Everyone who greenlights any kind of creative venture right now—not just the sitcoms Paul Scheer describes in this great essay—is running through this same dilemma right now. The way we used to place bets about investing time and energy into…
Category
Television
Nick Lea sings “Several Thousand” by Jim Boggia on “Men in Trees”
Just one of those neat things… You know how when you hear a song you love so often that it just resonates with you, and it doesn’t surprise you when it pops up other places? I’m working on an article…
American Idol Songwriting Competition Back for 2008
This week’s sponsor: With not a whole lot of rumor or speculation, the fate of the American Idol Songwriter contest for 2008 was up in the air until this week, when officials reopened the contest site to the public. By…
What happened to subtle marketing?
Are we so transparent about marketing these days that it’s okay for NBC to just slap a box on their pages that blatantly says, “CROSS PROMOTE?”
David Archuleta Referencing Eva Cassidy’s Arrangement of “Imagine”
Ann Powers writes longingly of the “wave of Eva-mania” in the late 1990s, and I remember it well. So it surprised her and others when American Idol contestant David Archuleta won compliments from the panel for his “original” cover of…
Nashville: Fox’s Other Music Business Television Series
While a whole lot of hype is building around The Search for the Next Great American Band, a report from the Fox upfront casts some light on another project that will be interesting to musicians. Nashville is from the same…
America’s Hot Musician Suing to Stop Idol Spinoff. Maybe.
How many ways can you possibly pitch a talent competition to a television executive? According to the producers of America’s Hot Musician, a series airing on the Oxygen Network this spring, FremantleMedia and 19Entertainment are just copying the idea they…
Search for the Next Great American Band: Most Bizarre Elimination Challenge?
American Idol’s producers have already told us how they’re going to spending the fall looking for “The Next Great American Band.” What they didn’t tell us was just how bizarre this contest is shaping up to be. According to this…
The Search for the Next Great American Band
19 Entertainment wants us to stay glued to our screens all summer as they search for the Next Great American Band. Looks like the Idol format, but with bands instead of solo performers. The biggest questions I have right now……
American Idol Songwriting Contest Discussion Continues…
Our discussion about your entries into American Idol’s songwriting contest rolls on. For newcomers, we’ve been splitting comments into new threads every 100 comments or so to keep our server from melting. Beyond that, there’s a lot of fun, positive…
American Idol Songwriting Contest Raises Great Questions
The discussion among American Idol Songwriter entrants is still going strong. We have opened up a new thread just about every day to accommodate the comments without bogging down the server or creating huge page downloads. If you’re new to…
Tell us about your American Idol Songwriter contest entries…
Because I spend much of my time working with performers, it’s really great to see so many songwriters stopping by the site to comment about the American Idol Songwriter entry process. Here’s a new thread for you to keep the…