Brown to set Super Bowl host record
CBS’ James Brown knows what it is like to host Super Bowl pregame shows when the day transcended beyond the teams competing for a championship.
Brown hosted Fox’s pregame for the 2002 Super Bowl, which occurred nearly five months after 9/11. With the coronavirus pandemic still at the forefront, Brown realizes Sunday’s fourhour “Super Bowl Today” pregame show could offer the same opportunities, but in a different manner.
“Typically, sporting events offer a respite to get away and to enjoy hopefully a competitive game. People are looking for that kind of relief and coming off of all that we’ve gone through, there’s a strong desire, hopefully, to become more unified,” Brown said. “It will be in a different sense of 9/11 because that was a celebration of withstanding the attempt at our country, but it was very patriotic and unifying. This is a different kind of backdrop where many people have just been fatigued, given all of the challenges that we’ve had to endure during this time.”
This will be a record 10th Super Bowl pregame hosted by Brown and his sixth for CBS.
He didn’t even know that anyone kept track until someone mentioned two years ago that he tied Brent Musburger, who anchored seven of his nine with CBS.
Songwriter Weatherly dies: Hall of Fame songwriter Jim Weatherly,
77, who wrote “Midnight Train to Georgia” and other hits for Gladys Knight, Glen Campbell and Ray Price, has died.
The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame said in a release on Friday that Weatherly’s family confirmed his death on
Wednesday at his home in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Weatherly, who was also a star quarterback for Ole Miss in the 1960s, wrote a number of hits for Gladys Knight & The Pips.
“We were just made for each other. We grew our lives together. I’m gonna miss him terribly and love him always,” Knight said in a post on Twitter.
Weatherly helped write hit country songs like “A Lady Like You” by Campbell, “Where Do I Put Her Memory” by Charley Pride and “Roses and Love Songs” by Price.
Weatherly, a Mississippi native, was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006 and the national Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014.
Vanderpump lands new show: Lisa Vanderpump, who departed “The Real Housewives” in 2019, is staying in the world of
reality TV.
The television personality and restaurateur has landed her own show on E!, called “Overserved With Lisa Vanderpump,” where she invites her famous friends over to her Beverly Hills mansion for a swanky at-home dinner party. In each half-hour episode, she will host two or three celebrity guests for an evening of cocktails, games and feasts that she creates herself.
Vanderpump’s new show premieres March 18.
Feb. 6 birthdays: Actor Mamie Van Doren is 90. Actor Mike Farrell is 82. TV anchor Tom Brokaw is 81. Singer Fabian is 78. Actor Michael Tucker is 76. Actor Robert Townsend is 64. Actor Kathy Najimy is 64. Vocalist Axl Rose is 59. Singer Rick Astley is 55. TV host Amy Robach is 48. Actor Crystal Reed is 36. Actor Anna Diop is 33.