Sydney Morning Herald Article: Australian Fans Pissed P Diddy & Missy Elliott Not Performing Down Under!!!
P.Diddy lashes out as fallout continues from Supafest farce
Stephanie Gardiner
April 11, 2012 – 3:14PM
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Supafest fans demand refunds
Hip-hop fans have taken to social media, outraged over the announcement P.Diddy and Missy Elliot have been pulled from the Supafest line-up.
- High-profile artists have hit out at the promoters of Australian hip-hop festival Supafest, with P.Diddy tweeting he is “mad as f—” about a breach of contract and Missy Elliott saying she was falsely advertised as a headliner.
Supafest promoters Paperchase Touring and Entertainment yesterday released a statement saying P.Diddy and Missy Elliott’s performances at the festival in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth were cancelled due to poor ticket sales.
But Missy Elliott’s management said she was never contracted to play, while P.Diddy took to Twitter overnight, saying promoters had not sent him his payment.
Angry … P.Diddy. Photo: Getty Images
A Supafest spokeswoman said yesterday that P.Diddy and Missy Elliott had both been “confirmed” to appear but the producers Dwayne Cross and John Denison had to cancel their appearances.
“It was a heartbreaking decision for both of them but it was purely financial.”
Missy Elliott’s manager Mona Scott-Young released a statement this morning saying there were early discussions with Supafest to have her perform, but she was never confirmed nor contracted to appear.
Missy Elliott … “falsely advertised”. Photo: Getty Images
But her name was put on advertising for the festival anyway, Scott-Young said.
“It has come to our attention that Missy Elliott was being falsely advertised for Supafest.
“The promoter began advertising without confirmation from our end or contracts as it pertains to Missy’s appearance.
“It is unfortunate when this happens as this dishonest behaviour hurts everyone involved.
“It not only damages the reputation of the artist, but most importantly it disappoints the fans who spend their hard earned money on tickets expecting to see the artist.
“On behalf of Missy Elliott and our entire team, we apologise to her fans for the false promotion and are taking measures to resolve this matter.”
Missy Elliott said in the statement she hoped the festival would still be great.
“I feel awful that my fans have been led to believe I will be in Australia.”
Overnight P.Diddy wrote a string of tweets to his 5 million followers slamming the promoters, saying they should come through on the conditions of the contract.
“I wanna come to supafest but its not up to me,” he wrote.
“The promoters never sent the money for the show I love you guys! I’m MAD as f—.”
He also wrote: “Attention Australia!!!! My 1st ever Australian tour is going to be cancelled because the promoters did not fulfil the contract! CRAZY!!!”
Cross would not comment on the artists’ statements when contacted by smh.com.au this morning.
The Supafest spokeswoman said the promoters did not want to make any further comment.
But she said fans could get a refund on tickets if requested.
Supafest’s Facebook page has attracted more than 1000 comments from fans, many of whom are asking for refunds or replacement acts.
TV Guide Article: Days Of Our Lives Producer Greg Meng Thinks Women Are Too Homophobic To Care About Will’s Gay Storyline.
Days of Our Lives Writers Massacre: Can the Show Be Saved?
They created the brave, ballsy storyline everyone is raving about — the coming out of Will Horton — but Days of Our Liveshead writers Marlene McPherson and Darrell Ray Thomas are now out of a job. They’ve been replaced by a new writing team headed by suds vets Gary Tomlin and Chris Whitesell, who previously served as co-head writers on the NBC soap. Is this a sincere, concerted effort to raise the ratings and save Daysfrom cancellation? Or yet another example of deadly network interference? TV Guide Magazine spoke with Days co-executive producer Greg Meng about this unexpected development.
TV Guide Magazine: Word is, NBC instigated this writer change. Is that the case?
Meng: We spoke with the network and collectively felt we needed to take a pause, make a change with the writing and the style of the show for a while and see if that will redirect things. The ratings situation is very complex and difficult, and we have a tremendous challenge with that right now. Everybody on the Days team, and that includes NBC and Sony, our distributor, wants this show to succeed and we’re doing everything we can to make it work. We all have different visions as to how to achieve that success but the good news is that we’re all in synch on the future. No one wants cancellation. Even though we brought in Darrell and Marlene to reset Days last September, it was always our feeling that the show needed to constantly be nurtured with smaller resets. This isn’t the end of the world. We’re just resetting it again in an effort to get it right.
TV Guide Magazine: Why couldn’t that be done with Darrell and Marlene? It’s not like they were stinking up the joint. They seem to be a very promising team and their very best work — Will’s coming-out story — is better than anything anyone in soaps has written in years. Surely there was something there worth retaining.
Meng: Marlene and Darrell brought such a fresh energy to Days and really honored the tradition and values of the show. They had an impossible job turning everything around on a dime. And they left us in a very good place.
TV Guide Magazine: After the firing, Marlene tweeted that NBC “never let us tell our stories. They kept stopping us and changing our direction.” You got a comment?
Meng: I can’t really address where she’s coming from. She and Darrell loved the show so much and it became a part of their lives. We definitely want to retain a relationship with them.
TV Guide Magazine: Why wasn’t this fixable with them?
Meng: It was a unique situation. We have this big elephant in the room — the ratings. And we are not seeing any movement. The goal is to have a long life on NBC and we must do everything we can to get the ratings up. It’s that simple. That said, Sony’s research tells us that one out of four of our viewers is not being measured by Nielsen. That’s a pretty big percentage and I don’t think they’re even counting the SoapNet replays in that information.
TV Guide Magazine: Is NBC aware of this research?
Meng: We are about to discuss all that with them.
TV Guide Magazine: It would certainly be worse if the network didn’t appear to give a crap about Days, like we saw happen with the ABC soaps. But do they really know what’s best here? We’re talking about NBC. They’re pretty much failing at everything these days.
