Category: Entertainment

Classic rocker Steve Miller has canceled his U.S. tour because he said severe weather including extreme heat and unpredictable flooding poses a danger to his band, its fans and crew.

The tour was set to kick off in August and run through early November, with nearly three dozen stops across the U.S. including cities in New York, Tennessee, Florida and California.

“The combination of extreme heat, unpredictable flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes and massive forest fires make these risks for you our audience, the band and the crew unacceptable,” Miller, 81, said in a statement posted on the band’s social media accounts Wednesday. “You can blame it on the weather. … The tour is cancelled.”

The Steve Miller Band, formed in California in the 1960s, has hits including “The Joker” (1973) and “Abracadabra” (1982).

A band spokesperson declined to provide additional details about the cancellation.

Miller’s decision comes as a stretch of extreme weather in the U.S. has made headlines. A sweltering heat dome that baked much of the eastern half of the nation in June and deadly flash flooding in Texas are some of the recent rounds of extreme weather.

Scientists say climate change is fueling extreme weather, causing storms to unleash more rain and sending temperatures soaring to dangerous heights, making it harder to plan outdoor summer events. The atmosphere can hold higher amounts of moisture as it warms, resulting in storms dumping heavier amounts of rain compared with storms of the past.

“Everyone wants to see their favorite artist, and that’s still possible. You just have to best mitigate weather risks,” said Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, a private weather company. “For example, the doors may open an hour late in order to ensure thunderstorms have moved sufficiently away from the venue so the show can go on safely.”

Music festivals have recently encountered extreme weather, resulting in cancellations or causing concertgoers to become ill.

In June, the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee was canceled partway through due to heavy rainfall. Last week, hundreds of people were treated for heat-related illnesses at the Rock the Country music festival in Kentucky, according to local officials.

In 2023, tens of thousands of Burning Man event attendees were stranded after heavy rain created thick mud in the Nevada desert and roads were temporarily closed.

A study published in 2020 reported climate change will increase the likelihood of extreme heat stress during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California.

Tropical storms and hurricanes will soon contribute to the turbulent weather as activity peaks between August and October, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Connie Francis, the wholesome pop star of the 1950s and ‘60s whose hits included “Pretty Little Baby” and “Who’s Sorry Now?” — the latter would serve as an ironic title for a personal life filled with heartbreak and tragedy — has died at age 87.

Radio DJ Bruce “Cousin Brucie” Morrow, a longtime friend, told The Associated Press that she died Wednesday at a hospital in Florida, the state where she had lived for years. Morrow did not cite a specific cause of death, but Francis had posted on social media earlier this month that she had been hospitalized with “extreme pain.”

Francis had gained renewed attention in recent months after “Pretty Little Baby” became a sensation on TikTok, with Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner among the many celebrities citing it.

“I’m flabbergasted and excited about the huge buzz my 1962 recording of ‘Pretty Little Baby’ is making all over the world,” she said in a video on TikTok, which she had joined in response to the song’s unexpected revival. “To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is captivating new generations of audiences is truly overwhelming for me.”

Francis was a top performer of the pre-Beatles era, rarely out of the charts from 1957-64. Able to appeal to both young people and adults, she had more than a dozen Top 20 hits, starting with “Who’s Sorry Now?” and including the No. 1 songs “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” and “The Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.” Like other teen favorites of her time, she also starred in several films, including “Where the Boys Are” and “Follow the Boys.”

The dark-haired singer was just 17 when she signed a contract with MGM Records following appearances on several TV variety shows. Her earliest recordings attracted little attention, but then she released her version of “Who’s Sorry Now?” an old ballad by Ted Snyder, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.

It, too, had little success initially until Dick Clark played it on his “American Bandstand” show in 1958. Clark featured her repeatedly on “American Bandstand,” and she said in later years that without his support, she would have abandoned her music career.

Francis followed with such teen hits as “Stupid Cupid,” “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” and “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Her records became hits worldwide as she re-recorded versions of her original songs in Italian and Spanish, among other languages. Her concerts around the country quickly sold out.

