Malcolm Owen
Apple has ordered "My Kind of Country," a competition singing show for Apple TV about country music featuring contestants from around the world, produced by Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine.
Announced on Monday, "My Kind of Country" is said to be a "groundbreaking global search for unconventional and extraordinary country music talent," one that will also "revolutionize the music competition genre with a fresh, new documentary sensibility."
The show aims to "break down cultural and musical barriers in the country music space," though few details about how the show will work have been revealed at this time.
Reese Witherspoon's Help Sunshine will be producing the show, alongside Jason Owen of Sandbox Entertainment and Emmy Award nominee Pizzie Pick Ibarra, who was the showrunner for other competition series including "Dancing with the Stars" and "The Masked Singer." Adam Blackstone, another Emmy nominee, will be the musical director for the series, which will be executive produced by Done + Dusted.
The show will be available globally to subscribers of Apple TV+ as part of its $4.99 subscription, or under the free one-year offer when buying Apple hardware.
Apple's expansion into a competition format is a departure for the service, which has heavily relied on scripted content in its original programming, but it won't be Apple's first attempt in the genre.
One of its first forays into original TV content pre-Apple TV+ was "Planet of the Apps," a show where people with app ideas attempted to gain funding and actually build it. The show failed to make much traction, and was slammed by marketing guru and one of the show's on-screen advisors Gary Vaynerchuk one year later for failing to market the show despite the stars involved in its production.
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4 Comments
OMG A country version of Nobody's got Talent or American Idle. What could possibly go wrong?
{{{shudder}}}
And starting a country music station …?
Has Apple suddenly discovered Dolly Parton or something? (Sorry, that's the only country artist I can name off the top of my head).
I'm almost curious enough to reactivate my AppleTV+ account just to see if there are any European, and particularly German, CW groups/singers. I lived in Germany for a while and was surprised to see how much interest in all things American Western there was, including active CW music scene. I was totally blown away when a friend took me to a club overflowing with Germans all decked out in boots, jeans, and stetsons, line-dancing to Cotten-Eyed Joe. And this was in an area far away from any of the few remaining US military installations. A quick google search finds other CW scenes in Sweden, Britain, and the Czech Republic. If this program does reach out to artists from other countries, there might be some pleasant surprises.
Of course, everything could go down in flames, too.
Maybe Apple could cement a deal with the Grand Old Opry or sign an exclusive deal with Dolly Patton’s production company? Both would have some cachet to them.