Quick Takes: Spirit Awards on move

After a move to downtown Los Angeles last year, the Spirit Awards are heading back to the beach in Santa Monica.

As previously announced, the Oscar-weekend ceremony also will return to a Saturday afternoon (Feb. 26) instead of the Friday night slot it occupied last year.

Film Independent, the group that administers the awards, had made the switch to Friday night — which saw the awards held in a cavernous space on the event deck at L.A. Live — to breathe new life into the event. But although attendance was high, the show faced backlash from some in the industry over both the space and the timing, with other industry parties competing for attention on Friday night.

—Steven Zeitchik

Strong start for Swift album

Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now” album, which was released Monday, is shaping up to have possibly the biggest first-week sales of any album this year, according to Billboard. The 20-year-old singer-songwriter’s third album is expected to log sales of at least 800,000 to 900,000 copies by Sunday, Billboard reports.

That would put it ahead of the year’s current first-week sales champ, Eminem’s “Recovery,” which posted initial sales of 741,000 in June.

The enthusiastic response to the album runs counter to the downward trend of overall record sales, which in the latest reporting period were 14% lower than the same period last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Just two weeks ago, Toby Keith’s “Bullets in the Gun” set a record for the lowest sales figure for a No.1 album debut — 71,000 copies — since SoundScan began monitoring retail sales in 1991.

—Randy Lewis

T.I. told when to enter prison

Federal authorities have ordered the rapper T.I. to report directly to a federal prison in Arkansas by Monday to start serving his 11-month prison sentence.

U.S. Marshal Beverly Harvard on Tuesday ordered T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., to report to the Forrest City low-security prison where he served parts of an earlier 10-month stint on federal weapons charges.

A federal judge in Atlanta sentenced the rapper this month to serve an additional 11 months in prison for breaking his federal probation after he was arrested Sept. 1 in Los Angeles on drug charges.

—Associated Press

DioGuardi gets show on Bravo

The Bravo network is bringing former “American Idol” judge Kara DioGuardi back to TV in a series of her own.

“Going Platinum” will be a songwriting competition that pits contestants against one another as they live together, all vying for a $100,000 grand prize.

DioGuardi will be head judge of the 10-episode series. Singer-songwriter Jewel will serve as host. It will premiere next year.

—Associated Press

ABC to drop ‘Whole Truth’

ABC’s “The Whole Truth” joins three other freshmen series that failed to make the grade this fall.

The drama, starring Rob Morrow and Maura Tierney, will complete production on 13 episodes, according to co-executive producer Kristie Anne Reed, but that will be the end.

It joins Fox’s “Lone Star,” NBC’s “Outlaw” and ABC’s “My Generation” among shows canceled this season.

—Maria Elena Fernandez

Poet’s papers are acquired

More than 300 boxes of Maya Angelou’s personal papers, including letters from Malcolm X and James Baldwin and several scribbled revisions of the poem she wrote to celebrate President Bill Clinton’s inauguration, will be made public at a New York library, the author said.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — a research unit of the New York Public Library — plans to announce the papers’ acquisition this week.

—Associated Press