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Rhianna, Jay-Z and Kanye West Slated on Leno’s First Show

Aug 7, 2009  •  Post A Comment

Rhianna, Jay-Z and Kanye West will be Jay Leno’s guests on his first show on Monday, Sept. 14, NBC has announced. They will sing the song "Run This Town," from Jay-Z’s new album, due Sept. 11th.

Rhianna, of course has not made too many public appearances since she was allegedly beaten by Chris Brown in February. So clearly there will be an interest in seeing her by the TV audience. And, of course, Jay-Z and Kanye West are popular.

However, just two days ago, on Wednesday, Aug, 4th, Leno told the TV press:

"Well, I’ll tell you a little secret to doing television. What music gets you is a great studio audience. Music doesn’t necessarily get you a great television audience because, if you want to see U2, I can
go to VH1, I can go to the Internet, press YouTube, and see — and see any U2 concert at any time that I want to see.

"If I announce that I had U2 on my show, I would have a great studio audience. I wouldn’t  necessarily have a very — and that’s nothing against U2. It’s just
that fact that, when I was a kid, the only place you saw the Beatles was "The Ed Sullivan Show."

"That was the only place you ever saw them. Now, you can see any music group when you want anytime."

Indeed, the song the trio will sing is already available on the Internet–including YouTube. Most of the availability is the song only, with no visuals; however there is a video on YouTube of Jay-Z singing the song in concert (although not with in-person performances of West or Rhianna).

Just this week the trio filmed the video of the song. Whether or not that will be available on the Internet or anywhere else before the trio’s appearance on Leno’s show is not known.

What does seem to be true is that Leno has assured himself of a great studio audience for his debut.

–Chuck Ross

9 Comments

  1. Leno was saying that just having U2 or any other single performer show up on a tv show and perform their current single is no big draw for a television audience. On the other hand, if you can get 3 top performers to show up and do something together that is different from what people might otherwise see in concert or in another venue, then you have created something new and fresh that a tv audience will want to see. Jay is showing that his show will not just have the same old approach to music guests; they will try to have interesting combinations of artists, like you see on the Grammy Awards, which will provide for exciting tv moments. This will definitely create some buzz for Jay’s first show.

  2. Chris Brown pleaded guilty to felony assault, which would seem to make it not “alleged” to me.

  3. Sorry Jay, The one shot deal audience you may attract to the tube for that performance is not the loyal fan base that will keep your ratiings afloat in the new 10pm landscape. No disrespect intended but that demo does not consistantly spend its consumer dollars in the product lines your advertisers represent.

  4. Who cares.

  5. Writer spelled Rihanna wrong… smh. in title, and story… spell check names please?

  6. Interesting layout on your blog. I really enjoyed reading it and also I will be back to read more in the future.

  7. Amazing freakin blog here. I almost cried while reading it!

  8. Wow, amazing blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy.

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