Mariah Carey's manager fires back at "Rockin' Eve" producers

Following Mariah Carey's turbulent New Year's Eve performance, in which she stumbled over her choreography while trying to keep up a bright face for the audience, talking to the crowd over the many technical issues. According to Stella Bulochnikov, Carey's manager, this was all due to the failings of Dick Clark Productions, the company that produced the show. In a statement Bulochnikov gave Billboard magazine, she claimed that Carey's in-ear monitors were not functioning, and that the problem was not fixed when she alerted the producers. "We told [the stage managers] that the in-ears were not working 10 minutes before the performance," Bulochnikov said. "They then changed the battery pack, and they were still not working on the frequency four minutes before the show. We let them know again, and they just kept counting her down and reassuring her that they will work as soon as they go live, which never happened."
Following the disastrous live performance, Bulochnikov tried to do some damage control by asking DCP if they could keep the performance from being aired on the West Coast channels. According to Bulochnikov, they said no, and the footage was presented unedited. "I asked him why would they want to run a performance with mechanical glitches unless they just want eyeballs at any expense," Bulochnikov said. "It's not artist friendly."
Carey's representative Nicole Perna also spoke out, saying Dick Clark Productions "set her up to fail." DCP released their own statement, saying, "To suggest that DCP… would ever intentionally compromise the success of any artist is defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd. In very rare instances there are of course technical errors that can occur with live television, however, an initial investigation has indicated that DCP had no involvement in the challenges associated with Ms. Carey's New Year's Eve performance. We want to be clear that we have the utmost respect for Ms. Carey as an artist and acknowledge her tremendous accomplishments in the industry."
In the viral video of the performance, Carey herself confesses that "we didn't have a soundcheck," however, DCP claims that it was Carey who insisted on skipping the soundcheck. While Carey's representatives insist that the Times Square crowd made it impossible for Carey to hear the backing track, DCP claims that there was more than enough sound for Carey to hear the music. According to the Billboard article, the most likely error was an in-ear monitor set to the wrong frequency, in which case, the blame would instead lie with Carey's tech operators.