AMERICAN IDOL - RECORD COMPANIES SUE ELLEN

RECORD COMPANIES SUE ELLEN

Only a day after it was announced that Ellen DeGeneres would be replacing Paula Abdul on American Idol, some of the leading U.S. record companies sued her daytime talk show claiming the producers had failed to obtain licenses for the music they have used for DeGeneres's "dance over" segments on each show. The companies include Capitol Records, Atlantic Motown, Sony Music, Virgin Records, and Warner Bros. Records. The latter company is a corporate sibling of Telepictures Productions, which produces The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The lawsuit charges that the show's producers used copyrighted material from its inception, including popular hits that the record companies historically refuse to license to daytime TV programs. Meanwhile, Daily Variety reported today (Friday) that the addition of DeGeneres to American Idol will establish a "solid pipeline" between the talent contest and DeGeneres's talk show. "It feeds one another, absolutely," Fox reality chief Mike Darnell told Daily Variety . "It's a win for us, as she'll be talking about it more on her show. And certainly people will come to Idol to see how she does. There's a huge curiosity factor." The deal also represents an embarrassment for print and online gossips who have insisted that the show's producers have continued to negotiate with Abdul's representatives secretly. Darnell told Variety "Look, we were finished with that contractual negotiation. And we took it seriously. We had to go back looking. We just moved on."

11/09/2009