CNN on-air drinking rule… MrBeast has surpassed PewDiePie… Cristiano Ronaldo blasts team… Ellen Pompeo officially bids farewell… and Ticketmaster cancels public onsale for Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’

“Variety” was first to report that the big boss at CNN laid down the law. Except for Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen — who’ve been co-hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve countdown since 2017 — none of the other anchors or correspondents are allowed to drink during the live broadcast. Apparently, the boss thinks on-camera drinking destroys the credibility and respectability of newspeople. But honestly, it sounds like Don Lemon is the one who ruined it for everybody. Don takes over for the CNN live broadcast at 12:30am New Year’s Day. In recent years, while under the influence, Don’s gotten his ear pierced on live TV and then last year, he told viewers he was a “grown a** man” who is “able to share my point of view on television and it freaks people out and you know what? You can kiss my behind, I do not care. I don’t care.” Yeah. That probably did it.

Sorry, the Bar Is Closed: CNN to Cut Back on New Year’s Eve On-Air Drinking https://t.co/ukiHgz0q5O pic.twitter.com/HQgrBeMujA

— The Root (@TheRoot) November 16, 2022

He was the first person to reach 100M subscribers on YouTube in 2019, and for the past decade, PewDiePie, aka Felix Kjellberg, has been the most-subscribed creator on the platform. Until now. MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, just passed PewDiePie with 112M subscribers, making him the most-followed person on YouTube. While PewDiePie got famous letting people watch him play video games, people love to watch MrBeast giving away huge amounts of cash and prizes to people. Last year, MrBeast launched a food bank charity that feeds communities across the country. He also works with YouTuber Mark Sober, so far raising more than $24M to plant 20M trees around the world and even more money to remove 30M pounds of plastic and trash from oceans, rivers and beaches!

MrBeast has surpassed PewDiePie as the most subscribed YouTuber of all time after crossing 112M subscribers. pic.twitter.com/dE4YgpXGco

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) November 17, 2022

We don’t normally talk sports, but Cristiano Ronaldo — the most followed person on Instagram with over 497M followers — is making news for an explosive interview he did with Piers Morgan. Cristiano blasted his soccer team, Manchester United, saying the higher ups have made him the “black sheep” of the team who gets blamed for everything. Cristiano said he has no respect for team manager Erik ten Hag, telling Piers, “I don’t have respect for him because he doesn’t show respect for me. If you don’t have respect for me, I’m never gonna have respect for you.” Cristiano also believes management have been trying to force him out. He had a lot more to say, but as a result of that interview, sources say the team’s attorneys believe they do have grounds to fire Cristiano for breach of contract. If that happens, Cristiano’s legal team will probably sue. He’s still got six months left on his contract and if he gets fired, it would cost him around $19M. In the meantime, Cristiano is going to be the captain of Portugal’s team in the upcoming World Cup in Qatar.

That was my all-time favourite interview. A sporting icon baring his soul as never before & doing it with such raw honesty & passion, knowing it would attract a lot of heat but believing it was time to speak out. Thanks ⁦@Cristiano⁩ – you’re a class act, on & off the pitch. pic.twitter.com/4hwTzk7Lhj

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) November 17, 2022

Back in August, we found out that Ellen Pompeo was going to step back a bit on Season 19 of “Gray’s Anatomy,” only appearing in a handful of episodes. At the time, TVLine reported Ellen would continue to narrate the series and serve as an executive producer. Yesterday, Ellen posted a lovely selfie with a message for her fans: “I am eternally grateful and humbled by the love and support you have all shown me, Meredith GREY and the show for 19 seasons! Through it all….none of it …would have been possible without the best fans in the world. You all are RIDERS and you all have made the ride so fun and ICONIC!! I love you madly and appreciate you right back. This isn’t your first time on the rollercoaster… you know the show must go on and I’ll definitely be back to visit. With a lot of love and immense gratitude XoE 🙏🏼❤️.” Ellen has played the namesake of Taylor Swift’s cat since “Grey’s Anatomy” premiered in 2005.

Ellen Pompeo is saying goodbye to ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ after 19 seasons as the series lead. https://t.co/4Mod7bv5XJ

— TMZ (@TMZ) November 17, 2022

This has been a very rough week for Taylor Swift fans. Ticketmaster pre-sales for her Eras Tour were such a disaster that today’s public on-sale is CANCELED. Without explanation, Ticketmaster tweeted yesterday, “Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.” Twitter got even more emotional after that, with many of Taylor’s fans asking her to say SOMETHING about what’s happening. So far, Taylor has kept her mouth shut, but yesterday the chairman of Live Nation — which owns Ticketmaster — went on CNBC and basically put the blame on Taylor’s popularity. Greg Maffei said, “Building capacity for peak demand is something we attempt to do, but this exceeded every expectation.” He went on to explain that the first pre-sale on Tuesday was supposed to be opened to only 1.5M Verified Swift fans, but instead 14M fans and bots — which weren’t supposed to be able to join the queue — shut everything down for hours. But a lot of fans who DID have pre-sale codes entered them to find out they didn’t work! It was a mess. And things weren’t better for the Capital One pre-sale, either. So until they figure this out, no more ticket sales for Taylor.

Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.

— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 17, 2022

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