Mr. Pop History – Eva Mendes was at her tops in 2003 when she was seen in four movies – the sequels “2 fast 2 Furious” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” then “Out of Time” and her fourth movie that year – “Stuck on You.”
Pretty busy for a then 26year-old Eva Mendes – who hasn’t really gone away.
Q: Ryan Seacrest has been in the Dick Clark camp for sometime – especially with Clark’s ABC-TV New Year’s Eve specials. Didn’t Seacrest compete with this very same show?
Mr. Pop History – Yes. Let’s go back to the year 2004 – New Year’s Eve. Clark had just had his stroke – and would you believe – Regis Philbin was asked to take his place that year? Actually – ol’ Rege did pretty well. But – look over at Fox-TV where Ryan Seacrest was doing the same type of show. Here are those listings, plus other competition that night:
Dick Clark prime time – Regis Philbin fills-in for ailing Dick Clark with Catherine McCord and Mike Richards. Ashlee Simpson is the West Coast host.
Carson Daily – Conan O’Brien, Brian Williams, Tina Fey, Amy Phehler, Jill Hennessy, Dule Hill, Kathy Griffin and Donald Trump. With performances by Maroon 5, Avril Lavigne and Duran Duran.
Fox-TV – Ryan Seacrest (New Year’s Eve Live From Times Square)– Hoobastank, Evanescence.
MTV New Year’s Bash – hosted by Damien Fahey, La La Vasquez, Quddus, Hilarie Burton and Vanessa Minnillo. With Green Day, Snoop Dogg, Ja Rule, Fat Joe, Jimmy eat World, Ryan Cabrera, Lindsay Logan, Destiny’s Child, Blink 182, Good Charlotte, Fabolous, Ludacris, Ying Yank Twins, Simple Plan.
Q: Mr. Pop – Memories are short. Wii has been such a phenom, but remember when Nintendo was in the dog house??
Mr. Pop History – Yes. It had something called GameCube, but went back to the drawing board after it got clobbered in the market. They were pretty nervous when Wii debuted in November of 2006 – but look at this – just a quick 6 months later – they knew they had something. From May of 2007:
Technology –
U.S. consumers have snapped up 2.5 million Wii consoles since they hit the market in November – a comeback for Nintendo, whose GameCube got wiped out by Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s Xbox.
Q: Howard Stern once ran a “tape” saying it was singer Beyonce. The sound was awful – and it was later revealed the tape was fake. Stern had been tricked. When was this?
Mr. Pop History – It was last year – 2009. The Stern folks thought they had another scoop, a pro singer who really sounded lousy (sometimes). This time, it just wasn’t true. From the last week of April, 2009:
“A reportedly doctored recording of Beyonce Knowles sounding out of tune at a ‘Today Show’ appearance last year, which shock-jock Howard Stern played on his Sirius radio show on Wednesday, is a fake, according to a man who told TMZ he made it. ‘It’s a little bit crazy. No one in their right mind would sound like that, and no one would cheer for someone singing like that,’ the unnamed alleged audio-perp said.”
Again, like TMZ and others – the race to get the edge sometimes can be, well, just the opposite.
Mr. Pop History – Yes, this week in 2010 – he’s done it again with his “over the top” remarks. From this week – The Anti-Defamation League is criticizing remarks by Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck about billionaire financier George Soros and the Holocaust. The conservative pundit described Soros this week as a “Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps.”
Beck loves this type of publicity. It’s headlines, it’s free publicity and to him, its a big, “what did I do?” He’s the Howard Stern of conservative talkers. Much of it is calculated. Here’s something from the week of August 22, 2009 – remember this?
“Glenn Beck Glenn Beck returns to Fox News Channel on Monday after a vacation with fewer companies willing to advertise on hisshow than when he left, part of the fallout from calling President Barack Obama a racist. A total of 33 Foxadvertisers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., CVS Caremark,Clorox and Sprint, directed that their commercials not air onBeck’s show, according to the companies and Colorofchange,a group that promotes political action among blacks andlaunched a campaign to get advertisers to abandon him.That’s more than a dozen more than were identified a weekago. While it’s unclear what effect, if any, this will ultimately have on Fox and Beck, it is already making advertisers skittish about hawking their wares withinthe most opinionated cable TV shows.”
This story taken from over a year ago – lot’s of words, lots of yelling – but nothing changed. You gotta love it! Beck is a master at PR and stirring things up.
Gary West – www.mrpophistory.com & www.mrpopculture.com
Q: Jerry Springer once tried to make a radio show work. Do you have a timeframe?
Mr. Pop History – Yes, it was around this week in 2004 that TV Zookeeper Jerry Springer tried his hand at radio. The plan was to get polished in a single market – then syndicate. This was a trend earlier this decade, when TV and other kinds of celebrities thought they could do a radio show. Here’s the report:
Radio news –
Jerry Springer – the king of trash TV – is trying out a three-hour radio show in Cincinnati over left/lib talker WSAI. Springer really wants a national radio show (it won’t happen.)
Mr. Pop History – TMZ is great at edgy, hooky, breaking pop culture news. They work hard at it. Founder Harvey Levin is pretty connected and he created a great niche. His background – a lawyer and a investigative TV reporter among other ventures.
But, being out front has its disadvantages – TMZ does get vulnerable. Earlier this year, it got sued. Take a look at this from February, 2010:
“Out Of The Zone – TMZ is being sued for broadcasting allegedly stolen and confidential footage of an interview with Debbie Rowe soon after her ex-husband, Michael Jackson, died last June. The details of the lawsuit raise interesting questions about the gossip Web site’s news operation, copyright issues, and the boundaries between an entertainment clip and a fair-use news product. Suit was filed by Marc Schaffel Productions.”
Q: – With all the Miley Cyrus news recently – skimpy outfits and all, when was she at her peak of “innocent” popularity with her Hannah Montana character?
Mr. Pop History – Amazing isn’t it how time flies. She seems more adult these days. Let’s go back exactly three years ago – November of 2007, when Hannah was at her hottest. Remember this story?
“Thousands of Hannah Montana fans are suing her fan club. They say membership in the “club” should have enabled them to obtain concert tickets in priority. “The Best of Both Worlds Tour” – is the hottest concert going these days and it’s sold out everywhere.”
www.mrpopculture.com
It was a first – selling a car on a home shopping channel.
Back in 2003, GM approached QVC to do a one-time, 85-minute pitch for women to buy its struggling Saturn line. Why not? Stats said the QVC feature would draw 15 million to 20 million viewers.
It aired on August 8, 2003 and as far as I know, only once. The hook wasn’t price – it was incentives. What’s more interesting – sitting through an 85 minute pitch for the Saturn – a car line now deleted. They must have talked about everything, including the paint job.
From Arlene O – Mr. Pop – Back in the early days of “American Idol” – there was a website – an independent site, that predicted contest outcome – and it was quite accurate. Do you remember?
Mr. Pop History – Yes, something called dialidol dot com predicted (quite well) which singers would get voted off in a given week. It did this with an auto-dialing program it provided to phone-in voters and then analyzed which of the contestants’ numbers yielded the most busy signals. That gave a high-calling volume algorithm. Interesting – isn’t it?
The folks at “American Idol” got wind and had content removed. But – this was an interesting chapter in the life of “American Idol” and a great trivia question.
www.mrpopculture.com
Mr. Pop Culture Report
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