Inside Rihanna's Feud With CBS Sports
The singer had choice words, including an obscenity, for network. Here's why.
— -- Rihanna has always been one to speak her mind.
This morning, nobody knows that more than CBS Sports.
The singer lashed out at the network because she said it was planning to use her song "Run This Town" to open its Thursday night football game this week, after the network pulled it last week amid coverage of the Ray Rice domestic abuse story.
"CBS you pulled my song last week, now you wanna slide it back in this Thursday? NO, F*** you! Y'all are sad for penalizing me for this," she tweeted. "The audacity..."
A rep for her label, Roc Nation, added in a separate statement, "Due to the misuse and misrepresentation of Rihanna's name and participation in connection to CBS' TNF [Thursday Night Football], CBS was not allowed to license and utilize the song 'Run This Town.'"
The NFL had said earlier this month that "Run This Town" would be used in the opening for Thursday night football, along with a narration by Don Cheadle. But CBS pulled it last week, along with a comedic segment, according to Sports Illustrated. (Rice's team, the Baltimore Ravens, was facing the Pittsburgh Steelers in that game.)
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"It’s important to realize we are not overreacting to this story but it is as big a story as has faced the NFL," CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus told the magazine at the time. "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.”
The network never said publicly whether it would use the song after last week’s cancellation, but it’s now clear that "Run This Town" is out of the picture.
"Beginning this Thursday, we will be moving in a different direction with some elements of our Thursday Night Football open," a CBS Sports rep told ABC News in a statement. "We will be using our newly created Thursday Night Football theme music to open our game broadcast."