The American Song Contest launched last year and finished with Oklahoma star AleXa winning the inaugural edition with “Wonderland”. But now, the future of the transatlantic version of Eurovision could be in jeopardy. American broadcaster NBC has not renewed the show for a second season yet.
Discussions are still ongoing to keep the American Song Contest alive for another season. That’s according to Christer Björkman, one of the people responsible for bringing the song contest to the states,
Björkman told podcast TV-fabriken that the results of the first American Song Contest season disappointed him.
He said: “I can get really upset if I think about all the factors that they didn’t succeed with in order for the programme to reach out. There are a lot of things that I think could have been done differently to get better dissemination and greater awareness that this programme would appear.”
“But that’s their headache, they have to deal with that and they have to try to fix that for a second season. It’s a bit out of my control.”
Many Eurovision fans watching the programme complained in the weeks leading up to the show and during the episodes that the show lacked proper promotion and enthusiasm compared to its European counterpart.
Additionally, the show’s premiere received a last minute pushback. Originally scheduled to debut on 21 February 2022, the show eventually broadcast four weeks later, on 21 March.
The premier failed to hit home with audience, picking up low viewing figures that continued to decline week by week. Critics doubted the American Song Contest too.
Commercially, none of the 56 entries by AleXa’s “Wonderland” made it to the Billboard charts, with most collecting only a dozen thousands of streams.
Will American Song Contest be renewed for season two?
The American Song Contest is yet to be renewed for a second season.
Speaking on the future of the American Song Contest, Christer Björkman said that negotiations are still ongoing. But broadcaster NBC has not made a decision on the show’s future.
Björkman had lots to say about the commercial viability of the contest.
He said: “I cannot control how the channel manages to get the message out and how they manage to spread awareness about this program. I can’t do much about that. That’s really a question for them to answer. Are they satisfied with how they got the message out? No, I do not think so. Are they happy with the viewership? No, I don’t think so either. Are they happy that they moved four weeks so they ended up on the same start date as American Idol? No, I don’t think they’re happy with that either.”
If the American Song Contest were to be cancelled, it would be the second failed international Eurovision spin-off in recent years. In 2021, the widely anticipated Eurovision Asia got the axe after several years of pre-production struggles.
Do you think the American Song Contest will return? Do you want to see it back on the screen? Or do you think the show does not work outside of Europe? Let us know in the comments down below.
The choice of hosts for the program set the show up for failure too. Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg lacked chemistry, and neither contributed anything meaningful. They should have gotten a rock artist and an R&B singer and paired them up instead of bringing in two cliches that people have seen a million times and whose novelty has long worn off. Snoop had no business presenting it. They probably paid him a big stack but for no return. That’s another thing people forget about TV shows that it’s not just about the ratings. The ratings are a means to generate… Read more »
I actually really liked this show–I discovered artists I never would have otherwise, and some of them have become favorites of mine. I really hope there’s a second season.
As an American and long time Eurovision fan I was so disappointed with this show. It completely missed the essence and soul of Eurovision…just another lame song contest without anythinf interesting.
This show was in trouble when they asked (and I most certainly suspect they asked) has-beens to participate: Jewel, Sisqo, Macy Gray, the Crystal Method, and Michael Bolton, the oldest (69) among them and the only qualifier for the final. They did this to drum up support for the show, because they suspected that, without them, viewership would have been deeper in the toilet than it turned out to be… …On top of all that, they would have made a decision for a second season before the end of last year. We’re in January now. The last season began in… Read more »
I said a year ago , it would last 1 or 2 seasons the most. America doesn’t get it, they don’t buy it and the show does have tremendously high production costs, overweighing the viewing figures which was very low. American live shows revolve around advertising, advertising and advertising, as well as viewing figures and revenue. They must have made a loss in this with last year. On another note , the votes for people of colour was tremendously disproportionate. Black artists with great songs got nowhere. They need to act soon if this is to work in the future.… Read more »
In a nutshell, nothing was Björkman’s fault. Except it was. The format was dreadful.
