U2 played live for the world on Sunday night via YouTube.com, and as they were in Hollywood, Bono gave the band a movie star sheen when he introduced each member. He compared drummer Larry Mullen Jr. to James Dean, bassist Adam Clayton to Clark Gable, The Edge to Mr. Spock of “Star Trek” and himself to a mix of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.

But if the setting was L.A. (Pasadena’s Rose Bowl to be exact), the show’s direction was aimed at a global audience. Before U2 performed “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” images flashed on the screen of green-glad protesters in Iran, some of them stained in blood. The crowd reacted with cheers of support for Iranian dissidents, just as they cheered on Bono’s rendition of “Walk On,” a tribute to Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, later on in the show.

“Thank you America, thank you everyone watching on YouTube on all seven continents,” Bono said at one point in the show, as he acknowledged the global audience that was tuned in for the live Web stream.

U2’s new concert contraption, The Claw, performed without flaw, transporting the band members around on giant moving bridges over the audience, with a huge video screen that slowly expanded and contracted like an accordion.

The big surprise of the show came during the opening act when the Black Eyed Peas brought on former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash to play “Sweet Child of Mine.” Fergie leaned on Slash’s shoulder during a solo, and Will.i.am moved his head to the beat. But anyone hoping to see The Edge and Slash trade licks on stage went home disappointed because that did not happen.

Bono said after U2 took the stage that having the Black Eyed Peas open for the band was like, “Xena the Warrior Princess joins Parliament-Funkadelic.”

The crowd of nearly 100,000 fans at the Rose Bowl sang to their favorite tunes and held up their cell phone lights when asked, first by Will.i.am and later by Bono. On that note, during the sound check a member of the stage crew who introduced himself as “nobody” told the crowd that the reason the live YouTube show was done from Los Angeles is because of the sing-along factor.  ”L.A. sings U2 songs better than anyone except my bosses,” the purported U2 employee said. What would Paris or Rome think about that? Or Dublin for that matter?

Susan Boyle has been admitted to a private clinic in London after suffering from exhaustion, and, according to the Sun tabloid, an “emotional breakdown”. After capturing people’s imagination the world over in April with her singing performance on “Britain’s Got Talent”, the 48-year-old Scot’s travails are headline news once again, at least in her home country. Predictably, the blame game has already begun, and following is a list of the main culprits in the whole saga, if press reports, commentators and pundits are to be believed:

1. The press: Some sections of the media, which had a big part in Boyle’s meteoric rise to fame, have apparently relished the chance to knock her off her perch. Those blaming the press point to reports late last week of Boyle throwing tantrums, of her threats to quit the show ahead of Saturday’s final and more generally of her inability to cope with the pressure.

2. The public: Rather like the press, the British public has also been blamed by some for wanting to bring Boyle down a peg or two. They did this in part by failing to vote for her on the night of the final, meaning she failed to win as expected.

3. The show: Should the show’s producers have seen this coming? Family members and others have criticised Britain’s Got Talent, aired on the commercial ITV channel, for not doing enough to support Boyle. According to Piers Morgan, one of the programme’s judges, Boyle had learning difficulties at school, which may have exacerbated the problem.

4. Susan Boyle: Britain’s Got Talent is a hugely successful format and anyone who enters the competition will know that they may be watched by millions of viewers and could become overnight stars. In her defence, however, Boyle’s trajectory has probably been unprecedented in terms of the number of people tuning in to watch her on the Internet and the global reach of that following.

ITV executive chairman Michael Grade said he had only seen once before Thursday the clip of Susan Boyle singing on ITV show "Britain's Got Talent", that has received more than 100 million hits on YouTube, but has not yet netted the broadcaster revenue from the video-sharing site owned by Google.

"I've been incredibly busy over the last few weeks and I have only had one opportunity to view a piece of television that's taken the world by storm," he told the Voice of the Listener & Viewer Spring Conference in London.

"I'd like to have another look at Susan Boyle," he said, before playing the video.