Meng: Everyone does not agree on the creative points but we do have tremendous enthusiasm from Bruce Evans and Rebecca McGill, the two network representatives. They are hands on, very encouraging, and supporting us in every way they can. So that’s very valuable.
TV Guide Magazine: When are you up for renewal?
Meng: Our current deal has us on the air through to September 2013, so it’s really important that we do as best as we can, ratings-wise, starting [this] September. That’s our final stretch.
TV Guide Magazine: Let’s talk about the new team. It wasn’t that long ago that you fired Gary Tomlin as exec producer. Now he’s back as a head writer. What’s the thinking there?
Meng: The thinking was that Gary knows the show and is as up-to-date as anybody. He hasn’t written for Days for many years. He knows the characters, and we want the show to continue to be character-driven.
TV Guide Magazine: And Chris Whitesell?
Meng: Lately I’ve had the luxury of getting to meet the best of the daytime writers. When in history have so many of them been available? I started formulating chemistry ideas. Who’d work well with Gary? Whitesell was at The Young and the Restless doing outlines, I believe, and it seemed to us like he and Gary would be great collaborators. They are not yes men. They really bring things to the table. Their energy together is great.
TV Guide Magazine: You’ve also expanded the writing team to include Lorraine Broderick, who won the respect of all of us when she came in to give All My Children a proper sendoff.
Meng: I really wanted Lorraine. She has worked with both Gary and Chris, and never really had the opportunity to work at Days, though we did have a deal in the works with her several years ago that didn’t happen. She’s on board as an outline writer and she’s very excited. We think it’s a dream team.
TV Guide Magazine: When will the new material begin to air?
Meng: Probably mid-August. We’re that far ahead. But we have some really big stuff coming up in the next few months, especially prior to the Olympics. We’re off the air two weeks during the Games but the week leading up to that is huge and it ends in a great cliffhanger. Then there are a lot of surprises the Monday we come back. You won’t want to miss those episodes.
TV Guide Magazine: The late James Reilly brought Days some of its best ratings and greatest notoriety with premature burial, devil possession and other wackadoo stuff. There’s been rumor that NBC wants to see a return to that. Do you see this happening in some form?
Meng: That worked at the time for the moment, but it’s a different era now. We’re finding people want more reality and balance, especially in these trying times. We don’t want to go cheesy, not that anything we did in the past was cheesy. We just want to be respectful to the show. What we’re hearing is that people want really good romance.
TV Guide Magazine: Or just straight romance? Could it be possible that the mainstreamDays audience does not want to watch the gay storyline and where it might be going? ABC claimed that was the case when One Life to Live suddenly dropped the Kish romance.
Meng: I don’t know. I think it’s a beautiful story and we are committed to it. But probably it’s not the story that most women are going to tune in for every day, the one they don’t want to miss. I think it’s a story everybody likes, but the women want to see romance. Our goal is to get back lapsed viewers — our family of viewers who stopped watching altogether or aren’t watching us every day.
TV Guide Magazine: If romance is what people want, could the problem be that most of your major couples have split up or been separated by circumstance? We’re talking about John and Marlena, Bo and Hope, Carrie and Austin, Sami and Rafe, Nicole and EJ. That’s a lot.
Meng: People do want to see those couples but the problem is you can’t tell good story when couples are together and everything’s all hunky-dory. That’s the challenge Darrell and Marlene have been up against. They tried some unique ways to split up those couples yet that hasn’t quite worked. But they get an A-plus for effort. In hindsight, I do think too many couples splitting up has been an issue. We also brought in the wonderful Sarah Brown [Madison] and threw her into a lot of material very quickly. Maybe too much too quickly. But, again, we feel like we’re in a great place to make the next step.
TV Guide Magazine: Is that “next step” going to involve some major actors going away?
Meng: Yes. We’re looking at weaving people in and out, and bringing them back later if we can.
TV Guide Magazine: Will it be as shocking as, say, the time you axed Drake Hogestyn and Deidre Hall a few years back? Will these firings be epic?
Meng: Yes. And that’s all I’m going to say about that right now.
Miami Masters 2012 Final: Andy Murray Loses To Novak Djokovic He Lacks Killer Instinct To Become A Champion.
I am so tired of the hype Andy Murray receives from the western media he is not a champion. The reason the American and British press hype Murray is because he is Anglo Saxon. The western media wants a British player to be number one but Murray fails to deliver. Even though Murray hired former champion Ivan Lendl to be his coach his results are not improving.
Prior to Miami Masters final match Murray practiced with Djokovic on stadium court. Does this make sense? Why would Murray practice with his rival before a major final? One argument is Murray and Djokovic are childhood friends and enjoy each other’s company. However, Murray lacks the mental toughness and the killer instinct. Do you think Roger Federer would ever practice with Novak? Of course not because Federer is a champion he does not practice with his main rivals. Murray seems to be trying too hard to be liked and not be a champion.
I believe Murray is not a contender until he wins a grand slam singles title. How can Murray be a contender when he NEVER beats Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, or Roger Federer when it matters most in a grand slam final? Murray continues to lose to the big three whenever it matters most. Today, Murray had a chance to help his confidence but he played tentative tennis and lost.
Agnieszka Radwanska Destroys Maria Sharapova In Straight Sets To Win Miami Masters Event!!
Well done Agnieszka Radwanska she upsets Maria Sharapova and wins the Miami Masters in straight sets. This is Radwanska’s second victory over Sharapova since the 2008 US Open.
Sharapova’s game is too one dimensional she doesn’t have any variety she just hits the ball hard. Radwanska changed the pace and used drop shots, angles, and lobs to push Sharapova all over the court.
Well done Agnieszka!
Gayblackcanada 