TVSquad

When I read the news that Billboard magazine (which is probably best known for giving Casey Kasem source material) was going to go into the reality show business, I scratched my head to figure out what exactly they'd do. After all, countdown shows are as old as TV itself, so doing something based on the trade magazine's famous charts would have had to be pretty damn creative. I was envisioning someone standing on a street corner acting out the top twenty songs through mime. And, as we all know, nothing good can come from the use of mime.

Fortunately, we've dodged that bullet for now; according to The Hollywood Reporter (via Reuters), the reality show will be a competition series, dubbed Billboard Next. Artists from various genres will submit videos via a website, which will be voted on by the site's audience. Those with the most popular votes will compete for the grand prize, which right now is unspecified. I'd imagine it'll be some sort of recording contract, but for all we know, it might just be a professional redo of the artist's MySpace page. I guess it all depends on the budget.

Soul Patrol, you need to get your man in line. In interview after interview, Taylor Hicks has been none too kind to his American Idol masters. Hicks told Relix magazine that he never watched Idol before appearing on it and that the show is "fizzling out" anyway. Hicks had this to say about the Idol-produced hit "Do I Make You Proud," "It's not mine. The song that was given to me first, I got up from a chair and walked right out of the studio. I was handed this song and I was just like, 'No way, you're not going to make me sing this song.'" That song debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, and undoubtedly, made the man some pocket change.

The billboard advertisements for Showtime's Weeds are driving stoners crazy in New Zealand. The billboards are three dimensional, with giant bags of pot bulging off of them. New Zealanders keep stealing the "pot" from the billboards, so the advertising company set up security cameras to catch the thieves in the act. At least one stoner takes a tumble while trying to score some major weed. It's just the latest in Weeds' creative promotion campaigns that have included brownies, scratch-and-sniff pot fliers, and the tagline, "Putting herbs in the suburbs".

Security camera video is after the jump.

[Via Defamer]

Poor Kevin Federline can't catch a break. His new rap single, PopoZao, is being trashed by music critics. Entertainment Weekly said it was worse than expected and Billboard calls it "a monument to mediocrity." The song has Brazilian stylings and, although it's three minutes long, K-Fed only raps for one minute, in which he explains what 'PopoZao' means. He raps, "In Portuguese, it means bring your ass." Niiiice. The rest of the song is just him whooping and grunting. You can see (and hear) K-Fed rockin' out to his new single here.

Maybe all that bad karma that is catching up with K-Fed. You know... leaving your girlfriend when she's seven months pregnant with your second child, and mooching off your rich wife. His crap single could be payment for all that.