Meanwhile, a romance bloomed with fellow teen idol Bobby Darin, who had volunteered to write songs for her. But when her father heard rumors that the pair was planning a wedding, he stormed into a rehearsal and pulled a gun on Darin, ending their relationship and seeming to set Francis on a pained and traumatic path.

She chronicled some of it in her autobiography, “Who’s Sorry Now?”

“My personal life is a regret from A to Z,” she told The Associated Press in 1984, the year the book came out. “I realized I had allowed my father to exert too much influence over me.”

Her father, George Franconero, was a roofing contractor from New Jersey who played the accordion. She was just 3 when her father presented her with a child-size accordion, as soon as she began to show an aptitude for music. When she was 4, he began booking singing dates for her, going on to become her manager.

Although her acting career had faded by the mid-1960s, Francis was still popular on the concert circuit when she appeared at the Westbury Music Fair in Westbury, New York, in 1974. She had returned to her hotel room and was asleep when a man broke in and raped her at knifepoint. He was never captured.

Francis sued the hotel, alleging its security was faulty, and a jury awarded her $2.5 million in 1976. The two sides then settled out of court for $1,475,000 as an appeal was pending. She said the attack destroyed her marriage and put her through years of emotional turmoil.

She suffered tragedy in 1981 when her brother George was shot to death as he was leaving his New Jersey home. Later that decade, her father had her committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed as manic-depressive. At one point, she tried to kill herself by swallowing dozens of sleeping tablets. After three days in a coma, she recovered.

Around that time, she wrote to President Ronald Reagan and volunteered to help others, calling herself ″America’s most famous crime victim.″ Reagan appointed her to a task force on violent crime.

″I don’t want people to feel sorry for me,″ she told The New York Times in 1981. ″I have my voice, a gift from God I took for granted before. He gave it back to me.″

She was married four times and would say that only her third husband, Joseph Garzilli, was worth the trouble. The other marriages each lasted less than a year.

Concetta Rosemarie Franconero was born on Dec. 12, 1937, in Newark, New Jersey. At age 9 she began appearing on television programs, including “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and “The Perry Como Show.” It was Godfrey who suggested she shorten her last name.

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This story has been updated to correct the name of the Westbury Music Fair, not the Westbury Music Center.

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National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed. Bob Thomas, a longtime Hollywood reporter for The Associated Press and the principal writer of this obituary, died in 2014.

Lin-Manuel Miranda plans to use the 10th anniversary Broadway performance of his award-winning cultural phenomenon “Hamilton” as a fundraiser for a coalition of nonprofits providing immigration services.

The Aug. 6 performance of “Hamilton” at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre is expected to raise about $3 million for the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition, 14 nonprofits ranging from the Hispanic Federation and National Immigration Law Center to the Haitian Bridge Alliance and the Tahirih Justice Center. The donation will come from Miranda, the Miranda Family and Miranda Family Fund, and the “Hamilton” cast.

It seemed like a fitting tribute to “Hamilton” and its inspiration, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, Miranda told The Associated Press, though he recognizes that Hamilton wouldn’t have called himself an immigrant.

“His narrative in our country kind of mirrors that of an immigrant story,” Miranda said. “He did not grow up here. He didn’t come from England. He came from the Caribbean, escaping harsh circumstances. And he really helped shape this country.”

Miranda did exclusively reveal some plans for the special, invite-only “Hamilton” anniversary show and the preshow reception that he will host. Fans already know the possibilities after the special “Hamilton” medley at the Tonys in June. Even the audience will be “stacked,” he said, since every actor who has ever performed during the show’s Broadway run will be invited to be in the audience to watch the show’s current Broadway cast that night. “We’re working on something special for the curtain call and another nice special thing after that,” Miranda said. “That’s about all I can say.”

