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      Walter Yetnikoff, Powerful but Abrasive Record Executive, Dies at 87

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      Mr. Yetnikoff led CBS Records during the boom years that included Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album. Then he fell from grace.Walter Yetnikoff, who led CBS Records during the boom years of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album and lived the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll life more indulgently than many of his stars did, died on Monday at a hospital in Bridgeport, Conn. He was 87.His wife, Lynda Yetnikoff, said the cause was cancer.Mr. Yetnikoff was one of the most powerful, insatiable and abrasive figures in music in the years just before the digital revolution upended the business.He was among a small group of powerful executives who shaped the record business in the rock era, including Clive Davis (who led Columbia Records and founded Arista Records), David Geffen of Asylum and Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic. He strode through those heady days of hit records brashly, licentiously and, by his own admission, often drunk or drug-addled.Though he never claimed to have much of an ear for music, he was adept at pacifying the stars on his roster — who in addition to Mr. Jackson included Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand and Billy Joel — and at outmaneuvering competitors and perceived enemies, at least into the late 1980s.Then came a hard fall.In 1990, Mr. Yetnikoff, having offended too many people with his outrageous behavior, was dismissed by Sony, the company that at his urging had bought CBS Records only three years earlier. He had gone into rehab in 1989 and kicked the booze and drugs that had been his more or less daily diet throughout his reign, but getting clean didn’t make him any more tolerable.“I would go into meetings and ask people to hold hands and say the serenity prayer,” he told The New York Times in 2004, in an interview occasioned by the publication of his eyebrow-raising autobiography, “Howling at the Moon: The Odyssey of a Monstrous Music Mogul in an Age of Excess,” written with David Ritz.Tommy Mottola, once a friend and later, as Mr. Yetnikoff’s successor at CBS Records, viewed as an enemy, put it this way in his own autobiography, “Hitmaker: The Man and His Music” (2013): “The treatment center had removed the alcohol and drugs from Walter’s life — but not the underlying problems that Walter had been using them to anesthetize.”Walter Roy Yetnikoff was born on Aug. 11, 1933, in Brooklyn. His father, Max, worked for the city painting hospitals, and his mother, Bella (Zweibel) Yetnikoff, was a bookkeeper. In his book, Mr. Yetnikoff described a difficult childhood that included regular beatings by his father.At Brooklyn College he grew bored with engineering and switched his studies to pre-law. An uncle paid for his first year at Columbia Law School, where he did well enough that he earned a scholarship for his next two years. Upon graduating, he joined the firm Rosenman & Colin. The other young lawyers there included Clive Davis, who would go on to have his own enormous influence on the music business.Mr. Davis soon moved to the legal department at Columbia Records, a division of CBS, and in 1961 he brought Mr. Yetnikoff on board there, luring him with a salary of $10,000 a year (about $90,000 today).“It wasn’t a money move,” Mr. Yetnikoff told Rolling Stone in 1988. “I thought it would be interesting, exciting. And I got my own office and a telephone with, like, four buttons on it.”His phone at his old job, he said, had no buttons.Mr. Yetnikoff with Michael Jackson and the filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who directed the 18-minute video for Mr. Jackson’s song “Bad” in 1986.Sam Emerson/ABCFor a time the careers of Mr. Davis and Mr. Yetnikoff ascended in tandem. By 1967, Mr. Davis was president of Columbia, and within a few years Mr. Yetnikoff was president of the international division of CBS Records. Mr. Davis lost his job in a financial scandal in 1973, and in 1975 Mr. Yetnikoff essentially replaced him, becoming president of the CBS Records Group, which included Columbia and other labels.In one of his first acts as president, Mr. Yetnikoff somewhat reluctantly let Ron Alexenburg, the head of CBS’s Epic label, sign the Jacksons. Epic had wrested the group from Motown Records (which retained the rights to the group’s original name, the Jackson 5), and though Mr. Yetnikoff wasn’t overly impressed with the Jacksons’ initial albums for Epic, he cultivated a relationship with the group’s key member, Michael, supporting the young singer’s interest in expanding into solo work.In 1982, that encouragement resulted in “Thriller,” still one of the top-selling albums in history. Mr. Jackson brought Mr. Yetnikoff onstage, calling him “the best president of any record company,” when he accepted one of eight Grammy Awards at the 1984 ceremony.