I still don’t quite understand what did NBC pay EBU for, because the ASC has very little with ESC. They threw away pretty much everything that makes Eurovision popular with the audience. The only thing they kept from the EBU’s format is the lose idea of various geographical bodies competing against one another. That’s too little. The rest was just your average talent show – and a pretty bad one at that.
Christer’s decision to go to the United States of America first is not a good decision, at least in my opinion. he should have gone to either Asia (specifically ABU [Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union]; helping them developing and launching “Asian Song Contest”, “Asia-Pacific Song Contest” or “Asia-Oceanian Song Contest”) or the whole continent of the Americas (specifically a collaboration of NABA [North American Broadcasters Association], CBU (Carribean Broadcasting Union) and AIR-IAB [Asociación Internacional de Radiodifusión/International Association of Broadcasting]; helping them organizing “Americas Song Contest”). Eurovision is a continental contest, and the only way that this Eurovision brand should be expanded is… Read more »
They tried to make a eurovision equivalent with Asian countries, but it never panned out. The American song contest is only more successful in that it actually did go to air.
the Asian equivalent did not pan out because there is one thing they didn’t do correctly: making it a private project instead of collaborating with the equivalent of the EBU in that region. for anyone’s information, the “license” was granted to SBS (Australian broadcaster) and Blink TV (a production company who also produced “Eurovision – Australia Decides”), not to ABU (Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union). the issue is that, if SBS and Blink TV doesn’t want to continue the project, it has to be axed altogether. it won’t be the same as if ABU gets/got the “license”. the good thing if ABU… Read more »
I agree that the American Song Contest should have been about uniting nations from the Americas, not the US alone. At the moment, ASC is another americanized contest. It’s like saying, “We want another The Voice/American Idol/America’s Got Talent/The Masked Singer/insert your option“. Eurovision is so much more than simply being plastic. It’s about uniting nations through the music and that’s what ASC has had to be about. Instead of dozens of heats, semi-finals or whatever crap they’re called in the US, there should have been only 2 semi-finals at maximum with a capability to compete for all the 35… Read more »
for transcontinental countries, they have to choose to join which union. like Turkey, Kazakhstan or the Caucasus countries. is it EBU or ABU? when all those continental contests can finally exist together, they have to decide. it is similar to association football that those countries have to choose (Israel and Turkey choose to join UEFA and not AFC). Australia is a special story; for non-full members, they should stick with the union/federation suitable to their geographic locations; this is only for Worldvision spots. if Australia takes part in both Eurovision and “Asiavision”, and Australia gets top five in both contests,… Read more »
in the context of song contest, the equivalent of FIFA will be the WBU (World Broadcasting Unions), and the “subordinates” will be like this:
Combining the US and the rest of the Americas for a contest would have been an even bigger disaster but more likely wouldn’t even make it to air, unless the goal was to have it air on Telemundo or Univision which are the Spanish-language TV channels in the US.
The producers, as well as Christer, wanted to be based in LA…
I really tried to like and watch ASC. There are so many things that are wrong in the ASC than the good parts. And I agree with most that the number one reason was no promotion of the show, and most important, no promotion of the songs. The songs and staging – the name of the artist and their songs are only released the day before. And most songs are bland with the exception of the winner Alexa and Texas’ Grant Knoche – both are very memorable. And the staging, it seems artist did not get that yes it may… Read more »
I’m glad. I don’t like how he tried to franchise off Eurovision like any other reality show, The Voice, Got Talent, XFactor….etc. This just cheapens the brand and seems like a money grab. The magic of Eurovision can’t be replicated with loud backing tracks/playback, fireworks and glitter. It has to have something unique to set it apart.
