Michael Jackson: AEG cleared

The procession following the death of Michael Jackson continues to march grimly forward, yesterday reaching a key point where a jury decided that AEG weren't responsible for killing him by hiring Conrad Murray.

The New York Times reports:

A California jury decided on Wednesday that Michael Jackson’s final concert promoter, A.E.G. Live, was not responsible for the pop star’s death.

After a five-month trial filled with gruesome details of Jackson’s last days, the case came down to basic questions of contractual relationships and the professional competence of Dr. Conrad Murray, the cardiologist who gave Jackson a fatal dose of the anesthetic propofol four years ago.

After deliberating for about 13 hours over four days, the jury of six men and six women agreed with lawyers for Jackson’s 83-year-old mother, Katherine, that A.E.G. Live had hired Dr. Murray. But they rejected arguments that the doctor was unfit to care for Jackson as he prepared for a series of comeback concerts.

It could have cost AEG USD1.5billion if they'd been found to be culpable. (That's roughly the annual GDP of Belize, if you'd like a meaningless but impressive comparison.)

Refreshingly, the jury decided to treat Michael Jackson as a grown-up who made his own poor decisions.

We're now in a curious place, where Murray is serving a sentence for the involuntary manslaughter of Jackson, but has been found fit to practice. The jury think they can make sense of that, though:

"We felt he was competent," [jury foreman Gregg] Barden said. "That doesn’t mean we felt he was ethical. If ethical was in the question, it might have been a different outcome. In the end, he was very unethical. He did something he shouldn’t have done. "

It's not entirely clear if someone who is unethical is fit to practice, but the jury seemed to think that wasokay.

Barden shakes his head sadly, though:

"There are really no winners in this ... Somebody had to die for us to be here.... It was really a tragic situation."

No winners? As the lawyers pack up and move on to Conrad Murray's appeal hearing, they might disagree, were they not struggling with suitcases packed with money.

You know what would make the Brits better? A lot more Brits

A startling and refreshing admission of failure from Jay Marciano, the European CEO of AEG, host of the Brits:

Eight out of ten people don't know the Brits is on tonight"

You're the man in charge of promoting what is meant to be the biggest musical event in the nation. It has a live slot on one of the main TV channels, and is co-sponsored by one of the UK's largest radio companies and the nation's biggest newspaper publisher. And still eight out of ten people have it drift by without them noticing. Now, it's not like this is an expedition to the North Pole, but I imagine you'd be proposing giving someone else the chance of promoting next year to see if they might be able to do a bit better?

Oh. No.

"so we plan to make it a week-long celebration."

Oh, of course. Having failed to get anyone to notice a massive gig on a single night, you think watering it down across a series of nights would somehow help.

The model Marciano is proposing is copying the Grammys - so not spinning the prize giving out over a calendar week, but boosting the main event by having a run of concerts running up to it.

It's not entirely clear how this is going to work. If this is to boost the 20% awareness rate, these extra gigs will have to be very special and very high profile.

How are you going to get the top-line acts you need to play this? It's unlikely ITV are going to want to televise a solid week of gigs, certainly not on ITV1, not during the European football season. Maybe ITV2 might pick them up, or one of the more distant music channels. But the more digits in the channel position on the EPG, the lower the audience, so the lower the chance of attracting top acts, and the lesser the chance of raising 'awareness'.

And that, of course, is a downward spiral.

And where are you going to find bands wanting to play one-off dates in a massive space like the O2? You might get someone to redirect an existing tour there, but is there going to be any enthusiasm for redirecting a European leg of a tour to London at the same time as everyone else?

Wasn't the idea of the Brits to support and promote British music - not for British musicians to be pressed in to service to support the Brits?

[Thanks to James in the Brits liveblog comments for the link]

AEG up for sale

AEG - the Anschutz Entertainment business, not the fridge manufacturer - is up for sale.

It's a huge business, with more sports teams under its control than the three shadiest betting syndicates put together, and a slew of venues and promotion interests.

In the UK, AEG is probably most famous for working Michael Jackson to death during the preparations for the comeback that he'd never come back from, but also cascades coins out of owning the MEN Arena and taking care of the day-to-day running of the Millennium Dome.

