The big homecoming concert planned as a thank-you to David Archuleta’s hometown fans has been canceled. But NOT by the Idol peeps, as originally reported, says “Team Arculeta.”
The PR person for Idol, Roger Widynowski, said there would be no concert due to contractual obligations between the 17-year-old and American Idol.
But, according to the Archeletas, the Idol folks actually approved the plans for Archie’s homecoming–that it was the booking agent for the E Center, where the concert was to take place, who had other ideas.
According to an Archuleta family spokesperson, things “got a little heated” as Jeff Archuleta was told by the E Center bookers that “there is no way this is going to happen.”
With the 2nd of two Salt Lake City Idol concerts–also booked at the E center–not sold out, there is no way David can perform at that venue, or even in the same city, until the Idol concert dates have passed, without creating a conflict of interest for the bookers.
According to the family, the homecoming charity event may still happen, but not until after the tour is over.
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Okay, maybe I’m missing something here, but this Utah news site FOX says 19E actually confirmed that they were behind the cancellation:
I don’t get it. Did they just make that up?
I tend to have more doubt towards info which comes from a “spokesperson for the Archuleta family”.
That report was from yesterday morning, if that means anything.
So he couldn’t do the concert because he couldn’t sell it out?
Duke,
no….there’s 2 idol tour dates scheduled at that venue. The first one is sold out but the second one isn’t…so they wanna sell those tickets.
Duke — that makes perfectly good economic financial sense….now don’t anybody get their panties all in a tight fit….it’s simply a money decision. And it makes sense.
To me, it sounds like spinning to avoid a negative reflection on Team Archuleta. This way, it’s not that they announced the show prematurely and without getting 19E’s approval, it’s all to blame on the mean booking agents who care about money more than they do about music, charity, and cute puppies.
Than again, I am quite jaded by Team Archuleta at this point, and frankly I don’t believe a word they say.
Actually, it makes sense that the booking agents would have put a stop to plans for an event that large. It seems pretty reasonable to me.
Although I’m not sure why the Idol PR person would say it had to do with contractual obligations with Idol if it doesn’t.
Having said that, both Jason and Syesha performed at homecoming events in their hometowns–Syehsa’s is tomorrow. So, that quote claiming that current Idols can’t perform anywhere until the tour is over is not quite true.
Well, one of my assistants is friends with the guys in Disturbed. I’m not a fan of their music, but they ran into a similar issue with an event they were playing at the Tweeter Center. Apparently, they weren’t allowed to play within a certain radius of the Tweeter Center within a give time period surrouding their concert. They wanted to play a small club for friends and family, so they got around it by playing the small venue as a Disturbed tribute band, even though it was really Disturbed themselves. They just didn’t advertise it as such.
I suspect that might be part of the problem here, but it also seems as if there’s a breakdown in communication between Team Archulta,TPTB and whoever does the booking. Perhaps if Team Archulta didn’t try to organize at the E-Center, Archie could have had his homecoming elsewhere. I also don’t get why it was scheduled for the same day as tour rehearsals begin.
I don’t get it at all…it’s a bunch of he said, she said. I do have to wonder, though, why there’s always so much controversy around “Team Archuleta”
Gingerly, I think it’s because they have too many people speaking. They really need a single spokesman or a professional PR consultation. I haven’t followed the past idols much, but are these types of mishaps and complaining (i.e. about the refusal of song choices and etc) typical?
I agree.
True. Team Archuleta has too many people speak. Archie should engage a manager/agent to handle all these. That spokeperson to together with the arranger and vocal coach need to shy away from Archie from now on.
amen!
Ok I understand it all but still Dad Archuleta is at fault to begin with because he is the one that wanted this to happen and started the ball rolling in the first place, knowing full well that the Idol Tour wouldn’t be finished yet.
There’s a lot of confusing info out there, but here’s what I discovered through some research and asking around. Take it for what it’s worth because I don’t have the whole story, either.
CAA (Creative Artists Agency) is American Idol’s tour booking agent. They’re not the booking agent for the venue (E Center), but for AI itself. They get a cut of the ticket sales, and they’re the ones that nixed the concert. CAA books the cities and venues for the tour, and would know the exact contractual obligations that AI has with these venues.
CAA is not a part of 19E, but they work closely together. The people at 19E that are organizing the tour (all but booking the venues and cities) apparently gave David permission to do the charity event. When CAA found out about the event they told them, no way, no how. Although the first Salt Lake City AI concert at the E Center is sold out, the second one isn’t, and CAA isn’t about to allow anything to happen that would prevent that second show from selling more tickets. On the theory that David is the draw in Salt Lake City (which is a reasonable theory), they don’t want to dilute their commodity (David) by allowing a $1-per-ticket concert to occur before the tour passes through.