The bulk of the invites have gone to winners selected from a Prizeo sweepstakes, where entrants donated at least $10 to the Immigrants coalition. A few dozen VIP packages, ranging from $2,500 to $10,000, will be available Thursday through the Hispanic Federation, with proceeds also going to the coalition.

“One of America’s greatest exports — at least for me growing up — was the immigration narrative,” Miranda said. “So many people I know… came to this country from somewhere else seeking a better life and then helped make this country better by being here. And I believe that’s one of the greatest promises, one of greatest things about the American experiment, and I’ll continue to fight for that and support organizations that are helping that cause.”

Immigrant-serving nonprofits welcome #Hamilten support

And the organizations that will benefit from the donations generated by the “Hamilton” 10th anniversary, better known as #Hamilten, say the donations and encouragement are sorely needed now.

Since the start of his second term, President Donald Trump swiftly moved to make good on “Mass Deportation Now!” promises from his campaign. His administration has encouraged U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and deport people quickly, even to countries where they have never been, in order to rein in illegal immigration.

Hispanic Federation President and CEO Frankie Miranda, no relation to Lin-Manuel Miranda, said he is heartened by the more than 125,000 people who have donated to the “Hamilton” fundraiser. “I think it is the beginning of what could be an incredible movement of philanthropy and individual donors basically saying, ‘Enough is enough’,” he said. “We have seen it also in the different demonstrations of people around the country where they are expressing their concern and their frustration out in the streets.”

Hispanic Federation has already lost millions in federal funding, as the Trump administration cuts support for workplace development initiatives and environmental justice work, Frankie Miranda said. He has also seen some corporations withdraw their financial support because they fear reprisals from the Trump administration. “We need bold ideas like ‘Hamilton’ where everybody feels that they can stand behind it,” he said.

Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, another coalition member, said the donations would help her group continue to provide community legal services to individuals, while also pursuing lawsuits like its challenge to the Trump executive order seeking to strip away birthright citizenship from some children born in the United States.

“At this time, when so many people are afraid to speak out and support vulnerable communities, Lin-Manuel Miranda being willing to use the ‘Hamilton’ platform just shows real leadership and bravery,” Kohli said. “And I’m hoping that more donors will step up and support our sector. We are the firewall between authoritarianism and democracy.”

Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, said her nonprofit plans to use the donations from the coalition to support its Defending Democracy initiative, which informs immigrants of their rights and uses the law as “a bulwark against unconstitutional actions carried out by this administration.”

Matos sees it as a “full circle” moment to use funding generated by “the story of one of our nation’s Founding Fathers who himself was an indigent immigrant, who through his own grit, determination and his brilliance, worked his way up.” “He was somebody who thought deeply about this new nation’s democracy,” she added. “What better way to honor Hamilton and to express our gratitude for these resources?”

‘Immigrants: We get the job done’ was a line that surprisingly resonated

For Lin-Manuel Miranda, the fact that people remain fascinated by “Hamilton” 10 years later also leaves him feeling grateful.

And he remains surprised by the resonance of the line “Immigrants: We get the job done,” a line shared in the show by Hamilton and French military officer Marquis de Lafayette at the Battle of Yorktown.

“I thought it was no big deal,” he said. “But from the moment it was performed on stage, the audience reaction was so joyous at just the utterance of that simple fact. It’s one of the things that just heartens me and gives me hope. In these dark times, it still gets a big cheer.”

The cheering still requires the show to add extra measures of music to wait for the audience to calm down before continuing with the song “Yorktown.” Miranda attributes it to the fact that so many Americans are only one or two generations away from an immigrant.

“It’s the same reason why that No Kings protest vastly outnumbered the military parade happening on the same day,” he said. “There are still a lot of people who believe in basic decency and treating people who come here — often from really tough situations — with humanity.”

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Connie Francis, the wholesome pop star of the 1950s and 1960s whose hits include “Pretty Little Baby” and who would later serve as an ironic title for a personal life filled with heartbreak and tragedy, has died at age 87.