ITV is reported to be in discussions with YouTube about monetising traffic
generated by demand for the 47-year old Scottish church volunteer.

Grade, who last week announced he would step down as executive chairman of ITV, is reported to loathe YouTube, and has called it a parasite living off content created by broadcasters.

The old refrain was that “video killed the radio star,” but more recently it’s been commonly said that the “Internet killed the video star” by putting music clips a mouse click away on Web sites such as YouTube.com.

In the new media landscape, cable channel MTV, a unit of Viacom, has filled its schedule with reality television shows instead of the music videos it aired nonstop in the 1980s, when it revolutionized the music industry. On Monday, the company announced that it would go back to airing music videos, but only between 3 and 9 a.m., when few viewers are tuned in.

The news was reported in the New York Times. MTV canceled “Total Request Live,” a long-running video countdown, last fall. The show was the last bastion for music videos on the channel, but it performed badly in the ratings. Now, MTV says it will bring back music videos with a block called “AMTV,” in an effort to keep up with changing viewer patterns.

Airing the music videos in the morning is a relatively low-risk proposition for MTV, because those hours do not generate high advertising revenues anyway. Will MTV stick with the music videos that made it famous, or will “AMTV” go the way of “TRL”? Only your remote knows for sure.

Video streaming Web site Hulu.com marked its one-year anniversary on Thursday by announcing new social networking features, as the site seeks to gain ground on other Internet entertainment hubs.
    
The Web site, a joint venture between General Electric Co.-owned NBC Universal and News Corp., launched “Hulu Friends” which integrates functions from social networking sites MySpace and Facebook, as well as e-mail providers Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, and allows users to see what their friends are watching, share new videos and leave notes for each other.
    
Hulu, which allows visitors to view television episodes and movies on their home computers, still has a long way to go if it hopes to catch up to video sharing giant YouTube.com. Internet tracking site comScore reported this month that YouTube accounted for about 43 percent of all videos viewed over the Internet in January. By comparison, Hulu.com had only a 1.7 percent share of all videos viewed. The Google-owned YouTube has reached out to mainstream entertainment companies, including Universal Music Group, as the site seeks to add more premium entertainment on its site. But unlike YouTube, which mostly has short video clips, Hulu allows users to view entire episodes, and it has positive trends in its favor.

Research firm Knowledge Networks reported in February that use of third-party video hosting sites such as Hulu to access network television shows doubled since 2007 among Internet video users age 13-54.

Watch out all you Red Carpet pros on Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and other celebrity TV shows, this September there will be a new face on Tinseltown’s glamour scene. And although that amateur may not know what the heck they are doing, he or she just might be aiming for your job. Remember, it’s not hard losing a coveted slot on the Red Carpet. Just ask Joan Rivers.

People.com and YouTube are unveiling a new channel on the video Web site dedicated to celebrity content provided by People.com. To kick off the channel, People.com and YouTube, along with cosmetics company Revlon, are launching a contest where one ”Red Carpet Reporter” will be picked to interview celebrities at a star-filled event in September.

They promise the winner “a whirlwind two days in Los Angeles” with hair and makeup by Revlon, a clothing allowance and  ”VIP entry into exclusive events,” according to a statement. And to wrap it all up, the winner has to work — on the glitzy Red Carpet, of course. Hey, it’s a tough job but somebody’s…  Ahh, you know the rest.

The initial contest kicks off on July 10 and runs through July 21. Contestants must submit a two- to four-minute video of them interviewing their family or friends. Ten finalists will be picked, and People.com and YouTube users will vote for a winner who will be announced on Aug. 27.

The new People.com celebrity YouTube channel, which will feature video, photos and star interviews, can be found at www.youtube.com/people. Submissions for the contest can be made at www.youtube.com/redcarpetreporter or www.people.com/youtube.

The little-known Creaky Boards just became a little less little known thanks to an accusation of copying against mega-band Coldplay via a Youtube posting.