“That’s unheard-of,” Mr. Yetnikoff bragged afterward, according to Fredric Dannen’s book “Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business” (1990). “You don’t bring record executives up at the Grammys, ’cause no one’s interested. I went back to CBS and said, ‘Give me another $2 million for that!’”Other megahits released during Mr. Yetnikoff’s tenure included Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” in 1977, the ambitious Pink Floyd double album “The Wall” in 1979, Mr. Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” in 1984, Mr. Jackson’s “Bad” in 1987 and a series of hit albums by Mr. Joel, including “The Stranger” (1977) and “Glass Houses” (1980).Mr. Yetnikoff was not known to be a discoverer of hits or talent. His strengths were in developing relationships with artists, negotiating contracts and easing his stars’ concerns about promotional budgets and a host of other things.“I sometimes feel like their shrink, their rabbi, priest, marriage counselor, banker,” he said in a 1984 interview with The Times. “I know more about their personal lives than I’d like to know.”His wild-man persona seemed to grow in proportion to his power. When he entered the record business, he was an unobtrusive family man. He married June May Horowitz in 1957, and they had a son; a second son arrived in 1962.Mr. Yetnikoff, right, presented gold records to Vera Zorina, the widow of the former Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson, and the director and choreographer Michael Bennett for the original cast album of “A Chorus Line” in New York in 1978.Carlos Rene Perez/Associated PressBut his ascension was accompanied by numerous affairs, which he detailed, along with his substance abuse, in his autobiography. Other record executives from the period wrote their stories, too, but Mr. Yetnikoff’s was in a class by itself. It was, Forbes said, “a portrait of such out-of-control megalomania that any music executive today, no matter how egotistical or ruthless, has to look better by comparison.”Many people tolerated and even enjoyed him at first, but not everyone.“He treated artists like they were objects, not human beings,” Sharon Osbourne, wife and manager of the rocker Ozzy Osbourne, was quoted as saying in Mr. Mottola’s book. “On top of that, he was the poster boy for misogyny.”In the mid-1980s, Mr. Yetnikoff’s name surfaced in an NBC News report on payola in the record business that focused on independent promoters and their possible ties to organized crime. But CBS came to his defense, and he survived.“Did the ‘Nightly News’ scandal change me?” Mr. Yetnikoff wrote in his book. “If anything, I became more defiant, more arrogant, more contemptuous of my adversaries.”He added: “I charged full steam ahead. I might have been middle-aged, but I adopted the youthful battle cry of more sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. I wanted more of everything, and I wanted it with a vengeance.”Eventually, he went too far too often. The stars whose photographs covered the walls of his office began spurning him. Up-and-coming executives, including some he had mentored, eclipsed him. In the summer of 1989, a doctor told him he would be dead soon if he didn’t get clean, which scared him into rehab but didn’t save his career.After being ousted at Sony, Mr. Yetnikoff tried making a movie about Miles Davis (Wesley Snipes was to star), but the project collapsed. Then he tried founding his own record label, Velvel Music Group — Velvel was his Yiddish name — but it failed after three years.“If I had still been drinking, I’d have drunk myself to death,” he wrote of the period after his fall. “But without drink or drugs to annihilate my true feelings, I had to cope with a condition that had existed for much of my adult life: acute depression. While I was running the free world, I could assuage those dark spells by ranting and raging, by antagonizing associates and turning daily tasks into high drama. By yelling, I could move mountains. Suddenly there was no one to yell at.”Mr. Yetnikoff in 2004. “I sometimes feel like their shrink, their rabbi, priest, marriage counselor, banker,” he once said of his stars in an interview with The Times. “I know more about their personal lives than I’d like to know.”G. Paul Burnett/The New York TimesMr. Yetnikoff’s first marriage ended in divorce, as did his second, to Cynthia Slamar. He married Lynda Kady in 2007. In addition to her, he is survived by two sons from his first marriage, Michael and Daniel; a sister, Carol Goldstein; and four grandchildren. In his later years, Mr. Yetnikoff generally kept a low profile, volunteering for addiction and recovery organizations. Mr. Yetnikoff’s book includes a chapter on a trip he took to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1987, when Mr. Joel performed there. He was surprised, he wrote, when he was not received there with acclaim and deference. The chapter opens with a sentence that perhaps sums up his record-business career as a whole, a dizzying period when he let his power distort his perspective.“Delusions of grandeur,” he wrote, “are especially infectious for the semigrand.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Can Paramount+ Succeed? One Producer Hopes to Make It So.

