Rihanna on Tuesday blasted a US television network (CBS) for pulling her song from the NFL opening night credits in the wake of the Ray Rice domestic abuse incident.
CBS had planned to play Jay-Z’s Run This Town, featuring Rihanna, at the start of its season-opening Thursday Night Football programme, which last week featured the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Baltimore Ravens – whose star Ray Rice has been banned from the National Football League over knocking out his now-wife.
CBS dropped the song, as well as a comedy segment, citing a need for the “appropriate tone” to the broadcast. Apparently, it had the intention to use it in the opening of this week’s programme.
But Rihanna – herself the victim of a highly publicised 2009 assault by singer and then-boyfriend Chris Brown – wasn’t impressed with the move.
“CBS you pulled my song last week, now you wanna slide it back in this Thursday? NO, Fuck you!” Rihanna wrote in an early morning tweet.
Soon after the tweets, CBS indicated the song was out for good.
In a statement that did not mention Rihanna directly, the network said it would go in a “different direction” and use “our newly created ‘Thursday Night Football’ theme music”.
