CBS, Rihanna exchange words over ‘Thursday Night Football’ drama; theme song for broadcast changed
Well, we cannot imagine CBS doing a whole lot of business with Rihanna moving forward, at least after what has transpired within the past week.
Just to ensure that all sides of this story are made clear, let’s go ahead and rewind a little to last week. Following the stories of Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, and other NFL players who are the center of investigations, charges, or even in Hardy’s case a conviction for domestic violence, the network decided to not play the singer’s “Run This Down” as a part of their planned introduction for the game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers. For the sake of sensitivity, they may have thought that this was the best choice given the song’s content, and also Rihanna’s own history as a domestic violence victim.
However, is there really no way the network could win here? In opting to not play this song, they basically also brought more attention to Rihanna’s own past, and things that she most likely would want to not think about any longer. Rihanna was clearly unhappy about the way all of this went down, and made it clear on Tuesday in a post on Twitter that she no longer wanted to be a part of the story:
“CBS you pulled my song last week, now you wanna slide it back in this Thursday? NO, F*** you! Y’all are sad for penalizing me for this.”
Meanwhile, the network issued a statement of their own announcing that she would no longer be a part of the broadcast:
“Beginning this Thursday, we will be moving in a different direction with some elements of our ‘Thursday Night Football’ open. We will be using our newly created Thursday Night Football theme music to open our game broadcast.”
In the end here, we understand the network’s decision. Meanwhile, we also understand why Rihanna is so upset and feeling victimized. In a situation like this, there really is not a whole lot else you can do other than try to move forward.
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Photo: CBS