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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