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      Like so many other writer-directors, Alex Kurtzman grew up worshiping film.But he is adaptable — and in the streaming era, that is a very lucrative trait.Mr. Kurtzman, the onetime writer of the “Transformers” movies and the director of the 2017 film “The Mummy,” recently renegotiated his deal at CBS Studios into one of the richest there. Under the $160 million, five-and-a-half-year agreement, he will continue to shepherd the growing “Star Trek” television universe for ViacomCBS’s Paramount+ streaming platform.He will also create shows, including a limited series based on “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” which he will direct for Showtime, and the long-awaited adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.” That limited series is likely to be sold to an outside streaming service.Mr. Kurtzman’s deal is the latest in a string intended to give prolific producers, like Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy for Netflix and Jordan Peele with Amazon Studios, free rein to create content that can feed insatiable consumer appetites and hopefully boost subscriptions for streaming. This one puts the ambitions of CBS Studios — the production arm for the networks and channels under the ViacomCBS umbrella — squarely in the hands of the 47-year-old Mr. Kurtzman.“From the first meeting I had with Alex, it was so obvious to me that he’s our future,” George Cheeks, the president and chief executive of the CBS Entertainment Group, said in an interview. “The guy can develop for broadcast. He can develop for premium streaming, broad streaming. He understands the business. He’s got tremendous empathy. He’s creatively nimble.“When you make these investments,” Mr. Cheeks continued, “you need to know that this talent can actually deliver multiple projects at the same time across multiple platforms.”“Star Trek: Discovery” is one of five “Star Trek” shows that Mr. Kurtzman has produced.Michael Gibson/CBSThe road ahead won’t be easy for ViacomCBS. Its fledgling Paramount+ was a late entry into streaming, and is essentially a rebranded and expanded version of CBS All Access. The company promotes the service’s news and live sports, including National Football League games, along with “a mountain of movies.” (“A Quiet Place 2” debuted on it on July 13.) But Paramount+, in combination with a smaller Showtime streaming offering, had just 36 million subscribers as of May.While it hopes to reach 65 million to 75 million global subscribers by 2024, that’s still a far cry from Netflix’s worldwide total of almost 210 million and the nearly 104 million for Disney+. Even NBCUniversal announced on Thursday that it had 54 million subscribers for its Peacock streaming service, thanks to an Olympic push.And with consolidation mania consuming Hollywood, many analysts are not confident that ViacomCBS will be able to continue to compete with the larger companies on its own.“I think it’s hard to imagine any of these companies going it alone; I think they are all too small,” said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners. “The challenge, whether it’s Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+ or Hulu, is that all of these companies are still conflicted over what do they put on linear TV, what do they put in a movie theater and what do they put on streaming.“Netflix, Amazon and Apple do not have that debate every day,” he added. “All their assets go into one thing. Here, they have to balance, and that makes all of their streaming services suboptimal.”Those corporate considerations don’t seem to bother Mr. Kurtzman. Rather than bemoaning the diminished state of movies or anguishing over the lack of viable buyers as the market shrinks, he said he was finding the current climate to be creatively invigorating and remarkably fluid.Mr. Kurtzman said he wanted to make the “Star Trek” universe as expansive as the Marvel universe.Philip Cheung for The New York Times“I do believe that the line between movies and television is gone now, and that to me is a tremendous opportunity,” he said in an interview. “For me and for showrunners like me, we can tell stories in a new way. We are not limited by the narrow definition of how you tell a story — something must be told in 10 hours, or something must be told in two hours.”Mr. Kurtzman began working with CBS in 2009 when he developed the reboot of “Hawaii Five-0” with his former writing partner, Roberto Orci. In 2017, he began reimagining the “Star Trek” universe for the company, building on his familiarity with the franchise after co-writing the two J.J. Abrams-directed “Star Trek” movies several years earlier.Since then, he has produced five shows in the universe initially imagined in the 1960s by Gene Roddenberry, and all will be on Paramount+. They are “Star Trek: Discovery”; “Star Trek: Picard”; “Star Trek: Lower Decks”; “Star Trek: Prodigy,” which will debut in the fall; and “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” set for release in 2022. ViacomCBS says “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Picard” are among the most watched original series on Paramount+.Also in the works are “Section 31,” starring Michelle Yeoh, and a show built around the “Starfleet Academy,” which will be aimed at a younger audience.But how much “Star Trek” does one planet need?“I think we’re just getting started,” Mr. Kurtzman said. “There’s just so much more to be had.”He recently finished a four-month shoot in London for the first half of “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” a 10-episode series based on the 1976 David Bowie film. