The people who are about to bring you Nashville Star, a new prime time “reality” series to debut on USA Network in March, insist that their show is more than a hybrid of American Idol and MTV’s Real World, with a twist of country. They repeatedly claim that unlike the highly contrived aspects of the aforementioned shows, which have come to symbolize the dulling of Western Civilization, their program will be, well, real. And that it will capture—no joke—the American spirit.
“This show will be a celebration of country music and country music culture,” says H.T. Owens, the vice president of creative affairs at Reveille Studio in Los Angeles, which is producing the program. “We view country music as real. In Nashville Star, the music is real, the people are real, they generally play their own instruments, and these people are true Americans.”
That’s enough to make Toby Keith blush.
The premise of the show, whose concept was hatched in L.A., sounds like it could have been developed over lunch between the delivery of cocktails and spinach dip: Ten singer-songwriter types, selected after a slate of auditions throughout the country, live in a fully-wired Nashville house. As the literature for the show explains, cameras will record the “friendships, squabbles, heartbreaks and intrigues that will develop during the course of the live, eight-week competition.” Hmmm. Original.
A panel of three unfortunate judges, along with viewers, will banish one of the houseguests at the end of each show. The last one standing will receive a recording contract from Sony Music Nashville. Until that grand finale, shows will feature live performances, songwriting and arguments among the cast over who forgot to close the cereal box. Then there will be the inevitable segments of the cast frequenting Nashville haunts, phoning their out-of-town friends and, if the other reality shows are any guide, we’ll also have those incredibly awkward confessionals where members reveal highly personal and petty thoughts about their lives.
“There’s going to be a lot more biography in this show where you’ll get to know the cast really well,” says journalist Robert Oermann, tapped to serve as one of the judges. (The other two judges are singer Charlie Robison and Sony Music A&R/marketing consultant Tracy Gershon.) “They all have really compelling stories to tell, and that will be a big part of the show.”
John Small, whose company, Picture Vision, will serve as the local producer of the show, says that he was initially reluctant to be involved with Nashville Star. “The first time I got the call, I wasn’t interested. It came out of Hollywood, and Hollywood doesn’t always understand Nashville,” says Small, who’s from New York but says he often works out of Nashville.
But Small, who suffers no dearth of confidence, became convinced that the L.A. folks were going to do his adopted town right. After all, the show will feature a live band and will showcase the city’s impressive musical chops. “I wanted to portray Nashville in its real light and the integrity of what it’s all about,” Small says. “Most people don’t understand what this town is all about. They think it’s all about Hee Haw. But this town has so many great singer-songwriters and musicians.” He adds, “I’m a former musician myself. I used to be Billy Joel’s drummer, and this town has the best musicians.”
If you’re looking for more assurances that Nashville Star will be a hit, Small says to look no further than the track record of Picture Vision, which he says recently dominated Country Music Television’s Flameworthy awards. “Out of the 12 Flameworthy awards, we won six of them,” he exults. “I’m not saying that egotistically, I’m just telling the truth.”
If the USA Network really wanted to capture Nashville in its new reality program, it would discard the clichéd stories of would-be singers looking to hit it big and focus on people like Small who give Music Row its personality. Short of that, Oermann at least assures us that Nashville Star won’t be the standard, run-of-the-mill reality program. “The talent we have is very diverse, and it features all different types of country music,” he says. “Everybody will have their favorites.”
L.A.’s Owens agrees. “These people are real. And they’re going to have a chance to tell their true story to the American people.”
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