I think ASC would’ve been better off with some appropiate audience priming beforehand. I watched the Defunctland documentary about the Disney Channel Theme Tune and in one of the interviews, a woman in PR openly disclosed the ways Disney primed their audience before “Finding Nemo” by showing fish facts in-between shows in Disney Channel about a year before the premiere. The same strategy should’ve applied here, but there was none. I think the Will Ferrell ESC movie was very hit&miss in that regard to be completely honest. I think a biopic on the first ESC in the same spirit and… Read more »
There’s plenty of wrong with ASC and it should be said. But in a constructive way, as in ”how to improve”, not in a way of ”how to pull the plug”. (Can we start being a bit more positive on average as a community?) The idea itself is pretty neat, and the songs were mostly decent and well produced. Sure, a lot of them sounded ”samey”, but still, we got K-pop, mainstream pop, pop-rock, ballads, country-ballads, country-pop, rap, and a few songs with distinct local sounds, like those from the Latin community or the islands. The promotion is pretty bad,… Read more »
There were some positive aspects about the ASC as an inaugural season, for sure. You are correct that from a non-American perspective, the issue of timing did affect the show; I take myself as an example here, as I only had time to watch one Semi Final and the Grand Final on playback during a very busy season. But the ASC is intended for the USA audience anyhow, who are more into well-established shows like American Idol. Hence, a major challenge is how to compete with those other shows in the USA. I think the ASC could offer something different… Read more »
As I’m not American, I don’t know the differences in approach between different networks, but by all means, find the one which understands what a song contest is. One aspect more which is criticized is that people have days for voting, and that the results are announced on separate occasion. I don’t think that it works for such competition. Also, I also noticed how the juries tend to give their wildcard qualification to the same type of songs – ballads with great voices (in ESC, a slickly produced pop would fill that spot too, but it seems like Americans already… Read more »
I can’t be positive about something that harms the Eurovision contest, I just can’t. Sorry, My constructive advice would be to abandon ship. Start again with something completely new, where the aim is to give talent an outlet. Not enhance a “brand”.
Gosh, wouldn’t it be great if all the money that the EBU throws at a contest that nobody watches could be channeled into improving Eurovision as it is- like paying for Balkan countries to actually be able to participate! Just a thought. It’s time for them to realize that Eurovision can’t be replicated elsewhere.
What money did EBU throw on ASC? They only sold the licence. They’ve *made* money on ASC, not spent money.
That’s not how any of this works… NBC spent the money on ASC. NBC has nothing to do with Eurovision and won’t be throwing money at it just to make you happy.
When American Song Contest was on, I used to watch the show. I liked some of the songs, others not so much. But I honestly liked the show. I hope that the show doesn’t get cancelled. It was one of only two songwriting shows, and I think the other one got cancelled or is still in production.
There were so many mistakes that it will be miracle if it survives. No promotion, to many small episodes with few songs, too many ads, all songs were similar, no diversity, stage was just average. It should be done as Eurovision, 2-3 semis and final in one week to keep excitement. They should already know the host state so they can have time to prepare. But it looks like no one wants it. Btw why UK choose same American company to create the stage when ASC stage was so bad?
As someone who lives there, promotion for the show was pretty much next to nonexistent. So it really is not a wonder that viewership was so low.
Majority of the performers did a poor job promoting it as well.
I love the American Song Contest and some of the songs there are still on my playlist like Wonderland, Tell Me, and DIY, not to mention that it gave us a plethora of great singers like Enisa and Alexx Brooke. I’m really hoping for a second season and I’m hoping that NBC would stick to it but I’m guessing it’s up to the executives if they would like to give S2 a chance.
It kinda makes me wish Netflix or Disney+ should have been the broadcaster, it may have done well there instead of NBC.
This was a complete mess. Send them an invitation like Australia and that’s all.
Please no. There are others in the queue. I really hope the end of the ASC does not now somehow qualify as a “long history” to get an invitation.
