Eurovision 2024

[Chippy]

i know

wish i hadn't seen it.

Agreed,

Night all, best I stop scanning the internet for this kind of thing.

[MissCorsham]

Yeah same, I should probably sleep before any more breaking news or interviews with pointless people with idiotic views

[Jono]

His court case was the first thing discussed on our forum here. Fact.

[Timsk]

Sad news indeed. I was lucky enough to see him live quite a few years back and it was one of the best nights of entertainment I've seen - even people who didn't like his music couldn't avoid being wowed.

I hope that in death the media focus more on his talents as a singer/performer rather than the other causes for media frenzy surrounding him in later years.

Surprisingly moved by this, probably as he was a major presence in my youth and early adulthood.

May he rest finally in peace.

[DC]

like 9/11, 7/7, when diana died. you'll never forget where you were.

love him or hate him, jackson's music helped shape a lot of stuff you hear today. r.i.p

[DarkAngelMJH]

Ima surprised by how sad this news makes me feel. I was never a massive fan but do like most of his music.

I just hope he finds peace now after all this world has thrown at him.

[Jono]

Michael Jackson record sales have seen an increase in the wake of his death yesterday.

Within hours of the news breaking, the star occupied the Top 15 selling albums on online retailer Amazon.

Jackson's 1982 album 'Thriller', the best-selling album in history with estimated sales of almost 50 million, was in peak position.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/a162163/jackson-album-sales-massively-increase.html

[Rik]

Michael Jackson record sales have seen an increase in the wake of his death yesterday.

Within hours of the news breaking, the star occupied the Top 15 selling albums on online retailer Amazon.

Jackson's 1982 album 'Thriller', the best-selling album in history with estimated sales of almost 50 million, was in peak position.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/a162163/jackson-album-sales-massively-increase.html

He's not yet broke into the iTunes singles top 40. Man in the Mirror is at 90 right now.

Thriller is at number one in the videos chart and on has also got to 11 on the US chart, followed by 8 of his other singles in the top 40.

[DaNNiP15]

This was on the news in wetherspoons last night and some people actually burst out crying and left. Must really be affecting some people. it was so sad seeing reactions from his fans when out...

[Steoph]

like 9/11, 7/7, when diana died. you'll never forget where you were.

love him or hate him, jackson's music helped shape a lot of stuff you hear today. r.i.p

This is true. I was out last night with mates. We first heard in a pub about 11 and just presumed it was a hoax. By the time we got into a club it was coming up as a coma then bam gone.

We paid tribute the only way we could - requesting MJ songs and dancing our hearts out.

[DaNNiP15]

This is true. I was out last night with mates. We first heard in a pub about 11 and just presumed it was a hoax. By the time we got into a club it was coming up as a coma then bam gone.

We paid tribute the only way we could - requesting MJ songs and dancing our hearts out.

Sounds similar to my night! Except we heard he died at half 10

[Danishgirl]

This is so sad news. I got in the car this morning and my mum told me they'd just said on the radio he's dead. I was quite shocked, to be honest, I couldn't really believe it at first. I can't say I ever was a huge Michael Jackson fan or anything, but he was an important person in the music history. And actually, the last three times in music our subject had been Michael Jackson.

RIP

[Jono]

I think one of my first introductions to Michael Jackson was when I was about four and my mum got me a karaoke machine. Blame It On The Boogie was one of the few songs on the karaoke tape that came with it

Michael Jackson: how celebrity gossip site TMZ got scoop of the decade

When the controversial celebrity gossip website TMZ.com breaks news, the world's media cannot help but follow.

Yesterday the Hollywood-based website had the celebrity scoop of the decade, breaking the news of Michael Jackson's suspected heart attack at about 1.30pm, Los Angeles time (9.30pm London time), then being the first to report the King of Pop's death just over an hour later.

TMZ did this at lightning speed. Jackson died at 2.26pm, LA time. At 2.44pm, TMZ informed the world of his death.

But in the US and overseas, many media outlets, put off by TMZ's use of paparazzi pictures and tabloid agenda, preferred to wait until the more sober and trusted Los Angeles Times bannered Jackson's death on its website at 2.51pm.

"That's typical," TMZ founder Harvey Levin told today's Los Angeles Times, speaking about rivals' reluctance to credit the site for the Jackson story. "No matter what they say, people know we broke the story. That's how competitors handle it. There's no issue about our credibility," he added.

"Today I made 100 phone calls, and everyone else made 100 calls," Levin said of TMZ's reporters. "Everyone blanketed the city."

Levin said the site was inundated with calls from other media asking if they were sure the story was true. "That's such an odd question. We would not have published it if it were not true."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/26/michael-jackson-tmz-scoop

[Rik]

I'm glad they've started covering other stories now on Newsbeat because that one about the baby battering teen would be quite significant on any other news day.

[Jono]

TMZ: Michael Jackson received a daily injection of Demerol; and yesterday he received a shot at 11:30 AM. Family members are saying the dosage was "too much" and that's what caused his death. Law enforcement is looking for a doctor who lived at Michael Jackson's home. The doctor gave Jackson an injection before he died.

