LISTEN
American Idol returns for its eighth season on Tuesday with a new judge, a better showcase for talented singers and a wary eye on its status as America’s most-watched television show. The five-month search for a new star kicks off with a two-night, four-hour premiere featuring the familiar blend of hundreds of hopeful, and sometimes hopeless, contestants auditioning in cities across the nation. But producers have tweaked the formula to keep viewers tuning in en masse after last year, when the numbers of “American Idol” faithful slipped to about 28.1 million per episode from an average 30.8 million in 2006.… Read more »
About two months before the release of his band's third studio album, "When the World Comes Down," All-American Rejects singer/bassist Tyson Ritter is spending most of his free time drinking beer and engaging in kite-flying wars on the beaches of Northern Florida. "I've been getting completely hammered and enjoying myself," Ritter says from his home in Destin, Florida. "I'm 24 and I know I'm not going to be able to do this s–t when I'm 50. Sometimes you've got to live." The All-American Rejects frontman has reason to enjoy his time off. In the two years since the release of… Read more »
A musicians union has filed a federal lawsuit against the producers of “American Idol,” claiming musicians were underpaid because the show’s live music was re-recorded for reruns. The American Federation of Musicians filed the suit seeking unspecified damages Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleging that American Idol Productions Inc. and its subsidiary Tick Tock Productions Inc. violated a collective bargaining agreement. That contract says the show’s musicians should be paid royalties for rebroadcasts of the show, the lawsuit said. The producers are required to pay 75 percent of scale to musicians who appear in the original show… Read more »
