GINGER JUICE : Thursday February 16, 2012
The "Hollywood Reporter" points out that "American Idol" has started a trend of reality competitions paying top dollar to land big name "judges." This began when they shelled out $12 MILLION to land Jennifer Lopez. At the time, "Idol" was under a lot of pressure to bring in a high-profile celebrity to compensate for Simon's departure. J-Lo was the first judge to get big money to join a show. And last year, she reportedly got $20 million to come back for the current season. Since then, NBC parted with $10 million to re-sign "Voice" coach Christina Aguilera AND they coughed up $15 million to get Howard Stern to join "America's Got Talent". On top of that, they're moving production to New York City to accommodate him. So, is it a game?
Cee Lo Green is working on two albums simultaneously. He has a solo album on the way called "Everybody's Brother" and his rap group GOODIE MOB is putting out an album called "Age Against the Machine". Both albums are "coming soon".
Okay what's the deal? Back in December, Adele said she was going to take a few years off. She *just* told "Vogue" magazine that she was going to kick it for 4 or 5 years so she can concentrate on her love life. I guess the Grammy's (and the fact that "21" has been sitting in the Top Spot of the Billboard Album Charts for 20 weeks now [ironically tieing with the "Bodyguard" Soundtrack]) taught her that she needs to hit the road and tour or at least keep her music going. In a new blog post, Adele says, "I have a few days off now, and then it's the Brit Awards here at home, and then I'm straight into the studio. BOYYAHH! 5 years? More like 5 days!"
Whitney Houston's "Greatest Hits" album just hit #6 on the Top Ten Billboard Album Charts, selling 64,000 copies in just over a day. Several of Whitney's other albums made it back onto the charts, too. Her debut album is at #72, the "Bodyguard" soundtrack is at #80 and her last studio album, "I Look To You", made it back to #118. In all, 101,000 Whitney albums were sold since Sunday. DIGITALLY, 887,000 tracks were sold. Not surprisingly, the most popular tune was "I Will Always Love You", which was purchased 195,000 times.
.. aaaand cut! (I hate bogus stories!) Regarding room 434 at the Beverly Hilton, nobody's in it now, and nobody is going to be in it for a while. The hotel says TMZ didn't even bother to contact them before running a story saying that someone was already staying in it, and that it was booked well into the future.
Catch "Remembering Whitney: The Oprah Interview" from 9:00 to 11:00 P.M. on OWN. A two part interview that original aired in September 2009 on Oprah's talk show in which she spoke with Whitney Houston regarding her personal life, her struggles with addiction, rumors and her marriage to Bobby Brown.
"American Idol" [Performance Challenge] . . . 8:00 to 10:00 P.M. on Fox.
