ, Law & Order: SVU. Also not helping is its Friends-type vibe, which doesn't quite jibe with CBS' crime drama-heavy schedule.
Before Amazing Race takes over at the end of the month, CBS will fill Monkey's slot with a rerun of NCIS next week and a rerun of CSI the following week.
Winfrey Signs Deal With XM Satellite Radio
NEW YORK - Oprah Winfrey has signed a three-year, $55 million deal with XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. to launch a new radio channel beginning in September, Winfrey and XM announced Thursday.
The new channel, "Oprah & Friends," will air programming on fitness, health and self-improvement topics with personalities that appear on Winfrey's TV program, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," as well as in O, The Oprah Magazine. It will also feature a weekly radio show with Winfrey and Gayle King, a frequent guest on her TV show.
The $55 million deal is a far cry from the five-year, cash-and-stock deal that rival satellite radio-broadcaster Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. has with morning shock jock Howard Stern. Originally worth $500 million when it was signed in 2004, Stern's deal is now worth $600 million due to appreciation of Sirius' stock price. XM also has signed other big programming contracts, including an 11-year, $650 million deal for Major League Baseball.
Winfrey's new channel on XM will feature personalities that appear on her show and in her magazine including Bob Greene, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Nate Berkus.
The Winfrey news and an unrelated positive analyst report helped send XM's shares up $1.74, or 7 percent, to $26.35 in heavy trading Thursday morning on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Sirius' shares edged up 3 cents to $6.01, also on the Nasdaq.
XM and Sirius are locked in a fierce competition to sign up programming and new subscribers as they both strive to reach profitability. Each service costs about $13 a month and offers dozens of channels of commercial-free music as well as other channels of talk and news.
XM, which is based in Washington, D.C., is the larger of the two, with more than 6 million subscribers, while the New York-based Sirius has more than 3 million.
Spears admits driving with baby in lap "a mistake"
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop star Britney Spears said on Thursday she "made a mistake" by driving a car with her infant son in her lap, but the agency that photographed the incident denied her claim that paparazzi were hounding her.
Spears has said a "frightful" encounter with "physically aggressive" photographers on Monday outside a coffee shop prompted her to pull out of the parking lot without first strapping her 5-month-old baby, Sean, back into his car seat.
Pictures published on Tuesday showed Spears at the wheel of her vehicle, holding Sean on her lap, as she drove down the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. A man identified as her bodyguard is shown next to her in the front passenger seat.
The photos ignited a media firestorm and led the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to visit Spears' home on Tuesday at the request of county child welfare authorities.
In an interview broadcast on Thursday by the TV show "Access Hollywood," Spears, 24, acknowledged she had used poor judgment, saying, "I made a mistake and so it is what it is, I guess."
She stuck to her assertion she was reacting to photographers: "Being put in the situation that I was in, it was kind of bad with the paparazzi."
The photo agency X17, which took the exclusive pictures, disputed Spears' account in a statement, saying, "These pictures were taken in a very peaceful context, in which photographers exhibited no aggressive behavior."
X17 Vice President Kelly Davis told Reuters only two photographers were involved, one of whom happened to be in a Starbucks parking lot when Spears arrived.
"He was parked four or five parking spaces away and never got out of his car," Davis said.
Spears, whose bodyguard and gone into the coffee shop while she waited outside with Sean in her lap, actually recognized the photographer, waived at him through her window and asked him not to take pictures, to which he agreed, Davis said.
A second photographer, alerted by his colleague to Spears' presence, arrived in time to snap a picture of the singer as she drove out of the parking lot. The first photographer then followed her onto the highway, taking the photo that ran in the New York Post and elsewhere.
"At the point where she made the decision to drive with the baby in her lap, there was only one photographer and he wasn't even shooting," Davis said. "They (paparazzi) usually are swarming around her, but on that day they weren't."
Under California law, children are required to be secured in a child-safety seat until they are at least 6 years old or weigh at least 60 pounds. Both the sheriff's department and the California Highway Patrol said they are not investigating the incident.