Jingle Writing Goes The “American Idol” Route

noah | April 14, 2008 9:30 am

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CBS has decided to pick up the Mark Burnett game show Jingles, during which contestants will be required to write songs showcasing the various sponsors of the program in a positive light, then have those tunes judged by an “expert panel” and Americans. Winning songs will get used in the featured products’ commercials, a fact that should make any indie musician hoping to pay his rent by selling his track to a soap company quiver in his boots. The designed-for-evading-TiVoers show will likely appear on the network’s schedule come summertime, and casting is apparently going on right now! Here’s a suggestion for CBS: How about cueing up a “marginal indie celebrity” version of the show to bring down your network’s average viewing age–perhaps Feist vs. Wilco vs. Stephin Merritt? A preview of that potential throwdown is after the jump.

It’s “Jingles” all the way for CBS, Burnett [Reuters]