There's no end of super-rich types interested in buying the company and, thus, becoming major-if-shadowy types in the music and sports businesses. Reuters runs its eye over some of the people kicking the tyres:

The list of potential AEG buyers includes investment firm Guggenheim Partners LLC and private equity firms such as Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, Bain Capital LLC and Colony Capital LLC.

Biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, Los Angeles's richest person with more than $7 billion, has also said he would bid on AEG to use its sports and concert assets to promote a healthy lifestyle to LA citizens.

Given that most of AEG's assets aren't in LA, presumably Soon-Shiong is thinking that he'd do something attractive in the Target Center in Minneapolis and encourage LA residents to cycle out there to watch?

Seriously, Patrick? Using sports franchises to promote healthy lifestyles? A business which encourages people to sit down watching for long periods of time, consuming hot dogs and nachos while drinking beer from your own hats?

And yes, Bain Capital is on the list, holding out the tantalising prospect that every time you go to see a gig at the O2, you'll be helping Mitt Romney get a little richer.

Even death can't stop Michael Jackson lawsuits

You'd have to admit it, Michael Jackson dropping dead was a total surprise - a man whose entire being screamed of balanced, healthy decisions.

No wonder his mother is suing AEG for failing to look after his health.

I know what you're thinking: wasn't Jackson accompanied by a personal doctor who seems to have been there, rummaging in his black bag, while Jackson died?

Katherine Jackson has thought of that, so she's also suing AEG for not overseeing the doctor properly.

This is the act of a grieving mother, of course, and any similarity to a money-grubbing attempt to shift blame to whoever might have a chequebook is entirely coincidental.

Michael Jackson: Finally, someone pays

AEG and the Michael Jackson estate are busily trying to make their grudging, belated, inadequate payment towards the massive costs of the Jacko back catalogue relaunch party ("memorial event") appear as an act of unprecedented generosity:

AEG President Timothy J. Leiweke and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Friday in a joint statement that $1 million will be provided to the city's general fund, and the rest of the money will go to the Los Angeles Police Foundation for crime-fighting equipment.

"It was important to us that all parties agreed that this was not an obligation but a choice we believed was important to make at a time when thousands of city employees are being reduced," Leiweke said in the release.

The 'rest of the money' is $300,000. In total, the payment from AEG and the estate doesn't even cover the overtime the residents of LA had to pay police to look after the concert; and it's barely a smidge of the profits made from people buying Jackson records when he died.

Perhaps now AEG have had a chance to choose to do the right thing, it's time for them to be asked to make up the rest of the costs?

Even dead, Michael Jackson is generating lawsuits over money

The LA City Attorney is currently buying pencils and post-it notes in order to find out how it is that AEG pocketed large sums of cash for boxes at the Jacko memorial, promising the cash would go to the LA Police Foundation, only for no large cheque to appear:

A rep for AEG told TMZ there were 18 suites that went for $5,000 a pop and AEG did indeed promise the money would be donated to the Police Foundation. The rep said AEG is still doing a final accounting of the event and "We have every intention of making this donation."

AEG says the city is trying to get way too much -- 7 figures -- out of them for the event. But the City Attorney believes AEG is on the hook for expenses including sanitation, transportation, street services and LAPD protection -- and that does indeed go into the 7 figures.

They were selling boxes? To a memorial? Classy.

Michael Jackson: "Unseemly jostling" is such an ugly phrase

Please, people, do not find it in any way difficult to keep your breakfast down at the haste with which AEG has launched the auction for those last rehearsal Michael Jackson tapes. Yes, yes, technically they're flogging them off before his body is in the grave, but they did wait until the corpse was cold, didn't they? So very, very cold.

It can be a little confusing, after a month of solidly being told how Michael Jackson belonged to all of us, and was kind-of-like the pyramids and/or the moon, to discover that it turns out he was merely part of a merchandising operation and, actually, didn't belong to all of us at all.

This should, in no way, make you feel that the big memorial service was part of a marketing campaign.

Naturally, AEG will be taking some of the cash - bids opened at $50million, Sony look likely to win - to recompense the people of LA for the costs of staging the memorial, won't they? Hello? AEG? Hello?

AEG miss the point a little while LaToya cries moider

The city of LA has suggested that AEG might like to pay some of the costs associated with the Michael Jackson farewell promotional event.