Her death was announced Thursday by her friend and publicist, Ron Roberts, who did not immediately provide additional details.

Francis was a top performer of the pre-Beatles era, rarely off the charts from 1957-64. Able to appeal to both young people and adults, she had more than a dozen top 20 hits, starting with “Who’s Sorry Now?” and including the No. 1 songs “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” and “The Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.” Like other teen favorites of her time, she also starred in several films, including “Where the Boys Are” and “Follow the Boys.”

The dark-haired singer was just 17 when she signed a contract with MGM Records following appearances on several TV variety shows. Her earliest recordings attracted little attention, but then she released her version of “Who’s Sorry Now?” an old ballad by Ted Snyder, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.

It, too, had little success initially until Dick Clark played it on his “American Bandstand” show in 1958. Francis followed with such teen hits as “Stupid Cupid,” “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” and “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Her records became hits worldwide as she re-recorded versions of her original songs in Italian and Spanish among other languages. Her concerts around the country quickly sold out.

Meanwhile, a romance bloomed with fellow teen idol Bobby Darin, who had volunteered to write songs for her. But when her father heard rumors that the pair were planning a wedding he stormed into a rehearsal and pulled a gun on Darin, ending their relationship and seeming to set on Francis on a pained and traumatic path.

She chronicled some of it in her autobiography, “Who’s Sorry Now?”

“My personal life is a regret from A to Z,” she told The Associated Press in 1984, the year the book came out. “I realized I had allowed my father to exert too much influence over me.”

Her father, George Franconero, was a roofing contractor from New Jersey who played the accordion, and he had his daughter learn the instrument as soon as she began to show an aptitude for music. When she was 4, he began booking singing dates for her, going on to become her manager.

Although her acting career had faded by the mid-1960s, Francis was still popular on the concert circuit when she appeared at the Westbury Music Center in Westbury, New York, in 1974. She had returned to her hotel room and was asleep when a man broke in and raped her at knifepoint. He was never captured.

Francis sued the hotel, alleging its security was faulty, and a jury awarded her $2.5 million in 1976. The two sides then settled out of court for $1,475,000 as an appeal was pending. She said the attack destroyed her marriage and put her through years of emotional turmoil.

She suffered tragedy in 1981 when her brother George was shot to death as he was leaving his New Jersey home. Later in the decade, her father had her committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed as manic-depressive. At one point she attempted suicide by swallowing dozens of sleeping tablets. After three days in a coma, she recovered.

She was married four times and would say that only her third husband, Joseph Garzilli, was worth the trouble. The other marriages each lasted less than a year.

Concetta Rosemarie Franconero was born on Dec. 12, 1937, in Newark, New Jersey. She was just 3 when her father presented her with a child-size accordion. The next year she began singing and playing the instrument at various public events.

At age 9 she began appearing on television programs, including “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and “The Perry Como Show.” It was Godfrey who suggested she shorten her last name.

Clark featured her repeatedly on “American Bandstand,” and she said in later years that without his support she would have abandoned her music career.

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Bob Thomas, a longtime Hollywood reporter for The Associated Press, died in 2014.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The members of alternative rock band Jane’s Addiction filed dueling lawsuits Wednesday over singer Perry Farrell’s onstage scuffle with guitarist Dave Navarro at a Boston concert last year, prompting the cancellation of the rest of their reunion tour and a planned album.

Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Eric Avery sued Farrell in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that Farrell’s behavior on the tour had ranged from erratic to out-of-control, culminating in the assault, where Farrell punched Navarro both on stage and backstage. The suit says the three bandmates are seeking at least $10 million.

“With a series of swift blows, he single-handedly destroyed the name, reputation, trademark, and viability of the Band and those who built it,” their lawsuit says.

Farrell and his wife, Etty Lau Farrell, sued the three bandmates in the same court later Wednesday, blaming them for the conflict and the violence.