As an American…GOD NO. We don’t need to push our big fat noses into everything. Let Europe (and Israel and Australia) have this one.
It was like Melodifestivalen, with snippets and all, but it lacked good songs and promotion. Also voting and results came oddly and it wasn’t in one neat package. Many singers seemed to lipsync most of their songs and in the end it all looked flat and boring.
I don’t think NBC is going to renew it for a second season, unless massive changes would be implemented.
I’ll honestly be very upset if this isn’t renewed. I love having a Eurovision concept here in the US. I’d love it even more if they expanded the Americas to include South America, and our great neighbors to the north. The creators and producers now have a lot of feedback about what did and didn’t work from its launch, and I think they can really improve the show with a renewal. They need to give it a chance.
Just let it die, Osterdahls obsessions with making Eurovision a global brand is unhealthy
P.s. since the winner is from OK [herself] I bet you she was right about the genre of music were known (mostly), it is country and not (usually)K-pop, but it also has pop and rock as well as Blues, even there own things like Red Dirt?(yes), there was a songwriter who was on Song Land and he wrote song Aloe Blac at the time, also there’s a show that air on a public TV network from a college: it’s called Studio 66(namesake as in Route 66), they even have something on YouTube (all I know that I saw was the… Read more »
Songs had the quality you can find every year in the MGP or its Danish counterparts. Almost every song sounded too artificial and souless. Irrelevant. It seems the competition between states didn’t resonate well with the audiende, totally opposite to what happens in Eurovision. It looked more like a talent show.
Not sure that’s 100% true, I liked when they showed breakdowns of how each state was voting (don’t think it should have been while vote still open however) and they showed Alabama overwhelmingly voting for Georgia and things like that, there were parts of the Eurovision spirit in the show.
Jury vote strangled it at birth.
The few good songs that people liked didn’t even qualify to future rounds. Kelly Clarkson even said on one of the episodes she was “surprised” at how the jury voted.
Thankfully they rapidly reduced the jury vote for the final to about 1/5th of what it was during the qualifiers.
Typical Swedish mafia behavior, no accountability no self criticism it’s always someone else’s fault. Maybe the fact that all the songs were basic af? The stagings as if they were advanced melfest semi acts?
He is pathetic.
Björkman trying to blame everyone else but himself, hilarious!
The concept of Eurovision won’t work anywhere else in the world other than Europe.
I think that it might work in Africa. Beside Europe I really starting to think that in Africa it might come alive for the same reasons it is alive here.
His ego is so big that it’s becoming his downfall
The concept of Eurovision may work elsewhere. The problem is that they didn’t use the concept of Eurovision for ASC. ASC was American version of Melfest, not American version of Eurovision. It lacked virtually all features that make Eurovision popular and successful.
If the EBU wanted a network that was going to nurture ASC and give it a chance to grow, they should have gone with a streamer or more niche cable channel and not NBC.
It’s hardly a secret that broadcast TV in the USA is cut throat – if you don’t perform straight out of the blocks, then you’re out!
Sure, Björkman, blame the promotion. Accepting your own responsibility, that your decisions were a failure? Nah, that’s not possible, it’s all about the promo, yes, that’s it.
While there were certainly many factors at play regarding the failure of ASC, the promotion was still lacking. I live in the United States, and yet the only reason I knew anything about this show was through the Eurovision community. I’ve seen plenty of promotions for other NBC shows, but none for ASC.
I also live in the United States, yet I saw commercials on TV about Eurovision. I even got to speak about it to some friends due to them seeing the commercial.
I made an ASC Facebook group and it’s the biggest and I’m proud of that. Every week I post upcoming concerts by those that participated in the ASC. However, it’s somewhat dead. Only a 2nd ASC can bring it back to life.
