In less than one week, NBC will air the first episode of the American Song Contest. This will launch the 8 week event to decide which of the 50 states and 6 territories will win the title of “Best Hit Song.” Here is everything you should expect to see on Monday 21 March at 8PM EST/2AM CET
Who Is Competing in Qualifying Round 1?
NBC has not officially released the line-ups yet. However, we can infer from some artist’s social medias who will be competing.
| State/Territory | Artist | Song |
| Arkansas | Kelsey Lamb | “Never Like This” |
| Conneticut | Michael Bolton | |
| Indiana | UG Skywalkin | “Love In My City” |
| Iowa | Alisabeth Von Presley | |
| Minnesota | Yam Haus | “Ready To Go” |
| Mississippi | Keyone Starr | |
| Oklahoma | AleXa | “Wonderland” |
| Puerto Rico | Christian Pagan | “Loko” |
| Rhode Island | Hueston | “Held On Too Long” |
| Wisconsin | Jake’O | |
| Wyoming | Ryan Charles |
Each artist will perform live on stage from Universal Studios Lot in Los Angeles, California.
The Format
Last week, the Minnesota representative, Yam Haus, revealed a lot of information about the format in a TikTok Live. The contest will consist of 5 qualifying rounds, 2 semi finals, and one grand final. Each qualifying round will see 11 artists compete with one round of 12. Four artists will qualify from each of the qualifying rounds. There will be 2 semi-finals consisting of 10 acts each. Finally, there is the grand final with a still unknown number of acts.
It’s time to talk about the voting
The voting is going to follow the Eurovision format. This means that we get to see each state give out their “douze points” and so on for each round. However, unlike Eurovision, the ASC will be televote only. This televote, however, will be very different than that at the ESC.
There will be 3 ways to vote: the NBC website, the NBC app, and TikTok. Voting will be free, and most likely restricted to the US. Each televoter will be asked to rank the songs just like how the Eurovision juries do. It is unknown how this ranking system will work with TikTok.
Will There Be A Prize?
We all know U.S. competition shows all have prizes at the end. These range anywhere from $100,000 cash prizes to recording contracts. However, in all the marketing, NBC makes it clear that the artists are only competition for the “Title of Best Hit Song.” This doesn’t mean artists will walk away empty handed. In fact, anyone who makes it to the semi-finals will receive a pair of custom in-ear-monitors.
Where/when can you watch
The exclusive place to watch it live will be on NBC which requires a US cable subscription. However, the shows will be available the next day on Peacock, NBC’s streaming service. Furthermore, some non-US broadcasters have acquired the rights and will stream it a couple days after it is live. They are:
- Sweden – SVT
- Iceland – RUV
- Finland – YLE
- Greece – ERT
- Serbia – RTS
- Spain – RTVE Play
- Canada – CHCH-DT
More about the American Song Contest
The American Song Contest is executive produced by Audrey Morrissey, Anders Lenhoff, Christer Björkman, Peter Settman, Ola Melzig, and Gregory Lipstone alongside Propagate’s Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens. The competition is produced by Propagate in association with Universal Television Alternative Studio, a division of Universal Studio Group.
The inaugural edition of the competition will be hosted by Snoop Doogg and Kelly Clarkson, and will premiere on the 21st of March on NBC.
What do you think of the upcoming contest? Will you be watching the show? Let us know! Don’t forget to follow ‘THAT Eurovision Site’ over at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
News Source: NBCUniversal
Photo Source: EBU