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a new alien character who arrives on Earth at a turning point in human evolution.Mr. Kurtzman said he loved the experience of working on the series, buoyed by the fact that the pandemic allowed him and his writing partner, Jenny Lumet, the opportunity to complete all the episodes before production began.“I would absolutely not be doing anything differently if we were making this as a film,” he said. “I’m working with movie stars in three different countries, shooting sequences that are certainly not typical television sequences, all of which I can only do because of my experience working in films.”Ms. Lumet met Mr. Kurtzman in 2015. He requested getting together after seeing the film “Rachel Getting Married,” which she wrote. Ms. Lumet said she was surprised that this “sci-fi robot guy in khakis” was interested in meeting her at all.“All he wanted to do was talk about tiny moments, tiny real moments in movies and tiny moments in television shows, and he was so gentle and willing to listen,” she said. “Usually, the robot guys aren’t willing to listen to anything, and that’s all he wanted to do. It was really cool.”The two have worked on everything from “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” to the short-lived “Clarice” and “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” Next, they plan to tackle the story of Ms. Lumet’s grandmother Lena Horne in a limited series for Showtime.Those around Mr. Kurtzman credit his early experience in television (“Alias,” “Fringe,” “Sleepy Hollow”) for giving him the ability to manage multiple projects at one time without appearing to be overwhelmed. “He has an almost supernatural ability to keep separate train tracks in his head, this show, this show and this show, and he can jump from one to the other,” Ms. Lumet said. “He is one of the few people who can keep all the trains running.”His work as a film screenwriter began on Michael Bay’s 2005 film, “The Island.” Soon, he and Mr. Orci were being called “Hollywood’s secret weapons” for their ability to crack scripts on lucrative existing properties that others couldn’t (like “Transformers”). That led him to consider “Star Trek” in the same expansive terms that Marvel Studios views its cinematic universe. It’s a strategy that CBS Studios thoroughly endorses.Mr. Kurtzman wrote two “Star Trek” films with Roberto Orci, right. J.J. Abrams, middle, directed both.Zade Rosenthal/Paramount PicturesDavid Stapf, president of CBS Studios, points to “Star Trek: Prodigy” as an example. The animated show, one of the first animated “Star Trek” shows geared at children, is set to debut in the fall on Paramount+ before moving to Nickelodeon.“It obviously builds fans at a much younger generation, which helps with consumer products,” Mr. Stapf said. “But it’s also a smart way to look at building an entire universe.”To Mr. Stapf, who has overseen CBS Studios since 2004, the “Marvelization” of “Star Trek” can mean many things.“Anything goes, as long as it can fit into the ‘Star Trek’ ethos of inspiration, optimism and the general idea that humankind is good,” he said. “So comedy, adult animation, kids’ animation — you name the genre, and there’s probably a ‘Star Trek’ version of it.”That’s good news to Mr. Kurtzman, who wants to get much weirder with the franchise, which will celebrate its 55th birthday this year. He points to a pitch from Graham Wagner (“Portlandia,” “Silicon Valley”), centered on the character Worf, that he calls “incredibly funny, poignant and touching.”“If it were up to me only, I would be pushing the boundaries much further than I think most people would want,” he said. “I think we might get there. Marvel has actually proven that you can. But you have to build a certain foundation in order to get there and we’re still building our foundation.” More

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      Emmys 2021: The List of Nominees

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      The 73rd annual Emmy Award nominations were announced on Tuesday.The 73rd annual Emmy Award nominations were announced on Tuesday by Ron Cephas Jones (“This Is Us”) and Jasmine Cephas Jones (#freerayshawn), a father-daughter pair who are previous Emmy winners. Netflix’s “The Crown” and the Disney+ Star Wars drama “The Mandalorian” led the way with 24 nominations each. HBO led all the networks with 130 nominations. More

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      For Times Reporters Appearing on TV, Extra Prep Time Helps

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      Appearing on TV news shows lets Times reporters take their work to a wider audience. But the opportunities must be handled with care.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.“What do you think?”The host looks to you. Hundreds of thousands — even millions — of television viewers await your answer. What do you say?Annie Karni, a White House correspondent for The New York Times who is a regular guest on MSNBC, said she has been asked some version of that question often during her TV news show appearances over the past few years.“You’re there to talk about your reporting, even if the host is pushing you to offer an opinion,” she said.Ms. Karni is one of approximately 20 Times reporters who make regular appearances on television networks like CNN, CBS and MSNBC. Although most appearances are unpaid unless a journalist has signed a contract with a network, Ms. Karni and others see substantial pluses in the appearances.“Sources in Washington watch, and maybe someone starts to recognize you more and is more likely to return your call on your next story,” she said.