So it’s not about 19E and “Team Archuleta” getting their signals crossed, it’s about 19E and CAA getting their signals crossed. It was probably somebody from 19E that had to break the news, though, which accounts for them “reaffirming” that David couldn’t do an event before the concert passed through Salt Lake City.
Also, David has a publicity person from 19E that did speak about the cancellation (the head of publicity Roger Widynowski). Brett (the family friend) only talked to local SLC news because he’s the one that they’ve talked to throughout AI. He was probably an easy contact for them.
Here is something else that is perplexing. It’s an official/unofficial page :http://www.myspace.com/davidjarchuleta
This is what it says in a scroll :THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION!! WE CAN NOT USE THE WORD “OFFICIAL” AS ONLY 19 ENTERTAIMENT CAN–WE CAN NOT LOAD IDOL MUSIC EITHER –THE OFFICIAL MS PAGE WILL BE RAN BY THE RECORD LABEL, DAVID WOULD GET IN TROUBLE IF WE DO THAT, SO WE ARE STAYING SAFE, AND ONLY DOING THINGS AS THEY ARE APPROVED BY JEFF
But then down the page it shows that his label is in fact Jive and that hasn’t officially been announced so you would think that may get them in trouble. OY.
ETA. I’m thinking this may be fake now that I look more.
MJ, I’m glad you don’t ban people for just being dumb because I’ve had one of those days.
“Apparently, they weren’t allowed to play within a certain radius of the Tweeter Center within a give time period surrouding their concert.”
This is true in a lot of performers contracts. I think my last contract to perform in San Francisco, the contract stated that I was not allowed to perform within 200 miles within a certain number of months, as well as stipulations about who got to announce I was performing there (they had to be able to announce it before I could announce it, etc.) These are standard performer’s contract items.
I just can’t wait for the tour to come here :) And feel kinda bad for Archie, he seems pulled every which way.
The myspace page has lots of grammatical errors. That annoys me.
Yea, that is another reason that I saw that it was fake after another look. I wish I could take back my post about it as I was multitasking and not thinking at the time.
Oy. my head hurts.
So, the answer is that Jeff, as he’s prone to do, went all Daddy Archuleta and decided to start his own tour and then there was a smackdown.
right?
If so, it’s a good thing they stopped him because I’m pretty sure that Daddy GetOuttaMyWay had plans to peat and repeat across the nation.
One for Idol, one for Me.
Although, the funds were to go to charity, there was money involved, and it was the same venue as the tour. Syesha & Jason performed in their towns for free and weren’t at the tour venues.
Jeff needs to go back and read all of the small print, before he gets himself or David into a worse problem.
I really don’t think it’s a Dad Archuleta issue at all, although the media seems to be making it sound that way this morning (not surprising). My impression of the concert when it was first announced (in a chat by a family friend) was that it was David’s idea to thank his fans. He’s a very humble, appreciative guy. The proceeds were going to be distributed as follows: 25% to cover costs; 75% divided among the Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. David is close to somebody with MS. And it was actually more a mini-concert and speech, not a fully-blown concert. Nobody except the charities were making money off of this. So essentially, David was going to do this for free. The tickets were only $1 to begin with.
The scope of the event, plus the fact that it was going to be held in the same venue as the AI concerts, was the issue. I’m not surprised that David’s team thought that verbal permission from 19E, plus the fact that other contestants had done shows since their run on Idol ended, would mean that it was okay to proceed. Making his father’s motives seem disingenuous is a stretch, really. He shouldn’t be blamed for everything that goes a little awry.
Though this event was for a good purpose–proceeds going to charity, apparently Jeff Archuleta said he had permission but apparently didn’t. I think this is another attempt of “Team Archuleta” to upstage the Idol tour and again put his son into the spotlight by himself.
This is what I found:
My Fox Utah
This is on the front page of Yahoo, and says it is the Idol producer’s who put the skids on this concert.
“American Idol producers have put the kibosh on a planned charity concert in the runner-up’s homestate of Utah, an event masterminded by Archuleta’s father as a “thank you” to fans who backed the teen crooner.”
Yahoo
The article above isn’t really contradictory to what David’s people said. CAA could very well have found the error and nixed the plan, but I’m sure that 19E had to deliver the bad news because they are the ones that are ultimately in charge of dealing and communicating with the artist. So, in essence, “Idol Producers” stopped the event. I’m kind of surprised it’s actually news. And that each article tells the story differently. But these are some of the same news outlets that informed us all today that Archie and Cook signed to the same label, and then cite 19/Jive as that label. I’m sure Cook would be surprised to hear that.