Hot take, but the American Song Contest kind of reminds me of Malta’s recent national finals. Sure, there are a few good songs in the mix, but there are also 20-30 more songs than there needed to be, and they ALL feel like filler. Adding onto that is the horrendous amount of ads, which honestly made me turn off MESC last year (like for real what was up with the 10 minute ad breaks??). The main thing that ASC had going for it was its staging, but really we should expect that, right? If Mr Björkman REALLY wants to bring… Read more »
as an American, I agree with all except letting us join.
Maybe after its been streamed on peacock for a lot longer, but now would not be the time.
all the Olympics and Idol comparisons make me sick!
I totally agree. I only watched one episode of ASC live because of the horrendous ad breaks. I’m okay with the number of songs, because the whole point is for each of the 56 US states and territories to be represented, but the song quality was definitely not the greatest.
As someone from the US, I can say with certianty that the biggest thing hindering the ASC was the fact that there was little promotion and there is a glut of music/talent shows on throughout the year.
So weird that a contest where representatives got assigned a state to represent based on weather reports for that day, where you could literally bring dozens of people with you on stage and where singing live wasn’t that important failed… I wonder how come.
reminder that every single episode of ASC was beaten three-fold by katy perry’s american idol in audience numbers
I want this concept to succeed but it needs to have the stability of its parent contest and not change result reveals every week.
they booked my boi snoop dogg for this???
what a waste
Not a bad thing. I was part of the ones that were actually excited at the idea of seeing an American version of the contest but it was a complete flop. The contest had nothing to compare with ESC, everything seemed fake (well, like the US culture) and the songs were meh… I only loved the winning song even though I’m not into K-pop (but I think it wasn’t hard k-pop, it was k-pop diluted in american pop).
As an American I don’t think the problem was promotion at all. The show was lackluster and didn’t capture any of the spark of Eurovision. I couldn’t even finish watching the first year. The same genre and styles of songs kept being chosen to move forward each episode. And it wasn’t just a televoting problem, the juries definitely had a bias. I’m hoping it doesn’t come back for a second year , it was so difficult to watch.
Oh come on, everyone knew it will flop, including NBC and Bjorkman. That’s why they were putting it off for so many years, did countless amount of market research with negative results. When the format was first introduced to Bjorkman by Anders Lenhoff, Bjorkman instantly rejected it. He knew it will NOT WORK.
Let’s be real: ASC Year 2 is probably not happening. With NBC already in talks to revive The X Factor US, I highly doubt they will be interested in keeping both the ASC and The Voice along with it. And the ASC is the easiest one to sacrifice of those two. Critically panned, beaten in the ratings by 9-1-1 reruns and a well-past-its-prime American Idol, no impact whatsoever in music charts… Unless the deal with Cowell falls through, it’s safe to say the road ends here for the American Song Contest.
I kinda knew that, this was coming, I have a feeling about the show (rather if came back another season or not), but if did I don’t know how it’s going to get good ratings… Also there’s a lot of good talent of acts out who are pretty good, even if we already know who they are if they were on a show that was short lived (like the X Factor that only lasted 3 seasons in America), also for [original] song select I wonder if an artist would come about what’s going on here (like anti violence perhaps) it… Read more »
bless Christer for taking absolutely no accountability for his own show’s shortcomings…and yes, while I recognize there was absolutely no proper campaign for this show, Christer and his crew never knew how to properly adapt Eurovision for American audiences the way people cared and really spoke to local music scene of each of the 50 states…getting a bunch of no-name talent to represent states that many of which did not represent the music scene from those individual states was really unfortunate–and that was not the responsibility of the show’s marketing–that was on the show and how they discovered and got… Read more »
The timing is everything for such shows. Eurovision was born at a time when people needed a distraction and nothing like it was on. Now Americans already watched so many talent shows, this cannot add something different in their screen.
there were good ones:
But it was really embarrassing as a eurofan from The US myself. The results on a separate day? nobody understanding how the results work, the outdated jury qualifier, and then there only being one jury per state. The whole crowd cheering through the whole thing.