“It’s also another way to bring the work of The Times to people watching a program who might otherwise not have seen it,” said Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent for The Times and a CNN contributor.Reporters are generally asked to appear on a show a few hours in advance, Ms. Karni said. They are given topics of discussion, along with any relevant articles to read, though producers do not supply precise questions.Before an appearance, Ms. Karni said she sometimes makes extra calls to her sources to get additional context.Katie Benner, who covers the Justice Department for The Times and recently signed on as a contributor at MSNBC, said she makes an extra effort to consider how to contextualize any topic she discusses for an audience that may be unfamiliar with it.“If there’s a major shooting and the Justice Department has deemed it a possible hate crime, the public should probably know what constitutes a hate crime,” she said. “Are they on the rise? Are we seeing a trend? If someone else addresses that, great. If not, I want to make sure it’s said.”Ms. Karni said the best way for reporters to learn how to present their work for a television audience is simply to do it repeatedly, but first-time guests aren’t completely on their own. The Times’s communications department offers media training for its reporters, which can include mock interviews. One thing that Ms. Karni said surprised her when she began appearing on TV was the streamlining and repetition necessary when summarizing reporting.“You want to come up with one or two things you want the audience to know and really emphasize those,” she said. “Even if it’s not the exact answer to the question you’re asked, it’s better than trying to think on your feet.”Even though a reporter may be on camera for only five minutes, the time required for TV appearances is hardly brief, Ms. Karni said. In addition to getting to and from the studio (during normal times, that is), reporters must catch up on all the news of the day, not just their specific stories. That can be the most difficult part, Ms. Karni said: the ability to pivot and to be prepared to speak on any pressing topic after a 15-minute cram session on the car ride over.But journalists have been appearing remotely since March 2020, which enables them to commit more like 10 minutes of their time rather than two hours. And reporters can make late-night appearances on shows like “Nightline” without worrying about catching a late car ride home.“It’s been a totally new world since the pandemic,” Ms. Karni said. “I bought a ring light for my bedroom, do my own makeup, and the whole thing is much quicker.”Ms. Benner agreed but said she missed one big perk: the hair and makeup team.“I normally don’t really wear any makeup, but they make you look amazing,” she said. “They’re also the funniest people and always make me laugh.”Mr. Kanno-Youngs, however, has become a little self-conscious about dialing in from his apartment. His dog stares at him from the couch, just waiting to bark; people tramp by in the hallway outside his door; and he ends up eyeing artwork in his background, wondering if it’s slanted.“That makes me nervous,” he said. “It’s like: ‘Geez, is this painting crooked in my background? Is Room Rater going to completely expose me because I didn’t wipe the kitchen counter?’”Aesthetics aside, Ms. Benner pointed out one critical rule to her appearances. “If, because of your schedule, you have to choose between reporting and being on TV, you should always choose reporting,” she said.But while Times journalists can spend months — or even years — reporting a single story, an appearance on a news show is, by comparison, over in a heartbeat.“There’s always a moment right after the host finishes and they go to the next guest,” Ms. Karni said. “You’re like, ‘Oh, wait, I have one more thing I want to say — come back!’” More

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      The Toasts Are Mimed, but the Kennedy Center Honors Return

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      The pandemic made the ceremony, honoring Debbie Allen, Joan Baez, Garth Brooks, Midori and Dick Van Dyke and airing on TV Sunday, like no other.WASHINGTON — A handful of dignitaries made toasts without glasses in front of thousands of empty plush red seats, before a masked stagehand in white gloves quickly wiped down the microphone and lectern. Actual drinks had to wait for the safety of an outdoor terrace and a distanced reception.A brief photo line was moved from the Kennedy Center’s grand entrance hallway to a wing offstage, where a half dozen photographers stood in front of mementos from previous productions. In an opera house designed to hold more than 2,000 people, roughly 120 masked attendees had their temperatures checked with wrist scans before slipping through a nondescript backstage door to witness a short, scaled-back fragment of the 43rd Kennedy Center Honors.Joan Baez arrived with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the infectious disease expert. Joshua Roberts/ReutersThe ceremony was delayed, and transformed, but the show went on. Instead of receiving their ribboned medals at the usual ornate dinner at the State Department, this year’s honorees — the violinist Midori, the actor Dick Van Dyke, the country singer Garth Brooks, the singer and activist Joan Baez, and the actress, producer and choreographer Debbie Allen — were given them onstage in the center itself.The ceremony, usually held and televised in December, was moved to May, and split over several days. Then the organizers and producers began stitching together a mixture of recorded at-home tributes and in-person performances across the center to be broadcast on CBS at 8 p.m. on Sunday, June 6.If the Kennedy Center Honors had to be stripped of much of its glamour this month to accommodate rapidly changing coronavirus health guidelines, the subdued ceremony offered a chance for the honorees to help usher in the reopening of the nation’s cultural institutions after a grueling year for the arts.