Search Results for: Refused

LOS ANGELES — Britney Spears’ father testified for nearly 90 minutes Monday about why he felt a long-term restraining order should be issued against three people, including the singer’s former manager and an ex-boyfriend. Jamie Spears was the first witness to testify in the restraining order case, and it did little to establish direct contact between Osama “Sam” Lutfi and his daughter since a conservatorship was established a year ago. Calling Lutfi a “predator” and repeating an allegation that he ground medication into his daughter’s food, Jamie Spears said he thought his daughter’s one-time friend and manager was a danger… Read more »

In 1993, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, the Smashing Pumpkins and Pavement brought AIDS activism into the bedrooms of grunge-obsessed teens on the benefit album ” No Alternative” marrying music to message in a way that registered strongly with Generation X. The project, organized by the Red Hot Organization — an international production company dedicated to fighting AIDs through pop culture — and released by Arista Records sold 292,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan and generated several modern rock radio hits. But the success was a mixed blessing; other major labels went out of their way to… Read more »

Google  entered the radio advertising business with grand ambitions three years ago. On Thursday, those ambitions fizzled. Google said it was ending its radio project, Google Audio Ads, because it had failed to live up to expectations. Up to 40 people are expected to lose their jobs. It was the second time in two months that Google had killed a program meant to expand its advertising business offline, suggesting that the appeal of Google’s automated model for selling ads may be far more limited than the company once hoped. The company had planned to revolutionize the way radio ads were… Read more »

The industry gets upset when anyone calls this a “tax” so I’ll use the “voluntary license” term, even though tax is much more accurate. A true voluntary license wouldn’t require everyone having a certain provider to opt-in, but that’s exactly what this plan would require. In fact, as the slides indicate, eventually it would basically require all ISPs to “opt-in” forcing all of their members to “opt-in.” Suddenly, everyone has to pay. That’s not a voluntary license. It’s a tax. However, even if we step back and pretend it’s really a voluntary license, and even if we grant the premise… Read more »

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort… Read more »

Rolling Stone magazine is shrinking with the times. After more than four decades of standing out with a larger format than other magazines, it will step back and look like everyone else starting with the Oct. 30 issue, due out this week. The adoption of a standard format could boost single-copy sales and reduce production costs for advertising inserts such as scent strips and tear-out postcards. The magazine says any cost savings, though, will be offset by the inclusion of more pages and the shift to thicker, glossier paper. Like other devoted readers, Eddie Ward, 35, said he will miss… Read more »

The red carpet swiftly turned into a red river, but we knew it would take more than a soggy strip of flooring material to put a damper on the MuchMusic Video Awards. An early-evening deluge timed perfectly to truncate the annual, big pre-show build-up to last night’s MMVAs ceremony at Much headquarters on Queen West nevertheless added a new urgency to the usual hysteria that splays around Queen and John at this time of year. There was a real sense of brewing terror in the air on the carpet while everyone who’d gathered outside the old CHUM-City building — the… Read more »

What David Archuleta wants to know is, why in the world wouldn’t he be able to fetch a glass of water for himself? “I heard one thing where [his dad, Jeff] refused to give me water or something like that and that’s the weirdest thing,” the American Idol runner-up said Friday in a conference call with reporters. “I mean, I am 17 and you know, if I want water, I am pretty sure I would just go get it anyway.” Archuleta, who lost to David Cook by a reported 12 million votes Wednesday despite being the apple of the judges’… Read more »

Madonna won’t know until next week whether a Malawian boy she found in an orphanage in 2006 will become a permanent member of her family, her lawyer said Wednesday. Lawyer Alan Chinula had expected the judge to rule on the adoption Wednesday but said the hearing was delayed after a Malawian human rights group presented arguments on “shortcomings” in the southern African nation’s adoption laws. Chinula said the group was not challenging the adoption and he expected it to be approved next week. The pop star and her husband, film director Guy Ritchie, were not present at Thursday’s hearing in… Read more »

More than ever, it pays to be pregnant in Hollywood. Jennifer Lopez, about to give birth to twins, is reportedly the latest A-lister to strike a deal worth millions for exclusive photos of her children. And the incentive might not be purely financial: Such pacts can also protect celebs’ privacy by thwarting the paparazzi. Those involved in negotiations for Lopez and her husband, Marc Anthony, confirmed that U.S. and Latin American rights were sold to People magazine and other international rights to OK! magazine. Advertising Age reported on its Web site Monday that Lopez and Anthony were negotiating with People… Read more »