It's easy to see why NBC put Nashville Star
on in primetime this year -- they're trying to promote themselves as
the "American network" prior to airing the Summer Olympics in August.
(Plus, months after the writers' strike, they probably just don't have
anything else.) But while this countrified version of American Idol is doing better in the ratings than it did when it was on cable, for a network show, its audience has been tiny.
Maybe
that's why the producers have decided to inject large amounts of pop
music into the show's country format. Even during earlier episodes,
contestants were as likely to sing such Top 40 hits as "Drops of
Jupiter" or "Waiting on the World to Change" as something actually
written in Nashville. And last night's Pop Goes Country theme -- while
it did feature some nice acoustic arrangements of songs like "Love
Shack" -- made it seem like a show in search of an identity as well as
an audience. (The guest performers were Danity Kane, whose only
possible relationship to this competition is that they were also
created by a reality show. And starting off with a group sing of
Madonna's "Like a Prayer" was just madness -- um, wholesome family show
with underage contestants, do you really not know about the underlying
meaning and controversial history of that song?)
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