ALBANY — The negative comments on social media started within minutes of Monday's announcement that R&B singer Chris Brown would bring his new tour to the Times Union Center in September.

"Nothing beats a Chris Brown concert, but Chris Brown beats women, so there's that," wrote Matt from Queensbury in response to a CBS6 Albany tweet about the concert.

On the Times Union's Facebook page, S.g. Molloy wrote, "I'd rather save my money on the outrageous ticket prices ... and donate it instead to a charity that supports survivors of domestic abuse." Tickets, priced from $63.50 to $203.50, go on sale Friday.

Many replies were simple announcement retweets or tags that called others' attention to news of the concert by Brown, who has sold more than 100 million albums since his debut 14 years ago and has not performed locally since 2015. But a significant minority or, depending on the social-media account, majority of comments were negative. Commenters denounced Brown, tour promoter Live Nation, the Albany County-owned Times Union Center for booking the show and the Times Union, which has had its name on the downtown arena since 2007 as part of a sponsorship agreement, for being associated with it.

In this era of the #MeToo movement, few contemporary celebrity figures are as divisive as Brown, who in July 2009 pleaded guilty to a felony related to assaulting his then-girlfriend and fellow R&B star, Rihanna. She spoke of the assault in interviews with Diane Sawyer and Oprah Winfrey, and a viral photo of her bruised face remains among the top results of online searches that link her name and Brown's.

In the years since, an aspiring model with whom Brown had a relationship obtained a five-year restraining order after claiming he threatened to kill her; he was arrested multiple times for violent encounters and probation violations; and had a standoff with Los Angeles police at his home after a woman called to report he threatened her with a gun. More recently, Brown was sued last year by a woman alleging she was repeatedly raped at a drug- and alcohol-fueled party at his house, and he was arrested in Paris five months ago after another woman accused him of rape.

On the Times Union Center's Facebook page, Ana Warren of New Paltz wrote, "How people can support this (jerk) is beyond me! He's been convicted multiple times of domestic violence and yet people are still buying tickets to the concerts of this (crap) excuse for a human!"

Most of Brown's defenders online argued that his assault of Rihanna was a decade ago, that he accepted responsibility, apologized and performed community service, and that Rihanna later resumed a romantic relationship with him, albeit briefly. Others simply said they wanted to see the concert.

Artists with criminal backgrounds or otherwise blemished personal lives present a dilemma for venues considering booking them for a concert or other type of performance.

"It's a really tough judgment call," said Jon Elbaum, executive director of the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy for the past eight years. "You don't want to limit someone's artistic expression or livelihood," Elbaum said, "but we've got to protect our reputation and our brand."

The music hall, which books its own shows and also rents the hall to outside promoters, has turned down two or three acts during Elbaum's tenure, he said. All were from promoters who wanted to present comedians that Elbaum judged especially crude — "blue," in industry parlance. Elbaum declined to name them. None was rejected for criminal or sexual accusations in their personal lives, he said.

Proctors in Schenectady booked Bill Cosby three times in the 17 years since Philip Morris became CEO, all before dozens of women came forward with allegations of rape or other sexual assault by the venerable comedian. After the news spread, starting about five years ago, Morris said, Proctors would not have brought Cosby back although he had not then been convicted of a crime.

The stance was both moral and practical, Morris said. "It just wouldn't have been worth the risk," he said, either to the theater's reputation or, because of Cosby's high fee and the possibility of poor ticket sales, the potential for Proctors to lose $50,000 or more.

In contrast, a Cosby show was announced for the Palace Theatre in Albany in late 2014, when the groundswell against Cosby was growing, with a performance date the following spring. Despite some community sentiment that Cosby should not be allowed to perform, Palace management accepted the booking from an outside promoter and planned to present the show, said Holly Brown. Then the Palace's executive director, Brown now runs the Cohoes Music Hall and has been in theater management for 32 years.

"We didn't think it was our position to pass judgment on somebody who had not been convicted," Brown said. "And even if somebody had been convicted, if they've done their time, served their sentence, should we be making a judgment about what the public can see?"

Ticket sales remained strong for Cosby, Brown said; the tour was canceled not by the promoter but by the comedian's management, as part of its damage-control effort. After a conviction last year of indecent assault related to a single case from 2004, Cosby is serving three to 10 years in state prison in Pennsylvania.

A year after the Cosby show was to have taken place, the Palace sold less than half the available seats for a concert by R&B hitmaker R. Kelly, who at that point had been acquitted of criminal charges but still was under a cloud of ill-repute as a result of two decades of allegations of sexual misbehavior including with minors. After a documentary series in January this year brought new focus on accusations against Kelly, he was dropped by his record label and indicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

Alice Green, founder and longtime executive director of the Center for Law and Justice in Albany, said she was troubled by what Chris Brown admitted to in the Rihanna case and by his subsequent alleged pattern of abusive behavior toward women. But she cautioned against a permanent conviction in the court of public opinion.

"I know in the #MeToo era people are very quick to condemn men who have been accused of something," Green said. "As a person who is concerned about the criminal-justice system, I know it's dangerous path to go down, convicting people based just on an accusation."

Further, Green added, noting that Brown fulfilled his sentence in the Rihanna case, "I don't think people should forever be labeled a bad person if they've been held accountable."

In general, area theater managers said they are extremely reluctant to impose moral judgments on booking decisions. Those directly involved in the Brown tour coming to the Times Union Center did not want to discuss it at all.

Bob Belber — a 24-year arena employee, its general manager and regional director for SMG, the conglomerate that manages the facility for Albany County — referred questions to the county executive's office, which referred them back to Belber, who referred them to concert promoter Live Nation. Local Live Nation management redirected questions to a corporate spokesperson, who did not reply to a request for comment. Elizabeth Sobol, president and CEO of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, where Brown drew about 15,000 people to a 2015 concert, did not respond to an interview request.

While the Times Union Center is free to decline any booking, other area theater managers said that doing so based on the stated reason of Brown's reputation and personal life could risk angering Live Nation, the world's biggest concert promoter and a regular supplier of big-name artists to the arena. Further, the theater managers said, it would send a message to other promoters, too, that the arena was making business decisions on seeming whim, changing public opinion and other capricious reasons.

All of the managers agreed on a universal cause for rejecting a booking: safety concerns for show patrons, theater staff and the venue itself.

Peter Lesser, who has been executive director of The Egg in Albany since 2000 and ran the Troy Music Hall for eight years before that, said he has never, in 27 years of Capital Region programming, rejected an artist based on show content, personal reputation or criminal history.

He chose not to rebook a rock act that attracted a crowd so unruly that another date was judged unsafe, Lesser said, declining to name the band. Otherwise, he said, "We're not interested in making those judgments."

pBilly Piskutz, the managing director of Palace who will next month become its interim executive director, echoed Lesser's position.

"We're a community venue that's committed to presenting a variety of voices and a diversity of acts," Piskutz said. "If community support warrants a show coming and we're satisfied about any safety concerns, I don't know that we would say no."

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