The Amazing Race continues tonight at 8/7c PM on CBS
LUDACRIS & MUSIC SUPERSTAR CIARA TO HOST THE “2016 BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS” – dick clark productions and ABC announced today that the “2016 Billboard Music Awards” will be hosted for the third year in a row by Grammy award winning recording artist Ludacris. He will be joined by first-time host and international recording artist, Ciara. It was also announced that this year’s award show will move to the brand new T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The “2016 Billboard Music Awards” is set to return to ABC and will broadcast live on SUNDAY, MAY 22 at 8pm ET. – Via dc productions pr release
‘The Voice’ winner Josh Kaufman to sing before start of Indy 500 – Josh Kaufman will be the next voice to sing “Back Home Again in Indiana” before the start of the Indianapolis 500 next month. Indianapolis Motor Speedway President J. Douglas announced Thursday that Kaufman, an Indianapolis resident and the winner of the sixth season of NBC’s “The Voice,” will be accompanied by the Indianapolis Children’s Choir in the song that was first performed at the track by New York Metropolitan Opera performer James Melton in 1946. – Read more at ESPN
Brian Dunkleman Puts His Hand Up For ‘American Idol’ Return: “I’m Available” -Dunkleman revealed that he met with Seacrest prior to the broadcast in an attempt to clear the air. “I made a point of going to see him in his dressing room before rehearsal and he walked in and he smiled and he said hello. We shook hands I said, ‘I want to apologize to you for all of the times we didn’t get along back then and I wish I could go back and change it all, but I can’t and I just genuinely wish the best for you and your family,'” he said. “It was a really great moment and he was so gracious.” Dunkleman said that in retrospect, the show did work better with one host. “That’s another thing that has been very liberating about this experience,” he said. “I gather they weren’t going to have me back anyway, so it’s a load off my shoulder that I guess I didn’t make a mistake. The mistake that I made was I guess I didn’t do a good enough job and I don’t think that I handled myself as professionally as I needed to back then.” – Read more at the Hollywood Reporter
Reflections Of A Degenerate ‘American Idol’ Gambler – First I enjoyed “American Idol,” then I studied it, then I gambled on it, then I watched it fall apart. Watching “Idol” for me was a lot like anything else I do for fun. That is, it involved making inferences and probability-based predictions by synthesizing and interpreting different kinds of information, including hard data (like the rate of busy signals for each contestant during after-show voting) and completely subjective impressions. With the show coming to an end after its 15th season this week — at least until its big nostalgia-soaked revival a few years from now — I’ve been reflecting on what it meant to me, as well as what made it so great and what made it so terrible. – Read more at FiveThirtyEight
Adam Lambert reflects on his American Idol experience – You had a lot riding on that audition! It was a very high-stakes situation for me because after the initial … there are a couple of different rounds of auditions before you even see the TV judges, and after I had completed the first two rounds of auditions for the producers, I had to quit my job in order to move on because I was in a professional theater production and the rules stated that you couldn’t be under any sort of entertainment contract. So I had to cut ties and quit my job, and that was my income; that’s how I was getting my health insurance, all that stuff. I had to quit the job that I had in order to move forward, so it was a big risk for me. – Read more at EW.com
‘American Idol’ Will Return And May Go Live On A Digital Platform – It is evident that the next generation of the most-watched TV show of the last 15 years is bound to embrace digital in its fullest form. Of course I can’t get into Fuller’s mind, but it could even get to the point of going live on digital platforms. This is what I read into Simon Fuller’s remarks about the show returning – Read more at Forbes
Kris Allen talks genre-bending, covers, ‘Idol’ ahead of Pittsburgh Winery stop – When focusing on making the setlist Allen said the process quickly became, “What songs are we not going to do?” speaking in terms of the latest release. If Allen had his way, he’d perform all of them. “I think there’s going to be a lot from that album. But people love hearing songs from ‘Horizons’ and the first album,” Allen said. “We have four albums worth of material now.” All that material might mean audiences can say goodbye to the covers that Allen and company typically perform. On one tour, for example, he was taking requests every day to see which song fans in that city wanted to hear. Allen said it ended up being a lot more work that he planned. “We won’t be doing as many. I’ll sprinkle them in,” Allen said, noting that above all songs, he’s most excited to play the quicker-paced “Faster Shoes” off the newest release. – Read more at The Times
American Idol Series Finale Recap – Behind The Scenes & Fantasia Studdard & Guarini #GMA