“Navarro, Avery and Perkins apparently decided,” the lawsuit says, “that Jane’s Addiction’s decades of success should be jettisoned in pursuit of a yearslong bullying campaign against Farrell involving harassing him onstage during performances, including, among other tactics, trying to undermine him by playing their instruments at a high volume so that he could not hear himself sing.”

The Farrells said that Navarro and Avery actually assaulted them.

Perry Farrell said he was “blindsided” when the other members canceled the remaining 15 shows of the tour and broke up the band without consulting him, costing all of them a great deal of money.

And he said his bandmates defamed him by publicly saying, after the fight, that he had mental health problems.

Jane’s Addiction was an essential part of the Los Angeles music scene in the late 1980s with their combination of elements of punk, goth and psychedelic sounds and culture. They became a national phenomenon with hits including “Jane Says” and “Been Caught Stealing,” and through their founding of the Lollapalooza tour, whose first incarnation they headlined in 1991.

The group broke up soon after but returned several times in various incarnations. The 2024 tour was the first time the original members had played together since 2010.

Farrell missed all seven of the group’s rehearsals in the run-up to the tour, his bandmate’s lawsuit alleges, and his behavior during the early shows ranged from erratic to out-of-control.

“He struggled night to night amid public concern for his well-being and apparent intoxication,” their lawsuit says. “Perry forgot lyrics, lost his place in songs he had sung since the 1980s, and mumbled rants as he drank from a wine bottle onstage.”

The lawsuit says Farrell was given many solutions to the volume problem, none of which he followed.

Then, on Sept. 13 at Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston in front of about 4,000 fans, videos partially captured Farrell lunging at Navarro and bumping Navarro with his shoulder before taking a swing at the guitarist with his right arm. Navarro is seen holding his right arm out to keep Farrell away before Farrell is dragged away.

But Farrell’s lawsuit says the “video evidence is clear that the first altercation onstage during the Boston show was hardly one-sided.” It says Navarro was deliberately playing loud to drown out the singer, and “what followed was an inappropriate violent escalation by Navarro and Avery that was disproportionate to Farrell’s minor body check of Navarro.”

Farrell alleges that when he was being restrained by a crew member, Avery punched him in the kidneys, and that both Avery and Navarro assaulted him and his wife backstage.

Shortly after the fight, Farrell, in a statement, apologized to his bandmates, especially Navarro, for “inexcusable behavior.”

The bandmates’ lawyer Christopher Frost pointed to that apology in response to the Farrell lawsuit, along with Etty Lau Farrell’s acknowledgement at the time in Instagram posts that her husband had clearly been the aggressor.

“If there is a question about what to believe, you can believe the video we’ve all watched,” Frost said in a statement. He added that the “complaint from Perry, including his account of events backstage after the September 13 show, is revisionist history. It won’t stand.”

Both lawsuits allege assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of contract, among other claims.

“Now,” Navarro, Perkins and Avery’s lawsuit says, “the Band will never have their revival Tour, to celebrate a new album and 40+ years of deep, complex, chart-topping recordings. Instead, history will remember the Band as suffering a swift and painful death at the hands of Farrell’s unprovoked anger and complete lack of self-control.”

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Prince Harry followed in his late mother’s footsteps on Wednesday by wearing a flak jacket and walking down a path in an active land mine field in Angola to raise awareness for a charity’s work clearing explosives from old warzones.

The Duke of Sussex is in the southern African country with the Halo Trust organization, the same group Princess Diana worked with when she went to Angola in January 1997, seven months before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.

Diana’s advocacy and the images of her walking through a minefield helped mobilize support for a land mine ban treaty that was ratified later that year.

Harry walked through a land mine field near a village in Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola, according to Halo Trust. It’s not the first time he has retraced his mother’s steps after traveling to Angola for a similar awareness campaign in 2019.

The land mines across Angola were left behind from its 27-year civil war from 1975 to 2002. The Halo Trust says at least 60,000 people have been killed or injured by land mines since 2008. It says it has located and destroyed over 120,000 land mines and 100,000 other explosive devices in Angola since it started work in the country in 1994, but 1,000 minefields still need to be cleared.

