What’s Loot Got to Do With It?

Watch this week to see if Tina Turner’s farewell concert tour will be simply the best of 2000. As the year draws to a close, the music industry is turning its eye to the bottom-line winners and losers, and one of the key yardsticks is the annual Pollstar magazine ranking of top-grossing concert tours. Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert industry trade magazine, says that the final numbers are still being tallied, but early indications are that Turner has the best shot at topping the 2000 list with grosses in the area of $80 million. “If she really is retiring from touring then she would be going out on top,” Bongiovanni says, referring to Turner’s July announcement that, at age 61, she would limit her future stage work to charity events and special appearances. “For the tour to do this well is really impressive because she didn’t have a huge record in the marketplace or anything,” Bongiovanni says. “I guess the public thinks that this is really a farewell tour.” If Bongiovanni sounds skeptical it’s because he’s seen plenty of acts, such as the Who and Elton John, make a tradition out of final bows. But Turner’s publicist, Bernard Doherty, said in June that “she wants to go out on top, while she is at her best. She doesn’t want to become a faded caricature of herself.” If Turner doesn’t take the title for 2000, look for ‘N Sync or the Dave Matthews Band to contend. The two groups may have little in common musically, but both are noted for epic tour schedules and crowd-pleasing performances--not to mention far cheaper seats than Turner, who had $98 top seats for sale at her Southern California shows earlier this month. That’s more than double the best seat at a typical Matthews Band show and $30 above ‘N Sync.

Soderbergh Could Go the Coppola Route

Opening a $50-million film about the failure of America’s drug wars for an exclusive run amid the crush of high-visibility year-end commercial releases is a calculated gamble at best. Steven Soderbergh’s thriller “Traffic,” which debuts in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, however, seems to have hit the jackpot. Before even being released, it has won a critics’ award (the New York Film Critics prize for best film) and received five Golden Globe nominations, including best film drama. Upbeat critical attention has accelerated USA Films’ release plans for the movie and buoyed the enthusiasm of theater owners, according to Russell Schwartz, president of USA Films. Originally set to break nationally Jan. 12, “Traffic,” which stars Michael Douglas, will now open in 1,200 to 1,500 theaters on Jan. 5. “It’s a wide-open date,” Schwartz says. It also gives “Traffic” a week’s jump on the national release of two other adult dramas, “Finding Forrester” and “Thirteen Days,” which will go into wide release in mid-January for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. On Thursday, director Soderbergh picked up two Golden Globe best director nominations from the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.--the other was for “Erin Brockovich,” which was also nominated for best dramatic film. If that translates into Oscar nominations, Soderbergh could be the first director to have two movies among the five best film nominees since 1974, the year “Godfather II” and “The Conversation,” both directed by Francis Ford Coppola, were in the running (“Godfather II” won). But only “Godfather II” got Coppola a directing nod (and he won). If Soderbergh managed to repeat his Globe dual directing nominations at the Oscars, he would be the first director since 1938 to be in competition with himself. Michael Curtiz was nominated that year for both “Angels With Dirty Faces” and “Four Daughters.”

A Little Traveling Music, Please

Attention, sports fans: You can put away the encyclopedia, because ABC’s “Monday Night Football,” featuring the comedy arcana of Dennis Miller, ends its season tonight, just as regular season coverage of the NBA kicks off on NBC, with a Christmas Day doubleheader featuring Orlando at Indiana at noon and Portland visiting Staples Center to play the Lakers at 2:30 p.m. Since Michael Jordan retired (a second time) in 1998, the NBA’s woes have become NBC’s: For the 1999-2000 regular season, ratings were down 21%, though the NBA finals between the Lakers and Indiana were up 3% over the finals a year earlier. With the NBA in a post-Jordan marketing drought, searching for new marquee stars and marquee matchups, NBC is betting on Shaq, Kobe and the Lakers, who will be seen in 11 of the 33 regular season games NBC will televise in the coming months. Orlando will be seen 10 times--largely because NBC figured the Magic’s signing of young stars Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady would make them a hot team to watch. The network is also reducing the number of games on Saturday, moving the bulk of its schedule back to Sunday afternoons. “The feeling was that people didn’t know when the games were on,” says NBC Sports spokesman Kevin Sullivan. Marv Albert returns as NBC’s top play-by-play man.

--Compiled by Times Staff Writers