By: Amanda Anderson-Niles
Rihanna has been busy hitting up the recording studio and working on her next album, but it was reported last week that her song with Jay Z, “Run This Town,” would be used in the opening for the NFL’s first regular season game last week.
However, CBS decided against using the song because the game was between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the network felt it would be a bad move to play the song amid the Ray Rice controversy.
The network got lots of backlash for pulling the song because it just seems as if pulling the song is punishing Rihanna, who herself is also a victim of domestic violence and has nothing to do with the Ray Rice situation.
Now that the backlash has been steady, CBS has now decided to play the song in the upcoming Thursday night game. Rihanna is furious. She tweeted the following earlier this morning (read tweets from bottom to top):
UPDATE: CBS has released a statement and confirms it will no longer be using Rihanna’s song for the upcoming Thursday night game or future games.
The Hollywood Reporter writes:
But, CBS and the NFL’s announcement earlier this month that it planned to open its Thursday Night Football broadcasts with “Run This Town” suggested that the song would be used in subsequent games. Now, according to a spokesperson, CBS is scrapping its plans to use the song. The Don Cheadle voiceover will remain a part of the Thursday Night Football opening.
“Beginning this Thursday, we will be moving in a different direction with some elements of our Thursday Night Football open,” the network’s sports division said in a statement. “We will be using our newly created Thursday Night Football theme music to open our game broadcast.”
This is why I love her. CBS is wrong and I’m glad she and many others have called them out for it.
She better watch it. Dragging CBS could hurt her chances of ever headlining the Super Bowl.
If they don’t let her do the Super Bowl over something THEY did, they are full of it.
I don’t think Rihanna cares. LOL.
She doesn’t.
She doesn’t need to perform at the Super Bowl, her career speaks for itself. Just like Beyonce didn’t have to either.
They are basically punishing another victim of domestic violence. It was a bad call.
Agreed. And deciding to play the song now makes them look even worse.
Drag em boo!
She went in. Well at least she won’t delete her tweets.
lololololol
CBS ought to be ashamed.
I knew she was going to say something. Anyway, I agree with her on this. When I first heard they were dropping the song, I couldn’t understand how they thought that was fair.
I don’t fault her at all for this. It was wrong of them. Have they even issued a public apology for the decision in the first place? If not, I would have snapped too. Because playing it on Thursday does not acknowledge the error. Nobody ever wants to be held accountable; Just sweep it under the rug and move on. They deserved these tweets…
Notice they pulled the song and made sure to announce it to all and sundry. But now they got dragged, they want to slide it back in undercover. Good for her for standing up and saying what we were all thinking.
CBS needs to issue a public apology. This is not cool.
Knowing her fans, CBS is probably getting dragged for filth on Twitter.
This is the one time I don’t have a problem with an artist going off on Twitter. Well said Rihanna.
I respect that she always speaks up for herself.
SMH @ CBS.
CBS has to have idiots working for them.
Right. This is just tacky period.
And they still didn’t apologize. Smh.
And that’s my issue with all of this.
So they’re still punishing her for something that had nothing to do with her in the first place. And now they are retaliating because of what she tweeted. Stay classy CBS.
They have some incompetent people doing their PR. They should have issued an apology to Rihanna and those who were offended. Scrapping it all together and not even really acknowledging Rihanna is pretty rude.
I agree. Bad PR all around.
Wow…
Yikes. CBS is tripping hard.
F-ck CBS.