[Chippy]

TMZ: Michael Jackson received a daily injection of Demerol; and yesterday he received a shot at 11:30 AM. Family members are saying the dosage was "too much" and that's what caused his death. Law enforcement is looking for a doctor who lived at Michael Jackson's home. The doctor gave Jackson an injection before he died.

So an accident and the doctor has run away in fear of what he has done...or something more sinister?

[DC]

This is true. I was out last night with mates. We first heard in a pub about 11 and just presumed it was a hoax. By the time we got into a club it was coming up as a coma then bam gone.

We paid tribute the only way we could - requesting MJ songs and dancing our hearts out.

it was really eerie where i was too, everyone thought it was a joke when the texts started flying around. i was checking bbc news online to keep up to date with it. dj's over the weekend should play all of his upbeat suff like billie jean, bad, rock with you, blame it on the boogie, smooth criminal, the way you make me feel etc

i'm going to grab some news clips from radio 1 and put a small montage together over next week.

[Mike]

dj's over the weekend should play all of his upbeat suff like billie jean, bad, rock with you, blame it on the boogie, smooth criminal, the way you make me feel etc

I agree, i played Blame it on the boogie to finish my show last night.

[Jono]

Comments of Radio 1 and 1Xtra. Must be why they asked for one word

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/971474/Michael_Jackson

[Rik]

The Game has been busy today making a tribute song to him.

eqIYG1WPqVk

Also, I take it no one is interested in Paul Gambaccini's Michael Jackson show over on Radio 2

[Timsk]

dj's over the weekend should play all of his upbeat suff like billie jean, bad, rock with you, blame it on the boogie, smooth criminal, the way you make me feel etc.

...and some of the brilliant remixes there have been over the years, old and new. Like this one from Frankie Knuckles.

<object height="344" width="425">

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXatWr1JJ5c&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></object>

The 'Dangerous' album from 1991 also rocks in my opinion. Way ahead of it's time soundwise.

[KingTutsWWH]

it was really eerie where i was too, everyone thought it was a joke when the texts started flying around. i was checking bbc news online to keep up to date with it. dj's over the weekend should play all of his upbeat suff like billie jean, bad, rock with you, blame it on the boogie, smooth criminal, the way you make me feel etc

i'm going to grab some news clips from radio 1 and put a small montage together over next week.

Look forward to this. Make sure you pop it on here/post a link.

I agree, i played Blame it on the boogie to finish my show last night.

Do I get no credit whatsoever for my suggestions? Hehe

Comments of Radio 1 and 1Xtra. Must be why they asked for one word

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/971474/Michael_Jackson

Hmmm. This looks good, but some of the stuff they read out earlier was a bit cack.

[E*F*4L]

dj's over the weekend should play all of his upbeat suff like billie jean, bad, rock with you, blame it on the boogie, smooth criminal, the way you make me feel etc

makes me want to

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqeADZgjtpY&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqeADZgjtpY&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

makes me

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex30DYwQlHU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex30DYwQlHU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

still cannot believe it.

[Emma]

I'd just got in from seeing Kasabian - what a downer to come back in to. I was shocked, still am. I guess I will be for a few days. When I was about two and a half years old I was apparently obsessed by Michael Jackson - had tshirts and everything - so it's scary that my first "idol" had died.

Also RIP to Farrah Fawcett who we musn't forget.

[E*F*4L]

:shock:

Web slows after Jackson's death

The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson's death.

Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack.

Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page.

It warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.

It was around this time that the singer was officially pronounced dead.

Google's trends page showed that searches for Michael Jackson had reached such a volume that in its so called "hotness" gauge the topic was rated "volcanic".

The BBC news website reported that traffic to the site at the time of Jackson's death was 72% higher than normal.

Fail

Google was not the only company overwhelmed by the public's clamour for information.

The microblogging service Twitter crashed with the sheer volume of people using the service.

Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages.

Before the company's servers crashed, TweetVolume noted that "Michael Jackson" appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates.

According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.

That put news of Jackson's death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.

Early reports of Mr Jackson's death and the confusion surrounding it caused a rash of changes and corrections to be made on his Wikipedia page as editors tried to keep up with events and the number of people trying to update the page.

TMZ, the popular celebrity gossip site that broke the story following a tip-off that a paramedic had visited the singers home also crashed.

There was a domino effect as users then fled to other sites. Hollywood gossip writer Perez Hilton's site was among those to flame out.

Keynote Systems reported that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo.

Beginning at 2.30PM Pacific "the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds," said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external operations.

He told Data Center Knowledge that "during the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8120324.stm

goes to show the power of Net 2.0,

within minutes the news was flashed around the world to millions of people, even five years ago this wouldn't have happened.

Twitter seems to have been the main driving force, people, blogs & news agency's providing links to streaming videos & pics (some in poor taste) the first truly global event to be played out in real time, in the space of two short hours a true icon of the 20th century died before our eyes.

such a pity that it took his death to realise what we have lost, throughout all the times he was vilified by certain quarters, we couldn't see a fragile lonely man that gave us his heart, soul & hope to millions.

may you receive the peace & happiness in death you craved in life.

RIP Michael Jackson