English Entertainment
Fox to kick off sixth season of ‘American Idol’ in January
MUMBAI: US broadcaster Fox has announced that the sixth season of its music based reality show American Idol returns for its sixth season in a special two-night, four-hour season premiere on 16 January 2007.
In India the show will air on Star World.
The search for the next superstar began last summer, as the show travelled to several cities in the US. Over 100,000 people turned up at the auditions for the sixth season.
The show’s host Ryan Seacrest is back, and judges Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson return to lend their professional expertise, personal comments and sometimes tough criticism to a new crop of aspiring singers. Some will get the judges approval and others will hear the cold, hard truth!
Guest judges Olivia Newton John, Carol Bayer Sager and Jewel also joined the road trip this season. Viewers will find out what these celebrity judges had to say about the talent around the country and who gets the gold ticket to Hollywood.
Last year’s season culminated in the crowning of Taylor Hicks as the fifth American Idol. Hicks joined previous winners Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia and Carrie Underwood as holders of the coveted title. In total, American Idol artists have sold 10 million singles and 23 million albums since the show first aired in 2002. Now the stage is set to turn a sixth singer’s dream into reality.
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
