Jackson's Not Quite Star-Filled Tribute Postponed to 2010

Jermaine Jackson announces show planned for this month in Vienna has been relocated to London and moved to June 2010

Well, that didn't quite work out the way it was supposed to.

The big-on-talk but short-on-delivery Michael Jackson tribute concert scheduled to take place in Vienna later this month has been postponed to June 2010 and relocated to London, with Jermaine Jackson blaming the move on scheduling conflicts with would-be headliners.

Organizers had been taken to task for its less than all-star lineup—25 acts were promised, only 13 had been named and arguably the three biggest, Chris Brown, Mary J. Blige and Natalie Cole, weren't exactly locked in.

"Numerous stars were just not able to change their schedules to make a live appearance at the Vienna event possible," Jackson said this morning.

"Now we have eight months to put this monumental show together and not just eight weeks."

And eight months, the theory goes, can cajole a lot of superstar participation.

"Many artists and performers who I have spoken to personally told me that it would be a great honor to be part of this memorial concert for my late brother," Jackson said.

"However, due to the short time frame it was not possible for many of them to change their schedule…therefore we decided, after careful consideration, to change the date of the tribute concert to June 2010—just a few weeks before the first anniversary of his untimely death."

Georg Kindel, who was promoting the event, acknowledged to reporters that "maybe we underestimated these issues."

"The purpose for this show is to give something back to the fans…we have to do this right," Jackson went on. "It's not about name-dropping."

Though if it were, the postponement and relocation would certainly help. As it happens, the upside of the delay is that both the timing and new location of the tribute concert make much more sense for a Jackson memorial.

London, of course, was the site of the King of Pop's much-heralded yet ill-fated concert run and holding the do in June assures much more pomp and circumstance and almost guarantees that organizers will promote it as a celebration for the first anniversary of his death.