At least a good one won, but now people think she cant sing after the disastrous winning performance
Tbf as an American who watched the show with his family. We all were put off by the VERY apparent lipsync going on, notably from Mississippi and WINNER Oklahoma.
The show also was FILLED with Ads that just bored me to death. It didn’t feel like a competition at all.
I agree! The lipsyncing killed whatever enthusiasm I had for the show in the very first episode
That’s what they aiming, see how Norway is introducing autotune this year. It’s a recipe for disaster.
You need live vocals for a musical contest, it’s that simple really.
The two contests are so different, I still don’t understand what NBC are paying the EBU for. All this talk of “brands” and “formats” and “seasons” bothers me. This is not what public service broadcasting is about. Imagine if our own European contest was decided by one team of producers. These people select all the songs, assign them to various singers, decide who will represent what country… it would be completely fake.
It’s ridiculous that EBU gave them the use of the “brand”, when all it does is cheapen it. Anything to raise the profile in America, it seems.
Something else I’ve never really understood, why a union of broadcasters would invest in Netflix. The thing that is sinking them.
They also had a deal where Netflix streamed the 2019 and 2020 contests in America.
Björkman has such a big ego that I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that he was an Argentine in his past life lol
Ngl, it was a miracle that the first season came to an end instead of being cancelled halfway through. As for the show, the songs were fine overall, but the format and the mess they made with the rules affected it
I actually really liked ASC!! There were a ton of gems in those songs, and a lot of diversity and range that we don’t get even in Eurovision. I still listen to DIY (my winner) and New Boot Goofin constantly, and really enjoyed a ton of other songs!! The biggest problem really came down to the show and showrunners itself – constantly changing the rules, the extremely biased and predictable (and racist!) jury made of Country Music Radio Hosts, the ads between every song, etc. If there’s anything they need to learn from Eurovision, it’s how to actually put together… Read more »
Well said. I still listen to many ASC songs too, though some ASC songs I liked seemed like cheaper versions of ESC songs that were good but a long way from my fave (like DIY next to That’s Rich, It’s Up next to IM, Sunsets and Seaturtles next to Boys Do Cry for example). And there were some awesome ESC songs that it would be hard to imagine in the American one.
the contest was a flop not the promotion. I saw many celebrities especially those affiliated with NBC promoting it
I would not be surprised if the American song contest doesn’t get another season. If you didn’t do well in the ratings, you’re a flop.
I do not think it was that bad. And I still listen to Wonderland!
I just think the market in US is to overstuffed with musical singing shows. “idol, The Voice”. Masked Singer”. Not to mention random other various entertainment shows with music as focus, like “That’s My Jam”. So even if these shows are not better people are used to them and watch it more out of duty than anything. And that is the problem, no one had relations to Song Contest. People simply chose familiar stuff like Idol over Song Contest. Even if Idol is terrible tooo
The Eurovision Song Contest was born in 1956, long before the dawn of these reality television shows. It’s about perception. To me, the contest is an annual event, not just weekly trash. A contest for songwriters as well as vocalists.
for you yes. But for Americans Eurovision is unknown. It has not been around forever. Therefore it has to be adapted into a format Americans are familiar with. And as mentioned, there is the problem: Too many similar shows!
But all those shows are known and established, that is what I am saying. They have steady audiences. Looks like NBC wanted Sing Contest to compete with those audiences and focus on the same target group who enjoyed those shows. Which of curse did not work since no one knew what ASC was or what it did. Should they have had another strategy? maybe, I do not work with PR. I mean it was clearl they would lose the fight with Idol even if Idol is way past it’s prime..
As an American, no one asked for this. I think one reason why Eurovision works so well is because there was a purpose for it (after WWII) and the competition has been filled with rich history (voting patterns, drama between countries, etc). Comparatively, the American version is literally only for commercial purposes. The voting was so weird…If they do bring it back, let actual Eurovision fans, writers, and commentators actually plan the thing