Nashville Star: A New Beginning, an Uncertain Future

This is the first installment in a series of Nashville Star coverage on The 9513. Be sure to visit The9513.com at 8 p.m. central on Monday, June 9th as we live blog the Nashville Star premiere on NBC.

Nashville Star, long maligned as a poor man’s American Idol, has finally made it to the big time. After five seasons on cable’s USA Network, Nashville Star makes its broadcast television debut on Monday, June 9 on NBC. Whether this event will mark the beginning of a commercially and culturally significant network television program or a footnote to a television schedule eviscerated by an historic Hollywood writers’ strike remains to be seen and is dependent not only upon the creative choices of the show’s producers but the omnipresent tension and precarious balance between Nashville Star and its big brother, American Idol.

During the early success of American Idol, producers at USA Network recognized an opportunity while Idol executives wielded their considerable influence to destroy a fledgling competitor. In Nashville Star’s first season (Idol’s second), management of both shows worked hard to create conflict, as Nashville Star ran several episodes in American Idol’s timeslot and Idol host Ryan Seacrest ripped Nashville Star as “American Idol without the talent” during one Idol broadcast.

However much each show tried to portray itself as similar to the other, there was much to distinguish the two franchises during their early years. Nashville Star producers, perhaps realizing that their show had significantly less commercial potential than the Idol juggernaut, adopted a strongly music-centric format. There were no televised audition spectacles, no drawn out results shows (in fact, no results shows at all), and a minimum of behind the scenes drama or Simon Cowell-esque criticism.

And, despite Seacrest’s comments, most of the performers on Nashville Star were more talented than their Idol counterparts. While Idol was still mining the karaoke bars, Nashville Star assembled a cast of mostly music veterans and young up-and-comers, songwriters and musicians who had spent years paying their dues. The first Nashville Star and runner-up, Buddy Jewell and John Arthur Martinez, respectively, were both industry veterans who, 41 years of age at the time of their appearances on the show, were much too old to darken Idol’s door. The producers set out to find singer-songwriters (and they found a good one in Jewell and a great one in Miranda Lambert) and held an original songs week. Lambert herself performed three original songs during her run on the show, an unfathomable feat for most Idol contestants, and almost every Nashville Star contestant accompanied themselves on guitar or another instrument during their performances, a practice that Idol didn’t embrace until Season 7.

The result was a show that, despite its structural similarity to American Idol, fostered an entirely different atmosphere, not to mention a different genre of music. At least in that sense, Nashville Star was not an American Idol rip-off but a viable alternative for country music fans who desired a more substantive artistic experience.

Since those early seasons, the paths of American Idol and Nashville Star have converged. When Carrie Underwood won season four of American Idol, Idols present and past were re-cast as country stars. Fox launched the short-lived reality show Nashville and CMT scored recent successes with Gone Country and Can You Duet? and Nashville Star, no longer the home of country music reality television, lost its most marketable feature. Recently, American Idol has encouraged its contestants to accompany themselves during performances and has made a broader age range eligible for the show, leaving Nashville Star with precious little territory to claim its own, and Nashville Star gave away even more ground by embracing Idol-style national auditions that will air at the beginning of this season. Original song week was always the most interesting episode of the USA Network show, but Nashville Star producers have not yet found another Miranda Lambert, an increasing number of contestants seem uncomfortable performing original material, and this feature is of questionable relevance in a commercial atmosphere that is unfriendly to many varieties of singer-songwriters.

The producers’ ostensible strategy for making Nashville Star unique is the inclusion of duos and groups among the eligible contestants. A reality show that features musical groups is not exactly untrodden ground, as Making the Band, America’s Got Talent and others, not to mention Can You Duet? have already explored this format. Nashville Star’s bet is that this gimmick will look better in the American Idol format, and whether this gamble proves profitable depends on how successfully the NBC version of Nashville Star is able to walk the line between American Idol rip-off and natural Idol derivative, whether the contrast between group and solo acts produces an interesting dynamic or a disturbing discontinuity, and whether viewers will be satisfied if the eventual “Nashville Star” turns out to be a group, thus rendering the show’s name a misnomer.

But it’s less important that Nashville Star place its unique stamp on American culture than that it have a cultural impact at all. It’s difficult to speculate where American Idol would be if Taylor Hicks or Reuben Studdard had won season one instead of eventual mega-star Kelly Clarkson, but it is reasonable to question whether viewers would have flocked to the show during its second season had the winner become a one-and-done flameout rather than an instant commercial force. Despite the disappointing careers of most subsequent Idol winners, the massive success of several notable Idol alumni means that Idol is perpetually relevant, and even those with no interest in following the week-to-week progression of the show keep an eye out for someone they might be hearing on the radio for years to come. That can’t be said about Nashville Star, whose winners have not even enjoyed the one hit single that characterizes unsuccessful Idol champions. Nashville Star’s new network muscle should help the eventual winner to establish a career, but the sixth winner’s success, and Nashville Star’s survival in any significant form, ultimately depends on this year’s champion being a legitimate star.

Nonetheless, NBC shouldn’t be disappointed with the commercial yield of its new acquisition. By airing during the summer months, the show earns itself a lot of default viewers, while new host Billy Ray Cyrus ought to attract some casual pre-teen viewers and prominent performances (like Taylor Swift’s in Monday’s premiere) will give Nashville Star an occasional ratings bump. However, it’s difficult to foresee the show creating a core audience. Many young fans of contemporary pop-country have been satiated by American Idol’s recent “country” offerings while true traditionalists are unlikely to hear much that they like on the sparkly network version of a show that features less classic country music each year.

And all of this begs the essential question: why Nashville Star? What does Nashville Star have that the public desires enough to make it more than an average cable program and a network fill-in? Nashville Star’s producers haven’t always seemed to agree on the answer, but Nashville Star still has the potential to thrive if they’ve come up with the right one. We’ll find out, beginning Monday at 8 p.m. central.