The most trusted professionals in America are now the target of coronavirus conspiracies.
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Ryan and Savannah are engaged but haven’t been able to even hold hands since the border closed.
The Mayo Clinic has required all visitors to wear a face mask since April 13, but the vice president didn’t wear one on Tuesday.
“No-one deserves to have their private photos leak and to be shown to the world and to be constantly reminded about it,” she told BuzzFeed News.
The CDC had previously only listed fever, coughing, and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing as the main symptoms of COVID-19.
The summer sports schedule is currently bare for 2020. Various leagues still hope to finish their paused seasons later this summer, but the biggest thing officially off the sports calendar is the Tokyo Summer Olympics. Originally slated for the summer of 2020, the Olympics were postponed until the summer of 2021.
The Olympiad was pushed a full year into the future because of a variety of scheduling issues and uncertainty about the state of the COVID-19 pandemic. NFL television contracts, for example, made it impossible for the Games to be pushed a few months into the fall of 2020. And moving the games to the summer of 2021 means qualifying for sports like basketball and others may make for a complicated calendar.
But now we know that it’s the summer of 2021 or bust for the Tokyo Olympics. According to a report from The Wrap, a Japanese official says that there’s no room for a third chance for the Tokyo Olympiad. If the games somehow get pushed back again, the entirety of the Games will be canceled.
“At that time it is canceled. If such a problem as war occurs in the past, it is usually canceled,” Yoshiro Mori, told Nikkan Sports. The Modern Olympics have been canceled three times due to World Wars: In 1916, 1940 and 1944.
It certainly makes sense that time is short on getting the Olympiad in at this point. The games run every four years, but a move to 2022 would also put the Summer Games in the same year as the Winter Olympics. Those Games used to happen in the same year, mind you, but the Olympics changed their scheduling and now have a considerable marketing apparatus that dominates the sports landscape every two years. That’s all been interrupted considerably due to COVID-19, and now we know the IOC has designated 2021 as the last chance for the Tokyo Olympiad.
[via The Wrap]
The ever-changing entertainment landscape just got a bit more tense thanks to some Trolls. Trolls World Tour seems to have started an interesting conflict in the mostly-shuttered movie industry after its distributor, Universal Films, hinted that the success some straight to video on-demand releases have had while theaters are closed may mean the practice continues when theaters open up again.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, AMC Theaters have decided to stop showing Universal Pictures after Trolls World Tour’s success — $20 at a time — created big revenue for Universal while theaters like AMC and others are still shuttered. The move came after NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said on-demand releases “exceeded our expectations” and may encourage them to release movies both on-demand and in theaters in the future.
“The results for Trolls World Tour have exceeded our expectations and demonstrated the viability of PVOD,” Shell told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the numbers. “As soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats.”
On Monday, Universal announced it would push another film — Pete Davidson’s King Of Staten Island — to a June on-demand release after its debut at South By Southwest was canceled and the growing coronavirus pandemic scuttled traditional release plans. But it seems Trolls and the comments about it prompted a letter from AMC Theatres chair-CEO Adam Aron to Universal Filmed Entertainment Group chairman Donna Langley, which called the idea “disappointing” and announced AMC would not show Universal movies around the world.
“It is disappointing to us, but Jeff’s comments as to Universal’s unilateral actions and intentions have left us with no choice. Therefore, effectively immediately AMC will no longer play any Universal movies in any of our theaters in the United States, Europe or the Middle East,” Aron said in the letter.
“This policy affects any and all Universal movies per se, goes into effect today and as our theaters reopen, and is not some hollow or ill-considered threat. Incidentally, this policy is not aimed solely at Universal out of pique or to be punitive in any way, it also extends to any movie maker who unilaterally abandons current windowing practices absent good faith negotiations between us, so that they as distributor and we as exhibitor both benefit and neither are hurt from such changes. Currently, with the press comment today, Universal is the only studio contemplating a wholesale change to the status quo. Hence, this immediate communication in response.”
With theaters closed it was inevitable that those in the industry will try new methods to make revenue, so releasing straight to on-demand was a matter of time for larger films while theaters are closed. But the theaters companies rely on to legitimize films — except this year, of course — will also do what they need to protect their place in the industry. Netflix and other streaming companies would love to see movie theaters lose their importance in the industry for a variety of reasons, but it’s clear AMC and presumably other chains will do what they can to fight back as this back and forth continues.
While The Last Dance continues to dominate the conversation in many basketball circles, there is still a great deal of uncertainty with regard to the potential resumption of the 2019-20 NBA season. Discussions are ongoing, both in the league office and within the NBA’s 30 organizations, on how things might continue in the coming days but, for at least a handful of teams, the potential for a postseason doesn’t directly apply.
The Golden State Warriors would fall into that category and, in fact, Steve Kerr’s team is the only team in the league that was mathematically eliminated from playoff contention before COVID-19 prompted a league-wide suspension of play. Even with that increased level of certainty on the lack of a playoff future in 2019-20, Kerr likely shared a fairly common sentiment on Tuesday, even if his candor could be surprising.
As part of a Zoom call with Warriors president and COO Rick Welts and University of San Francisco women’s basketball coach Jennifer Azzi, Kerr essentially let the cat out of the bag in saying that, in his mind, the 2019-20 campaign is virtually over.
“We’re staying in touch with guys, but everyone is just sort of assuming that this is kind of it,” Kerr said, via Connor Letourneau the San Francisco Chronicle. “We’re not going to be involved much anymore.”
Kerr went on to say that “it feels like the offseason” and he even disclosed that the team’s coaching staff is “absolutely in offseason mode right now.” In addition, Kerr and general manager Bob Myers recently held what was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as meetings that “amounted to exit interviews” with each member of Golden State’s roster.
It isn’t exactly shocking to see Kerr and the Warriors viewing things in this fashion, especially when taking into account the reality that California is still under a shelter-in-place order through the end of May. There are still some individuals within the league holding out hope for a return that would include regular season play but, given Kerr’s sentiment here, it is fair to say that he doesn’t fall within that group. Even if the Warriors end up playing additional games within the 2019-20 season, they don’t have much, if anything, to play for and that, combined with the bizarre nature of the overall situation, has one of the NBA’s most famous coaches operating in “offseason mode.”
Last night’s episode of Raw was a historic one, but not in a good way.
The episode, which featured a WWE Championship match contract signing, Andrade vs. Apollo Crews, and the return of Jinder Mahal, drew an average of 1.82 million viewers over its three-hour run time, according to Showbuzz Daily. Raw’s viewership has been under two million for the past few weeks of empty Performance Center shows, but this was a notably low number. 411Mania points out that this was Raw’s smallest live cable audience for a non-holiday episode ever. It’s also the second smallest in the program’s history, only beaten, so to speak, by the Christmas Eve 2018 episode, which drew 1.78 million viewers.
However, the first two hours of Raw were still the second and third highest rated hours of programming on cable last night, while the third hour came in seventh. Shows on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC had up to millions of more viewers, but WWE beat everything but Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta among 18-49-year-olds. Raw’s highest-rated hour was rated 0.56 with that demographic and its lowest an 0.43. However, Raw was most watched by viewers over the age of fifty, with whom it was rated 0.92 for the first two hours and 0.82 for the third.