LITTLE ROCK — Bieber fever is coming to North Little Rock’s Verizon Arena in January, but you don’t have to wait until then to scream along with the preteens.
Justin Bieber: All Around the World continues at 7 p.m. today on NBC. Part 1 aired Wednesday. Tonight’s hour special concludes the 18-year-old pop/R&B singer’s first network special and promises “an unprecedented look behind the scenes of his whirlwind global tour.”
NBC publicity says the hour is “very unique,” a qualification that always vexed my old high school English teacher since unique means one of a kind and can’t be qualified, very or otherwise.
What makes the special unique? The program “combines documentary and music performances and follows Bieber’s tour around the globe as he showcases his new album Believe, including the No. 1 single ‘Boyfriend.’”
In other words, we’ll get another hour infomercial pitching Bieber’s album. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. TV exists to sell stuff.
NBC spokesman Doug Vaughan boasts, “We’ll have unprecedented access to Justin as our cameras film not only his performances, but his every move on this global tour — giving our viewers an all-access pass to his life over a 12-day period, something rarely seen on TV today.”
Don’t scoff. Untold hordes of 12-year-old girls will be watching and hanging on his every move.
Pop idol worship is nothing new. My own late mother once confessed how she swooned over a young Frank Sinatra in the early ’40s when she was 14 and 15.
I’ve seen pictures. He was 120 pounds soaking wet and hardly swoon-worthy.
A decade later the kids were screaming over Elvis. Ten years after that it was the Beatles. In the ’70s, you couldn’t open a Tiger Beat without seeing David Cassidy or Leif Garrett.
Michael Jackson, boy bands and even Hanson (who?) had their day in the spotlight. Bieber is just the latest and he has been a hot item for three years.
NBC points out that he has more than 43 million Facebook fans, more than 22 million Twitter followers and some 2.9 billion YouTube views.
That last fact is interesting since Bieber began his career by posting videos of himself on YouTube. They were discovered by a talent agent who landed him an audition with R&B star Usher. That led to a recording contract when he was 15.
Whether Bieber has the talent and drive to make the transition to adult popularity remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, borrow a pre-teen tonight and enjoy the thrill of “what life is like through the eyes of Justin Bieber with the ‘Justin-cam.’”
Growing up. Here’s an example of a boy singer trying to transition to the next level. Musician and actor Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers has signed on to be a celebrity mentor on The CW’s forthcoming singing competition series The Next: Fame Is at Your Doorstep.
He’ll join rapper Nelly, pop icon Gloria Estefan and country star John Rich as they travel about looking for undiscovered talent.
The format sounds familiar, but we’ll find out once the show gets on the air. No date has been set.
Jonas is 22 and has been around for five years — long in the tooth for a Disneygrown boy singer.
Creep factor. You gotta love the cheesy Saturday night movies that air on Syfy. Most are so awful they’re great.
At 8 p.m. Saturday, Syfy unleashes Arachnoquake in which an earthquake releases giant spiders from the bowels of the earth. They go on a murderous rampage through hapless New Orleans.
Not only are they spiders, they’re fire-breathing albino spiders! Natural gas shale deposits are involved.
As if that poor city hasn’t been through enough.
The movie stars Tracey Gold, who used to have a career once upon a time. The 43-year-old mother of three is best known as Carol Seaver on Growing Pains.
Arachnoquake is directed by Griff Furst, who also directed Syfy’s Swamp Shark last summer. You remember that one? It starred Kristy Swanson and D.B. Sweeney and had a shark terrorizing the Atchafalaya swamp near New Orleans.
Memorable quote of Furst’s latest: “It’s time we showed daddy longlegs how we roll on the bayou.”
Hoo-ah!
King canceled. In case you missed the memo, CNN has canceled John King USA. It’ll last until the end of the month.
To fill the 5 p.m. hour, Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room will expanded from 3 to 6 p.m. King, who joined CNN in ’97, will be chief national campaign correspondent.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:
Weekend, Pages 34 on 06/21/2012