People: This HD stands for ‘Hi, Dan’
Dan Rather is making a comeback.
Three weeks after being let go by CBS, the former anchor has agreed to launch a program called “Dan Rather Presents” on HDNet, the high-definition channel owned by billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban.
“We are excited about it,” said Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team.
He described the show as “an opportunity to do news in what I like to call ‘fearless mode,’ what Dan calls ‘with guts.’ Go out there and find the stories we think will have impact.”
Rather, 74, moved to “60 Minutes” after relinquishing the anchor chair last year amid controversy over a story about President Bush‘s military service.
He complained last month that CBS had not offered him a meaningful role during contract talks.
HDNet plans to roll out the Rather program in October. The channel, available on the DirecTV and Dish satellite networks, reaches about 3 million homes.
Accounting for his shortfall
Speaking of comebacks, Keith Richards rejoins the Rolling Stones for today’s relaunch of the band’s European tour – previously postponed when he suffered a head injury after falling out of a coconut tree in April while vacationing in Fiji.
So what exactly was he doing up that tree?
“If you saw the tree, you’d realize the joke,” the 62-year-old guitarist says. “Fiji is not just made of coconut trees. It was a little tree.”
Go forth and cash in
This season’s fourth-place “American Idol” finisher, Chris Daughtry, has signed a recording contract with music mogul Clive Davis.
The 26-year-old North Carolina native “has already begun to work with A-list collaborators” on an album scheduled for release later this year on 19 Recordings Unlimited, the label run by RCA Records chief Davis and “Idol” creator Simon Fuller.
Daughtry recently turned down an offer to be lead singer for the band Fuel.
Taking the fifth
Model/actress Brigitte Nielsen married her fifth husband on Saturday in Malta – 17 months after a ceremony that wasn’t legal because she hadn’t finished divorcing No. 4.
Last year’s ceremony between Nielsen, 42, and former model Mattia Dessi, 28, was “more like an official engagement,” her manager said.
She was still technically married to former race car driver Raoul Meyer at the time. Other husbands have included actor Sylvester Stallone and former NFL star Mark Gastineau.
More lip service
Angelina Jolie, who voiced a femme fatale fish in 2004’s “Shark Tale,” will portray a martial-arts master in the computer-animated comedy “Kung Fu Panda.”
Her high-kicking character, Tigress, helps give kung fu training to Po, a slacker panda voiced by Jack Black, her “Shark Tale” co-star.
The film, slated for release in May 2008, also will feature the voices of Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, Dustin Hoffman and Ian McShane.
The birthday bunch
Actor Tab Hunter is 75. Actress Sela Ward is 50. Guitarist Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi) is 47. Actress Lisa Rinna (“Days of Our Lives”) is 43. Actor Justin Chambers (“Grey’s Anatomy”) is 36. Rapper Lil Kim is 31.