“Coming out of this very dark time of the pandemic, being able to see the arts coming back into our lives again, live, in person,” made the ceremony particularly special, Midori said at a news conference ahead of the ceremony. “This is also encouragement for me, as well as a motivation to be able to continue to connect with others, to collaborate, to create.”And even a reduced capacity, socially-distant honor was still cause for celebration.“I can’t be more thrilled,” Van Dyke, 95, proclaimed to reporters. “How I got here, I don’t know, and I’m not going to ask.”Dick Van Dyke said he was thrilled to get the honor: “How I got here, I don’t know, and I’m not going to ask.” He shared a moment with the violinist Midori. Joshua Roberts/ReutersThe arts industry remains among the most devastated by the pandemic, with the restrictions that kept theaters closed for more than a year to stem the spread of the virus just now beginning to lift in New York, Washington and other artistic centers. For the Kennedy Center, the Honors ceremony serves as the biggest fund-raiser of the year, usually attracting a conglomerate of lawmakers, federal officials, donors and artistic elite for a week of festivities.Compared to the average haul of $6 million to $6.5 million in donations, this year’s ceremony is brought in about $3.5 million, according to organizers. The Kennedy Center faced a partisan backlash in 2020 after receiving $25 million in the $2.2 trillion stimulus law, but still cutting pay for some staff members, including National Symphony Orchestra musicians.Like many awards ceremonies of the pandemic era, the center relied on technology to help accommodate virtual viewers, including a website for donors that streamed some of the segments and tributes, as well as backstage clips from previous ceremonies.Gloria Estefan was the host of the ceremony.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesGarth Brooks and his wife, Trisha Yearwood.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut the decision to allow a small group of donors, guests and reporters attend the medallion ceremony and a few in-person, outdoor tributes was a tentative return to normalcy at the Kennedy Center campus after officials canceled all performances last year.The center was dotted with remnants of a 2020 season that never was: an art exhibition still on display celebrated the centennial of women’s suffrage in 2020, and there was a display of costumes for operas that were never held.“There was never actually much serious conversation about not doing it — for us, literally for the last 14 months, we’ve really been taking it one day at a time,” said Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president, in an interview. “This is about artists creating something out of limitations.”But organizers were determined to barrel forward with a small ceremony, however delayed and however limited, to preserve the tradition of honoring a handful of artists for lifetime achievements. Plans repeatedly changed with shifting federal guidance and health guidelines, and top officials, in offering opening remarks, joked about the number of times they conferred with the honorees about how to make the ceremony feasible.Yet the five artists — some of whom had participated in previous ceremonies as part of tributes — appeared moved by not only the recognition of their life’s work, but a far more intimate celebration that allowed them to spend time with each other and their loved ones, instead of being shuttled separately between events.“We’ve been hanging out,” Allen said, calling it a “cohesive, lovely part” of being part of the group. Brooks added that “we got to move at our own pace,” something that allowed him to “leave here as a fan of these people more than a fellow honoree.” (At one point, as Brooks helped him down a staircase, Van Dyke cheerfully hummed the “Bridal Chorus.”)If the pandemic made this a most unusual year for the awards, in at least one area things seemed to return to normal: President Biden held the traditional reception for the honorees at the White House, something former President Donald Trump did not do during his four years in office.Baez said she sang a verse of the civil-rights anthem “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” in the Oval Office, and she repeated it for reporters, her unmistakable soprano echoing in the empty opera house.“It feels like we’re coming out of a dark tunnel, and there’s the possibility again for arts and culture,” she said. (Baez arrived to the medallion ceremony on the arm of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whom she invited after the pair struck up a friendship earlier this year.)Chita Rivera chatted with Debbie Allen and Dick Van Dyke. Joshua Roberts/ReutersThe event also offered the small audience a chance to see the skeleton of the medallion ceremony, hosted by Gloria Estefan, a previous honoree.The crackle of stage directions over a headset momentarily pierced a few bars of pizzicato, as Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist and 2011 honoree, offered a solo performance as the lone in-person tribute for the ceremony.Recorded tributes also meant that the five artists could be surprised along with a televised audience when the show is broadcast. The filmed salutes were slated to include performances from students Midori and Allen have mentored, songs from “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” for Van Dyke, and renditions of “We Shall Overcome” and “Friends in Low Places” for Baez and Brooks respectively.The honorees emphasized the need to continue investing in the arts as the country begins to move beyond the pandemic, with Allen promising to “keep my hands on the plow with our young people.”Brooks, visibly emotional as he spoke about the medal around his neck, said he had been “looking at it as a finish line” until Midori had reflected on the award as a motivation to continue creating and collaborating with others.