Suffice it to say, Shakira and Usher on The Voice works. NBC’s singing competition hit is pulling off a rare feat, increasing its ratings since the Season 4 premiere, with a switched-up judging panel to boot! Adam Levine and Blake Shelton are still holding it (and throwing it) down, but the show has not been dinged by the hiatus of Christina and Cee Lo. Three weeks in, The Voice is up 4 percent from the previous cycle, hitting a season high 13.7 million viewers and a 4.9 rating among adults 18-49 last night. The show still could tank as we head deeper into spring, but it certainly doesn’t look like it. In fact, Usher and Shakira are re-igniting the fire if anything. The blind auditions conclude this evening on NBC. Grade Usher and Shakira on The Voice: Love them! They’re great! They were okay. We’ll see if they improve. Not a fan! Get Christina and Cee Lo back in here ASAP! View Poll »
Fox is threatening to convert its entire operation to a pay-TV-only channel if Internet startup Aereo continues to “steal” its over-the-air television signal. News Corp., which owns Fox, said not being paid by Aereo threatens the economics of broadcast TV, which relies on both retransmission fees and advertising. Say what now? Anyone with an antenna can pick up a TV station’s signals for free. However, as we well know, cable and satellite companies typically pay stations and networks for the right to distribute their programming to subscribers. Industry-wide, those retransmission fees can add up to billions of dollars every year. Fees that Aereo is circumventing with its new business model: Aereo takes broadcast signals from the air with thousands of little antennas, recodes them for Internet use and feeds that to computers, tablets and phones. Subscriptions start at a mere $8 per month, which is much cheaper than a cable package, though the service is mostly limited to broadcast channels. Obviously, they were sued VERY fast, but last week, that industry was shaken after a federal appeals court issued a preliminary ruling siding with Aereo. The company contends that it doesn’t have to pay those fees because it uses thousands of tiny antennas to grab the signal, and a judge agreed. “This is not an ideal path we look to pursue, but we can’t sit idly by and let an entity steal our signal,” NewsCorp COO Chase Carey said in response. “But if we can’t do a fair deal, we could take the network to a subscription model.” While most people get Fox through a pay cable TV provider anyway, millions of other Americans rely on the free signal coming over their own antennas. If realized, Carey’s proposal would amount to a sea change in how Fox does business; currently, Fox sends its signal to TV stations across the country. Those stations, 27 of which it owns directly, relay Fox programming such as New Girl and Glee for free in local markets and add their own local news, etc. Carey didn’t explain how TV stations would be affected if Fox shut off the signals it sent to broadcasters and went straight over to a pay TV model. Later, the company said in a statement that any change due to the Aereo situation would occur “in collaboration with both our content partners and affiliates.” Last week, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said that Aereo could continue its service despite a legal challenge by Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS. In a split ruling, the court accepted Aereo’s position that having individual antennas meant that Aereo wasn’t retransmitting signals illegally for profit. Rather, the appeals court said that Aereo enabled its subscribers to do what they already could on their own with their own antenna and video recorder.
What does a $2 million pizza look like? Does it have gold leaf and saffron-infused white truffles? Is the cheese made from the milk of a thousand duck-billed platypuses? Is the sauce the really good Newman’s Own stuff with the garlic and basil? No! None of that! It looks like this: According to Motherboard , the pizza was purchased by Mike Lazio back in May of 2010 using an online currency called Bitcoins (BTC). 10,000 BTC to be exact. At the time, a BTC equaled about .3 cents, meaning that Lazio spent about $30 on it when he took to the Bitcoin forum to make an offer: you order me pizza in the real world, I’ll give you 10,000 BTC. It was the first time a real-world transaction had actually occurred using the virtual currency, and is believed to have sparked the intense inflation that has caused one single BTC to rise to about $234. So do the math: 10,000 BTC at $234 each means that if Lazio had kept that money instead of spending it on Pizza, he’d be sitting on an extra $2.34 million. Hopefully he enjoyed the pizza. I bet he could have found a lot of homemade pizza recipes that cost a lot less than $2.34 million to make.
Ashley Judd is a joke and probably mentally unbalanced, according to a leaked tape in which Sen. Mitch McConnell’s staff is plotting how to run against her. McConnell (R-KY) was fully expecting a U.S. Senate bid from Judd in 2014, and although she decided not to run , his staff discussed her at length. McConnell’s voice can be heard during parts of the recording. At one point, someone played a recording of the star describing her religious beliefs: “I still choose the God of my understanding as the God of my childhood,” she says. “I have to expand my God concept from time to time, and you know particularly I enjoy native faith practices, and have a very nature-based God concept.” “I’d like to think I’m like St. Francis in that way. Brother Donkey, Sister Bird.” One of McConnell’s staffers can be heard laughing at that point in the tape. Another staffer laughs and says, “people would take to the streets with pitchforks.” During the tape, the team also discusses Ashley Judd’s mental health. “She’s clearly … this sounds extreme … but she is emotionally unbalanced,” one McConnell staff member says. “I mean … it’s been documented.” According to the aide, “she’s suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the 90s.” Judd is also described as “anti-sort-of-traditional American family.” Ashley Judd Leaked Tape It appears from the audio that McConnell’s team doesn’t feel threatened by Judd, yet the fact that they were even talking about this tells you a lot. McConnell even produced a couple of anti-Ashley Judd ads , 18 MONTHS before an election she never said she was running in. Also a telling sign. The audio (excerpted above) was posted by Mother Jones, the left-leaning publication which also released the infamous Mitt Romney 47 percent video. Again, it’s all moot, as Judd’s not running for Senate, but McConnell’s office is livid and wants the FBI to investigate the source of the video’s leak. Campaign manager Jesse Benton said in response to the leak that “Watergate-style tactics to bug campaign headquarters are above and beyond.”
James Deen says the Farrah Abraham “sex tape” he co-stars in is really mode like a regular old adult film – one the Teen Mom star plotted from the start. Deen tells TMZ he was contacted by an unidentified porn company to shoot a porno with Farrah Abraham over the weekend, and he did so. This is what he does for a living. He says the plan, initially, was to pass the porn off as a “sex tape,” but that was all a ruse that fell apart when he and Abraham were seen together. James Deen and the MTV star were holding hands as they left Vivid Entertainment offices, holding hands, and the Farrah Abraham sex tape jig was up. Not unlike his … forget it. He says: “I think what happened is that [the company was] going to pass it off as a ‘sex tape’ and somebody saw us coming out of a building together.” “People asked me what’s going on … so I was just like ‘we’re making a porno!” Deen won’t say if the “company” was in fact Vivid, but it looks like it. Despite Farrah’s bogus protests – calling the reports “shocking” (and saying she’s an amazing mother and daughter) – Deen says she was behind it. “Everybody’s trying to make this a story, but really [Farrah] wanted to make a sex tape,” James added, while reiterating that this is straight up porn. The rumor is that Farrah was shopping an actual sex tape featuring her and an ex, but that she couldn’t get the proper releases signed and the deal failed. When that happened, she devised this dubious porno plan. Hot? Not? You tell us: Will you watch the thing? You bet! She’s hot! Maybe. Need to see a sneak peek first. No way. I refuse to acknowledge that disgrace of a mom! View Poll »