The video cuts snippets from the Boards’ song “The Songs I Didn’t Write” (oh, the glorious irony of it all) with clips from Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”, the title track from the group’s new album which is selling fast in the UK. The posting even claims the band thought they spotted Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin in the crowd at a gig last year when they performed the song, hence making the link between the two.

The allegation prompted Coldplay to issue a blunt denial, saying that “Viva La Vida” was actually written seven months before the night in question.

The blogosphere has been busy with reactions to the accusations, with what seems to be a slight majority accusing the Boards of a cheap publicity stunt. Still, it may have worked. More than 320,000 visits have been made to the Youtube posting to date, about 1,000 times the number of clicks on other Creaky Boards’ contributions.

Jessica Alba has laid down a challenge — can you outstare her? Millions have tried to beat the actress since she joined a competition on video sharing Web site iBeat You (www.ibeatyou.com) about two weeks ago.  She uploaded a video of herself staring into the camera without blinking for 1.5 minutes and submitted it to a “longest stare” competition. So far the video has received over 3.8 million views on YouTube. Why did she do it? Might have something to do with fact that the Web site was co-founded by her husband Cash Warren. The site is one of a number where people can compete against anyone in anything using photos, video and text.

It was supposed to be Syesha’s night. After all, it was the axed Floridian’s last chance to shine on “American Idol” after a meteoric rise to third place that no one expected.

But here we are, the top two “American Idol” finalists decided after four intense months, and yet the buzz following Wednesday night’s elimination show centered not around the impending David showdown, or on the ouster of Syesha Mercado, but an over-the-top performance by an “Idol” winner from four years ago.

Fantasia, the passionate, raspy-voiced single mother from North Carolina, to this day is arguably the edgiest “Idol” winner ever (Taylor Hicks and his premature head of gray hair don’t count). Tonight, however, she truly outdid herself, bursting onto the stage with a head of fire engine red hair and three backup dancers and delivering a high-energy performance of her song “Bore Me.”

The performance immediately sparked a lively debate on the Web over whether Fantasia was back to her magnetic self or had completely lost her mind.

“I loved it…it was FUN and CRAAAAZZZY! I was up dancing!” wrote one fan on the “Idol” forums, while another said: “What was all the screaming about? That’s talent? She’s lost it.”

Many viewers commented on Simon Cowell’s slack-jawed stare during Fantasia’s performance, saying he couldn’t have made his feelings any clearer.

On YouTube, where several versions of the performance were posted following the show, one viewer panned the performance, but admitted to being unable stop watching the video.

“For some strange reason beyond my own comprehension I can’t stop watching the vid!!! It’s like deep down inside I want to punish myself for all the mistakes I did in my life by watching this freakshow!”

Isn’t that what reality TV is all about?

For more on the elimination show, click here.

In one of the more bizarre Internet phenomena to sweep the music world, 80s crooner Rick Astley has shot back into the headlines after years in obscurity thanks to millions of Web surfers being “rick-rolled”. For weeks now unsuspecting Internet users have clicked on enticing-looking links related to celebrities and instead been directed to a video of Astley performing his huge hit “Never Gonna Give You Up”.

It appears Youtube decided to get in on the joke, featuring a similar link on its main page on Tuesday, which just happened to be April Fools’ Day. (The image on this blog is a rather arbitrary snap of Youtube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Sorry, but our pictures archive did not feature Mr. Astley, although that may be about to change).

As many as 15 million people, among them me, have seen the flame-haired Briton strut his stuff as a result of the gag. Bloggers have written about being both irritated and impressed by the trick, but either way it has begun to spill over into the real world.

Astley’s record label has brought forward the re-release of his greatest hits by around two weeks to April 28 to try to cash in on the craze. Astley himself is not available to speak about it, although he did tell the LA Times recently how he found it ironic that a pop song which he himself describes as “pretty naff” has become a kind of cultural beacon, rather than a hit with an obvious political or social message.

If I am anything to go by, “rick-rolling” victims old enough to have been around in 1987, when the song was Britain’s biggest selling single, will be struggling to get the kitsch-yet-catchy tune out of their heads.