- Thursday, April 5, 2012

Marc Anthony says working with Jennifer Lopez is like second nature, which is good since the exes are uniting for one night in concert.

The pair have announced they’ll perform together May 26 in Las Vegas as part of “Q’Viva! The Chosen Live,” which will feature the top talent from their televised talent show.

“Q’Viva! The Chosen,” which airs on Univision and Fox, features the former couple as they travel across the globe to find the best Hispanic talent. Both Mr. Anthony and Miss Lopez are executive producers of the show, along with “American Idol” creator Simon Fuller and the show’s director, Jamie King.

The show was conceived when Mr. Anthony and Miss Lopez were a couple, and even after they announced their breakup last year, they decided to go ahead as the show’s hosts.

Mr. Anthony told the Associated Press that he and Miss Lopez met while working, and for them, working side by side is natural and that there’s no bad blood between the two.

“Thank God that’s not the case, obviously. Maybe if that was the case, it would’ve been different,” he said of their work together on the show. “But, that’s why I can tell you it was a wonderful experience all the way around.”

Besides Miss Lopez and Mr. Anthony, 52 performers from around the world will perform as part of the “Q’Viva!” concert at Mandalay Bay Events Center. It’s a culmination of the TV show’s search to find acts for what Mr. Anthony termed “the world’s most amazing Latin spectacular ever.”

Patrick Dempsey’s Le Mans journey headed for TV

Patrick Dempsey is bringing his passion for auto racing to television with a new documentary series.

The “Grey’s Anatomy” star will produce “Road to Le Mans,” a four-part series about his competition in the venerable French race, the Velocity channel said Thursday.

Mr. Dempsey, who has a professional auto-racing team based in Georgia, will be both owner and driver at the 24-hour endurance race in June.

“Road to Le Mans,” set to air by mid-2013, will include his team’s preparation for the event, including sponsor acquisition, training and time trials, and the race itself.

Mr. Dempsey, a documentary buff, said combining the series and the art of racing is a “perfect fit.”

For the fledgling, 6-month-old Velocity, “Road to Le Mans” represents its biggest financial commitment yet to a series or a special, said Bob Scanlon, the channel’s general manager and senior vice president.

Velocity is part of Discovery Communications. Formerly HD Theater, Velocity reaches about 40 million homes and focuses on topics including cars, sports, adventure and travel.

UK’s Sky News: We hacked in the public interest

Rupert Murdoch’s British satellite news channel on Thursday became the latest branch of the mogul’s global media empire to acknowledge bending the rules in an effort to stay ahead.

Sky News admitted its reporters hacked emails on two separate occasions, insisting that it was done in the public interest.

But legal experts said that’s no defense, the police are investigating, and Mr. Murdoch’s goal of taking full control of Sky News’ profitable parent company, British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC, may be at risk.

Sky chief John Ryley said in a statement released Thursday that his reporters had twice been authorized to hack into computers for stories. That included in the case of Anne and John Darwin, the so-called “canoe couple” who became notorious in Britain after the husband faked his own death in a boating accident as part of an elaborate insurance scam.

Mr. Ryley said the intercepted material was later handed to police and insisted Sky had done nothing wrong. “We stand by these actions as editorially justified and in the public interest,” he said. “We do not take such decisions lightly or frequently.”

But the company’s public-interest defense for computer hacking drew immediate skepticism from British legal experts. David Allen Green, media lawyer at Preiskel & Co., said there is no such thing as a public-interest defense as far as Britain’s Computer Misuse Act is concerned.

British police said Thursday they were investigating the circumstances surrounding Sky’s email hack, which was first reported by Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

Mr. Murdoch’s media empire — whose holdings include Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal — has spent the better part of a year in the spotlight over widespread illegal behavior at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid, where journalists routinely hacked into public figures’ phones in an effort to gain scoops.

Compiled from Web and wire service reports.

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