“Because of you, it’s a beginning,” he said.Now the Kennedy Center will try to make up for lost time: it aims to produce its 44th ceremony in December for another slate of honorees. That one, officials hope, will be staged before a full-capacity audience. More

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      How ViacomCBS's Content Deals Cost U.S. Taxpayers $4 Billion

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      A new report details ViacomCBS’s use of a labyrinthine tax shelter to sell rights to its shows and films overseas.Dismissed by critics and devoured by fans, “Transformers: Age of Extinction” was the top box office film in 2014, bringing in $1.1 billion, with more than three-quarters of those dollars coming from overseas. More

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      Broadway’s Tony Awards, Delayed by Pandemic, Set for September

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      Most of the prizes will be announced on the Paramount+ streaming service, followed by a starry concert celebrating Broadway on CBS television.The long-delayed Tony Awards, honoring the last set of shows to open on Broadway before theaters went dark, finally have a plan: The ceremony will take place on Sept. 26, timed to bolster a pandemic-hobbled industry as shows begin to reopen.Three of the 25 competitive awards — best musical, best play and best play revival — will be presented live during a television program, broadcast on CBS, that will primarily be a starry concert of theater songs. But the bulk of the awards, honoring performers, writers, directors, choreographers and designers, will be given out just beforehand, during a ceremony that will be shown only on Paramount+, the ViacomCBS subscription streaming service.The organizers’ current expectation is that the event — awards and performances — will be live and in-person, taking place inside a Broadway theater.The three jukebox shows vying for best musical — “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” — will each be invited to perform on the television broadcast. Many details — like which theater will be used, whether there will be a host, and who will perform — have not been determined.The two-platform structure, running a total of four hours, was arrived at during lengthy negotiations between the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing — the two organizations that present the awards — and CBS, which has broadcast the ceremony since 1978. CBS pushed to emphasize entertainment value, particularly in a year when viewership has plunged for many awards shows; the theater organizations wanted a way to honor the artistry of the abbreviated 2019-2020 season.“The ground was shifting under our feet the entire time, but our goal was to get as much celebration of the community and all the nominees as possible,” said the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin.In a joint interview, St. Martin and the Theater Wing’s chief executive, Heather Hitchens, said they were pleased with the outcome.“Everybody wanted to create something that would celebrate the community, help sell tickets and be appealing to a national audience,” Hitchens said. “There were really good, thorough and passionate discussions about how best to achieve those three things.”They noted that it has been years since all Tony Awards categories were viewable nationally. For six years, starting in 1997, some of the awards were presented on a PBS special that would air just before the CBS broadcast, but in recent years, many of the design and writing awards have been presented off the air.“One of the things we’re proudest of is we got Paramount+ for all of our awardees, and the celebration of these awards on a major platform is a huge achievement,” Hitchens said. “That’s something we’ve wanted for years.”The broadcast segment is being described in a news release as “a live concert event, featuring superstar Broadway entertainers and Tony Award winners reuniting onstage to perform beloved classics and celebrate the joy and magic of live theater.” Asked for more detail, Hitchens said, “It’s going to be jam-packed with entertainment that is about Broadway. More to come on that.”The two-platform plan is similar to that used by the Grammy Awards, at which the majority of the prizes are announced at a preshow ceremony, followed by an entertainment-focused television broadcast. Some of the Tony Award winners named during the streaming ceremony will also be acknowledged during the TV portion.The ceremony, originally scheduled for June 7, 2020, will take place in September as part of an effort to reinforce the marketing message that Broadway is back in business — in fact, the show is being titled “The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back!” Broadway’s 41 theaters have been closed since March 12, 2020; at the moment, the first show planning performances is “Hadestown,” on Sept. 2, followed by “Chicago,” “Hamilton,” “Lackawanna Blues,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” on Sept. 14 and at least two dozen more over the fall and winter.