TVSquad

When I read the news that Billboard magazine (which is probably best known for giving Casey Kasem source material) was going to go into the reality show business, I scratched my head to figure out what exactly they'd do. After all, countdown shows are as old as TV itself, so doing something based on the trade magazine's famous charts would have had to be pretty damn creative. I was envisioning someone standing on a street corner acting out the top twenty songs through mime. And, as we all know, nothing good can come from the use of mime.

Fortunately, we've dodged that bullet for now; according to The Hollywood Reporter (via Reuters), the reality show will be a competition series, dubbed Billboard Next. Artists from various genres will submit videos via a website, which will be voted on by the site's audience. Those with the most popular votes will compete for the grand prize, which right now is unspecified. I'd imagine it'll be some sort of recording contract, but for all we know, it might just be a professional redo of the artist's MySpace page. I guess it all depends on the budget.