AEG aren't rushing forward to help:

But AEG president Tim Leiweke said that AEG did pay for the memorial itself.

Leiweke seems to have been breathing too deeply from the fumes of Jackson overstatement, as he seems to feel that putting on an event is, somehow, an act of public generosity in its own right. In summary, AEG's position seems to be 'why should we pay for the crowd control? We already paid out to bring the crowds there in the first place'.

Meanwhile, LaToya Jacksons talks to the News Of The World (or possibly has a private conversation which the News Of The World paid money to get transcribed):

I will nail Michael Jackson's killers

Blimey. That's got to be up there with the death penalty as a cruel and unusual punishment, hasn't it?

Oh. As in "capture". I see.

Yes, "killers" - for LaToya believes that someone went out their way to kill Jackson. Presumably someone who couldn't wait another ten minutes or so for natural causes to do the work.

Jackson says she knows who did it - and yet, surprisingly, doesn't seem quick to share that vital piece of information:

"Michael WAS murdered," declared La Toya, 53. "And we don't think just one person was involved. Rather, it was a conspiracy of people. I feel it was all about money. Michael was worth well over a billion in music publishing assets and somebody killed him for that. He was worth more dead than alive."

Yes. Somebody - or bodies - who couldn't wait to get their hand on all that lovely, lovely debt that outweighed the value of his assets.

The Hooded Claw, speaking to the Sunday Mirror on condition of anonymity, explained that there wasn't a criminal mastermind alive who wouldn't kill to seize control of a complex of networks of companies that owned rights that had been used as collateral against unsustainable debts. "I mean, who wouldn't, right? And personally, I'd have made sure I killed him right before he did all those gigs to clear large chunks of the debt, rather than wait a few months, see the debt mountain reduced, and kill him when it would seem even more plausible that he just conked out from a year's worth of efforts in Greenwich."

Still, LaToya knows the names of people who were happy enough to conduct what would have been one of the most high-profile murders in history, despite the financial trail making them obvious suspects. And yet, rather than name them, she's just let them know she knows who they are, but isn't going to tell people yet. Has LaToya ever seen an episode of Columbo? Does she not realise that that sort of behaviour usually gets you wrapped in a carpet and dumped over the side of a boat bobbing about on Lake Michigan?

But to be fair, Columbo is a made-up story about murders. Which is totally different from this one. Because it doesn't have Peter Falk in it.

Jackson: Luckily saved for posterity

Now, here's a funny thing, as Karl T points out:

Fear not, MJ fans! Despite the singer's death, AEG aren't going to deprive you of new product!

Now, obviously, there are reasons to have cameras at a dress rehersal (performer feedback, making of.. documentary, blocking of shots for the actual performance etc etc), but to have captured Jackson's final performance in "multi-camera high-definition video and multi-track surround-sound audio" is fortuitous indeed.

If only the guys involved in formulating digital strategy for the major labels had had that kind of foresight.

It's popularly believed that AEG didn't have an insurance policy for the fifty nights... it turns out that maybe they did after all.

AEG come up with a cunning plan

There's a number of stories swirling about at the moment that the death of Michael Jackson is possibly going to pull AEG down with it - the weekend papers reported that the company had been unable to insure the entire run of O2 gigs as the insurers didn't believe Jacko would manage them all; AEG could be millions in the hole by the time it refunds all the ticket holders.

Its plan B? To try and tell punters to forgo their refunds and see the tickets as 'collector's items' instead:

Company president Randy Phillips said of Jackson: "The world lost a kind soul who just happened to be the greatest entertainer the world has ever known.

"Since he loved his fans in life, it is incumbent upon us to treat them with the same reverence and respect after his death."

The company will not be printing more of the tickets and it anticipates the originals will become collectors' items."

You know... collectors' items. Probably should hold on to them, then, right? We'll keep your... sorry, curate your money, you keep the ticket. Who wouldn't swap £75 for a collector's item, right?

Jackson "not sick"

I don't think there's a person alive, or indeed who has died in the last ten years, who would have expected Michael Jackson to turn up for all the booked London dates. But did anyone think they'd be falling apart quite so soon?

The first dates have, as you'll know if you weren't in the air all day yesterday, been "pushed back". But it's not because Jackson's sick or anything. Oh no, no no. No. No no:

AEG Live president Randy Phillips said the rescheduling had "absolutely nothing" to do with the star's health.

