Could Sugarland: Live on the Inside usher in a new era of TV concerts?

Has it really been four months since a broadcast network aired a televised concert? Sure, there was a Barbra Streisand special earlier this year, but that was from a 2006 concert, and Streisand isn't exactly a "current" or "hip" musical act. (Although she did top the charts when it was released on DVD.) Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Last night brought us Sugarland: Live on the Inside at ABC. This Sugarland concert was pulled from their current tour and featured their top country hits of today. It was a regular concert filmed for television, and I think it turned out really well.

With networks continuously scrambling to look for fresh alternatives to their traditional programming model amidst eroding ratings, I'm hoping somebody was watching ABC the other night. Concert tickets are expensive, and there are still millions of Americans who don't live near enough a big city to consider going even if they could afford it.

Every year we read about these massive tours selling out across the nation from these huge acts. For many of us, this news is bittersweet because we really would like to see them live, but it's just not feasible. So we pop in our CDs of their greatest hits, cry into our bran flakes, and remember the time when we used to be able to see live concerts on television from time to time.

4.2 million viewers for Sugarland: Live on the Inside is respectable for a summer special featuring a major country music group. If there were a summer concert series on a major network with serious promotion and a wider palette of artists attached like Nickelback, Daughtry, Britney Spears or Beyonce, you could definitely improve on that figure. Sure, Streisand is a legend, but what about the current crop of up-and-coming legends?

As big as Sugarland is in the country music community, I'm not sure they've had enough crossover success to judge the potential of a full-on concert music series by the ratings for this special. Plus, like Sugarland, the artists would really just be using the concert to pimp their next album (Sugarland: Live on the Inside CD/DVD set available exclusively at Wal-Mart starting yesterday, August 4, 2009). The network could always negotiate a cut of those sales in exchange for some of the cost of airing the special, or just take the rates for advertising it.

Maybe I'm the only one who has any interest in seeing a televised concert. Would you be excited about seeing concerts of your favorite artists on broadcast television? Do you think a concert series would even work, or should they stick to their cable and pay-per-view events?