In another bombshell from the latest hacked Sony emails, an executive chat revealed that Simon Cowell lobbied to replace Howard Stern on America’s Got Talent.
In the Wikileaks-published email titled “confidential” — and dated exactly one year ago, on April 17, 2014 — Sony CEO Michael Lynton floated the idea of swapping out the mega media moguls to NBC Universal CEO Steve Burke, and encouraging him to meet with Cowell (who created the show and continues to get an executive producer credit on it).
The Sony exec told the NBC bigwig that he met with the TV mastermind the day before, and that Cowell was “thinking that the right thing to do would be for him to star in the show, not Howard Stern.”
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Lynton told Burke that the U.K.’s version of the show, Britain’s Got Talent, “is hugely successful and a better show” than the version that airs in the states, with Stern, Heidi Klum, Mel B. and Howie Mandel.
Cowell also wanted to move the filming of the show back to Los Angeles — “where it would be cheaper to produce,” Lynton added — after the program moved to the East Coast three years ago to accommodate the then-incoming King of All Media.
Lynton went on to ask if Burke (and NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt) would meet with the American Idol mastermind “and hear him out.”
“He is [very,] very talented,” Lynton concluded. “We have a big overall deal with Simon and own his music company and half of all the television shows he produces.”
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As we previously reported, a new batch of more than 30,000 documents and 173,000 emails were published by the rogue site Thursday, also containing shocking content about A-listers Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said the organized archive of “an influential multinational corporation … belongs in the public domain,” vowing” WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there.”
Stern, ironically, found himself lambasted by a number of outlets in another controversy related to the hacking scandal late last year, when he compared the initial leaks to the September 11, 2001 attacks, saying that “the president should have announced immediately we’re under attack.”
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