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More AP news on the British royals: https://apnews.com/hub/royalty

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Backstreet Boys singer Brian Littrell says a local Florida sheriff’s office isn’t doing enough to protect his multimillion-dollar beachfront property from trespassers and is asking a judge for an order commanding deputies to do so.

The petition filed last month by Littrell’s company in a Florida Panhandle county touches on a perennial tug-of-war between usually-wealthy oceanfront property owners and beach-loving members of the public, especially in Florida, which has 825 miles of sandy beaches.

Under Florida law, any sand on a beach below the high tide water mark is public. Many homeowners own the sand down to the average high-water line, though some counties over the decades have passed local ordinances that let the public use otherwise private beaches for sunbathing, fishing and walking if people have historically had access for those purposes.

Property records show that Littrell’s company purchased the property in Santa Rosa Beach in Walton County in 2023 for $3.8 million.

A spokeswoman for the Walton County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday that the office doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

“The Walton County Sheriff’s Office prides itself on handling every situation, call for service, or interaction with professionalism using a customer service approach,” public information officer Lindsey Darby said in an email. “This has always been our philosophy and will remain so moving forward.”

In the petition, Littrell’s company said that chairs, umbrellas and small tables had been put out on the beach, as well as “No Trespassing” signs, to mark it as private property. But that effort had been in vain “as numerous trespassers have set out to antagonize, bully, and harass the Littrell family by regularly, every day, trespassing,” according to the petition.

The sheriff’s office has refused requests to remove trespassers or charge them, and the family has had to hire private security, the petition said.

Walton County, which has become home to several famous property owners besides Littrell over the past two decades, has been at the center of a recent fight between private property owners and the public over access to beaches.

A 2018 Florida law that stemmed from a Walton County ordinance blocked any local government from passing ordinances dealing with public beach access until affected homeowners were notified, a public hearing was held and a court had determined whether a private beach was historically open to the public.

Florida lawmakers this year approved legislation that restored control back to local authorities, and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law last month in Santa Rosa Beach, the beach town where Littrell’s house is located.

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Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.

NEW YORK (AP) — Halfway through 2025, a few music trends have become clear, according to Luminate’s 2025 Midyear Report, which was released Wednesday:

— In the U.S. and globally, more music is being streamed than ever before…

— But growth has slowed.

— And in the U.S. specifically, there’s been a resurgence in Christian music and “recession pop.”

In its midyear report, Luminate, an industry data and analytics company, provides insight into changing behaviors across music listenership.

A decrease in growth, an increase in volume

Music streams continued to grow globally and stateside in the first half of 2025. Global on-demand audio streams reached 2.5 trillion in the first half of 2025 — up from 2.29 trillion in the same period last year.

And in the U.S., on-demand audio streams grew to 696.6 billion in 2025, compared to 665.8 billion in 2024.

But even though more music is being streamed than ever before, compared to past years, the rate of growth is slowing down. In 2024, U.S. and global on-demand audio streams grew 8% and 15.1%, respectively. In 2025, those numbers have dropped to 4.6% and 10.3%.

In the US, Christian music and recession pop are making a comeback

In the U.S., streaming accounts for 92% of all music consumption. On-demand streams were up in 2025 as physical and digital album sales dropped.

R&B/hip-hop remains the most popular genre in terms of on-demand audio streaming volume, followed by rock, pop, country and Latin. The same was true in 2024. What’s interesting are the highest-growth genres: Rock leads stateside, followed by Latin, country, and Christian/gospel music.

Though streams of new music — music released in the last 18 months — are slightly down from the same time last year, new Christian/gospel music has defied that trend, said Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations. It is led by acts like Forrest Frank, Brandon Lake and Elevation Worship.

He attributed the genre’s growth to “younger, streaming-forward fanbase,” which is 60% female and 30% millennial.