“To have tickets on sale, to have shows announcing their openings, and to have an announcement about the Tony Awards, feels exhilarating, and hopeful,” St. Martin said.This year’s awards ceremony — formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards — will be the 74th such event and will recognize work performed on Broadway between April 26, 2019, and Feb. 19, 2020. The Tony Awards retroactively set that eligibility deadline after determining that too few voters had seen a revival of “West Side Story” and a new musical called “Girl From the North Country” that opened in the final weeks before the pandemic arrived; those shows are expected to be eligible to compete for awards next year.The nominations for this year’s ceremony were announced last October; 15 shows managed to score a nod.The five contenders for best play are “Grand Horizons,” by Bess Wohl; “The Inheritance,” by Matthew López; “Sea Wall/A Life,” by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne; “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris; and “The Sound Inside,” by Adam Rapp.The winners have already been determined, although the results are unknown: the 778 Tony voters — producers, performers, directors, designers and others associated with the industry — were invited to cast their ballots, electronically, in early March. The results have since been safeguarded by the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.The streaming portion of the Sept. 26 Tony Awards ceremony is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Eastern; the broadcast show, which can also be streamed live and on demand on Paramount+ and the CBS app, is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern. As in years past, the Tony Awards show will be put together by the producers Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss of White Cherry Entertainment; Weiss will be the show’s director. More

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      Stephen Colbert’s late-night show will resume filming soon before a vaccinated live audience.

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      Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show will return to filming in front of a studio audience on June 14, CBS said on Monday.About 400 audience members will be allowed in the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway in Manhattan, provided they can show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus, such as through the Excelsior Pass issued by New York State or an original physical vaccination card from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There will be no capacity restrictions, and masks will be optional.CBS said that staff and crew members will be tested for the virus before starting work and will be screened daily for symptoms, monitored by a Covid-19 compliance officer. The network said the plan comports with New York State guidelines.The show’s changes will come just a few months before Broadway shows are expected to return, and about a month after baseball stadiums in New York began designating separate seating sections for people who have been vaccinated and those who have not.Last week Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo relaxed the state’s capacity restrictions, allowing businesses to serve as many patrons as they like as long as there is enough space for people to adequately socially distance. He also ended the mask mandate for vaccinated people indoors and outdoors, though individual businesses are allowed to have stricter mask policies.The pandemic put a stop to many late-night talk shows for a time in mid-March 2020, when New York and Los Angeles, where many of them are produced, introduced strict social distancing and quarantine guidelines.Since then, the shows have had to get creative, interviewing guests by video conference and filming in empty studios or from the hosts’ homes, with family members sometimes serving on the crew.When Mr. Colbert began doing his show from home, the first episode had him delivering the monologue from his bathtub. At the time, Mr. Colbert and the network changed the name from “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” to “A Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” to reflect the show’s straitened circumstances. The name will return to normal once the audience returns.A screengrab from the first episode shot at home.CBS“Over the last 437 days, my staff and crew (and family!) have amazed me with their professionalism and creativity as we made shows for an audience we couldn’t see or hear,” Mr. Colbert said in a statement included in CBS’s announcement on Monday. “I look forward to once again doing shows for an audience I can smell and touch.”The show resumed studio production in August 2020, using a small set in the Ed Sullivan Theater, a far cry from Mr. Colbert’s normal setting. Of the 205 episodes shot without a live audience so far, 16 have been broadcast live, including an impromptu reaction to the Jan. 6 Capitol assault.During a recent interview on “Fresh Air,” Mr. Colbert said that working without an audience created challenges that only a crowd could ameliorate.“I’m much more likely to mess up and have to retake something, lose the rhythm of a joke, or even just misread the prompter without an audience there, because there’s some vital performance adrenaline spark that’s missing that the audience provides,” Mr. Colbert said. “And so my wife and my kids have seen me absolutely shank monologues over and over again. And it’s very humbling for them to realize that I’m not that good at this.” More