He added: "I would trade my body for his tomorrow. He's in fantastic shape."

I wouldn't go round saying stuff like that, Randy. Not only does it make you look and sound ridiculous, but I suspect Jackson might have a team of surgeons who have been waiting for just that sort of offer...

The official line is that the gigs have been pushed back due to "technical difficulties". The first night will now take place five days late, while some other July dates will not happen. Sorry, that should be "not happen until March 2010".

"I bought my tickets off a man with no nose" "How do they smell?" "

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal revealed how Britney Spears and Neil Diamond appeared to be scalping their own tickets.

Today, sister paper The Times reveals that Michael Jackson has been doing the same thing - or, at least, the promoter of his shows:

The Times understands that outside the official sale of the tickets, AEG Live approached secondary ticketing companies — which allow people to resell tickets to sporting and music events — offering to provide them directly with between 500 and 1,000 tickets for each performance.

It is thought that AEG Live offered the tickets on the understanding that they were sold at about £500 each, with 80 per cent of the revenue returning to AEG Live and the secondary ticketing company taking the remaining 20 per cent.

Last night tickets for seats closest to the stage were on sale on Viagogo for thousands of pounds. Other seats in prime locations seemed to be on sale at surprisingly uniform rates, with many priced at £418 and £659.

AEG Live did not deny its links to Viagogo. The company previously said in a statement: “In an effort to ensure fans are able to purchase premium tickets and exchange tickets directly with other fans, AEG Live has entered into an agreement with Viagogo. The online site allows people to buy and sell live event tickets in a safe and guaranteed way.”

Is it just me, or does that statement totally miss the point - the question would seem to be 'have you deliberately started selling tickets on the secondary market, rather than sell them for face value', to which that is not an answer.

There is an argument that some, or perhaps all, tickets for popular events be sold through an auction; but surely the most important thing is that the process is transparent?

If AEG wants to charge £500 for a £50 ticket, why can't it be honest about it?

A happy ending: AEG, NME do the right thing

It's only fair to wave flowers and give a few moments applause to NME and AEG, who have withdrawn their previous response to the collapse of Trinity Street, and are giving original ticket purchasers the tickets they'd orginally purchased:

NME.COM is extremely pleased to announce that Shockwaves NME Awards Big Gig ticket holders who bought their tickets through Trinity Street, a company that recently ceased trading, will have their original tickets despatched to them on Monday, by registered post.

The Shockwaves NME Awards Big Gig takes place at London's O2 Arena on February 26, next week. The event, headlined by The Cure and also featuring Franz Ferdinand, Crystal Castles and White Lies, will celebrate the Shockwaves NME Awards ceremony that takes place the night before (February 25) at the O2 Academy Brixton.

In light of the recent difficulties experienced by some ticket holders, NME and AEG Live have done everything in their power to ensure that those music fans are still able to attend the gig, at no extra cost.

If you are a Shockwaves NME Awards Big Gig ticket holder who was affected by the closure of ticket provider Trinity Street, please read through the following official statement carefully:

"New tickets will be despatched to you on Monday, by registered post. Please note that they will need to be signed for upon delivery.

If you have already re-purchased tickets via the link and password we supplied to you, we will automatically have these tickets cancelled and your repurchase monies refunded to you in full, including all transaction fees. If you purchased replacement tickets via any other source, or direct to the Ticketmaster site, please contact us at enquiries@aeglive.co.uk with your purchase details and we will arrange to have these refunded.

If you requested complimentary tickets this order will now be cancelled as your original tickets are on their way to you.

Please do not continue with any claims from your payment card provider, there is no need to request a refund as your original tickets are on their way to you. Please note that if your credit card company does provide you with a refund then we will need to contact you directly to re-charge for the gig tickets.

We would like to take this opportunity to offer our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience that you may have experienced. The unexpected demise of Trinity Street so close to the concert and the resultant financial issues led us to initiate a repurchase and refund process. However NME and AEG Live have been working non-stop to find a resolution and we are pleased to be able to end the week with this great news.

So please do look forward to receiving your tickets and of course we hope that you enjoy the Big Gig itself.

See you on Thursday!

NME & AEG Live"

Great news, and well done to whoever reversed the original response to Trinity's collapse.