“Recession pop” — the term for upbeat hits like Kesha’s “Tik Tok,” Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” and other carefree pop music that emerged in 2007-2012 around the time of the Great Recession — has also seen a jump this year. Luminate found that U.S. on-demand audio streams of pop music from that era have increased 6.4% in 2025. Songs from Cyrus, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga and Rihanna lead the shift.

“We’re actually seeing pop music from those years outpace the growth of the industry at-large,” adds Marconette. “When looking at performance of all genres from that period, listeners are gravitating toward pop in particular, highlighting a sense of nostalgia and potentially bigger themes of escapism.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn has a book coming out next year that reveals how she has been shaped by the power of words.

HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced Wednesday that Burstyn’s “Poetry Says It Better” will be released April 28, 2026. Burstyn, 93, is known for such films as “The Last Picture Show” and “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” for which she won an Academy Award; the TV shows “Political Animals” and “House of Cards” and the Broadway production “Same Time, Next Year.”

Burstyn’s favorite poets include Maya Angelou, Mary Oliver and William Butler Yeats.

“I’ve been lucky enough to spend my professional life as an actress: I worked as a model and dancer from the day I left high school and eventually reached a pinnacle in my career and won an Academy Award, a Tony Award, and two Primetime Emmy Awards,” Burstyn said in a statement. “Nevertheless, it is poetry that has fueled and sustained me throughout my career and has been interwoven with every major life milestone I’ve ever experienced.”

Burstyn also is the author of “Lessons in Becoming Myself,” a memoir published in 2006.

NEW YORK (AP) — Two milestones revealed this week illustrate the diminishing power of broadcast television in the media world — one fueled by the habits of young people and the other by their elders.

During June, viewers spent more time watching streaming services than they did for broadcast and cable television combined. That happened for the first time ever in May, by a fraction of a percentage point, but the Nielsen company said on Tuesday that gap widened considerably in June.

Also, for the third straight week, Nielsen said that Fox News Channel had more viewers in prime-time on weeknights than any of the main the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox entertainment.

For years, the mantra of media executives was that streaming represented the future for in-home entertainment. Now, that future has clearly arrived.

Broadcast TV slips below 20% of total

In June, 46% of Americans’ TV time was spent on streaming services, led by YouTube and Netflix. Cable television networks represented 23.4% and broadcast was 18.5%, for a total of just under 42%, Nielsen said. It was the first time broadcast TV had ever slipped below 20% of total TV viewing.

“It kind of felt like the right time,” said Brian Fuhrer, Nielsen’s senior vice president for product strategy and thought leadership. “A lot of people thought it would happen more quickly.”

The driving force in June was school ending for young people, meaning they had more time to watch TV, where Netflix series like “Ginny & Georgia” and “Squid Game” were big hits. Roughly two-thirds of people aged 6 to 17 watched streaming ahead of conventional TV, Nielsen said.

In June 2024, the numbers were roughly reversed — 47.7% of people were watching conventional TV in an average minute, with 40.3% logged on to a streaming service.

While the direction is clear, it’s not a death knell for conventional TV. June and July are fallow months, and their viewing will increase when football season begins and original episodes of comedies and dramas return, Fuhrer said.

Content is distributed over more platforms

It’s also not a strict either-or situation; media companies are doing a better job spreading their content out on different platforms to give viewers a choice, he said. The growth of YouTube, which many consumers can access for free and is a portal for “traditional” TV, has also fueled streaming services.

Fox News has occasionally eclipsed the broadcast networks in viewership before, but last week represented the seventh week it has done so in 2025, already more than 2024 and 2023 combined. It averaged 2.4 million viewers in prime time on weeknights last week, Nielsen said.

Fox News is also taking advantage of what is traditionally the least-watched time of the year for broadcast networks, when summer nights and barbecues keep people outside. The difference this year is it has won a few weeks outside of the summer, during President Donald Trump’s inauguration week in January, for example.

Its audience — among the oldest of all television networks — tends to stay pretty steady throughout the year.

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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social