Where have you gone, Priyanka Chopra?
Last week we told you that Thursday Night Football updated its opening theme song for the 2014 season, replacing the Bollywood singer with Rihanna’s parts of Jay Z’s 2009 hit “Run This Town.”
Now, with the start of Thursday Night Football on CBS just a few hours away, Rihanna has been pulled. And there’s a whole lot of WTF going on.
The network nixed their pre-recorded Thursday Night Football intro, which also features spoken word by Don Cheadle, to run a segment on suspended woman-beater Ray Rice by CBS This Morning anchor Norah O’Donnell.
Rice was cut from the Baltimore Ravens — coincidentally, the home team in tonight’s Thursday Night Football opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers — after video surfaced earlier this week of him punching then-fiancee (and now wife) Janay Palmer in a Las Vegas elevator.
Rihanna, of course, is no stranger to domestic violence. In 2009 the singer was assaulted by then-boyfriend Chris Brown, who was eventually sentenced to five years probation.
“It’s important to realize we are not overacting to this story but it is as big a story as has faced the NFL,” CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus told SI, via Mashable. “We thought journalistically and from a tone standpoint, we needed to have the appropriate tone and coverage. A lot of the production elements we wanted in the show are being eliminated because of time or tone.”
Rice has been cut from the Ravens and indefinitely suspended by the NFL.
No word on whether the Rihanna spot will run during next week’s telecast, which is in Atlanta for the Falcons-Buccaneers game.
Here’s Jay Z and Rihanna’s “Run This Town.”
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