Platinum Hit - This Is Platinum Hit

Episode Synopsis: Songsmiths battle in various tune-writing challenges in this music-competition reality show hosted by Jewel. First up: The city of Los Angeles inspires the 12 contestants to author a hook-laden song. Kara DioGuardi is the series' head judge; Jermaine Dupri and Trevor Jerideau are guest judges.

My delayed thoughts on last Monday's Platinum Hit series premiere on Bravo featuring Kara DioGuardi.

First of all, I am very excited to see Kara on TV again! I think she benefits a lot from the editing. She comes across as really professional and more in control. She is the head judge after all and she's finally looking like one on TV.

I'm not so sure about Jewel as host. She's seems very cold and not friendly. I guess it's fitting for such a cutthroat industry as songwriting, but I would like to have a more calming influence guiding the proceedings where everyone is expected to behave badly.

The casting for this show is excellent. Apparently bloated egos are not in short supply, so we are assured of a lot of drama for the next few weeks. Hopefully some of them are at least funny and not just delusional.

The prize is $100,000 and a record deal. Not bad! That's actually the same as The Voice, LOL.

Like most reality shows, the show is divided into two parts: a short "mini challenge" leading to the bigger "main challenge". For Platinum Hit, the mini challenge is a "hook challenge" where the songwriters are tasked to create a "hook" for their song. The top 4 writers chosen by Jewel and Kara get to be leaders of the "song challenge" where they are tasked to complete a song based on the hook by groups! Nice. Groups always create conflict.

For the Hook Challenge this week:

4th - Jackie Tohn - from American Idol Season 8!
3rd - Scotty - Jordin Sparks' musical director!
2nd - Nick - a douche
1st - Sonyae - and yet another delusional reality contestant. I was so shocked she won - I thought it was a joke.

One cast member worth mentioning is Blessing who is blind and has a guide dog with him. Heart.

These are the songs the teams came up with:

Nick - My City
Jackie - City of Dreams
Scotty - No One Again
Sonyae - Love It Or Hate It

And guess what? They're available on iTunes!

Download: Platinum Hit - This is Platinum Hit (4 songs)

Again, the songwriters benefit a lot from editing. I think the actual studio recordings from iTunes are played on the show when they are presenting to the judges.

Results:

Nick's team which included Jes and Karen win! Jackie's team was second.

Scotty's team was the losing team.

Nevin was eliminated for contributing the meaningless "They want you to lose, they need you to fail" lyrics.

I look forward to next week's episode. As long as there is a lot of drama and tears -- I'm there. It also doesn't hurt that we get to hear some interesting music each week.

Watch the video here: