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Clare Bowen as Scarlett and Sam Palladio as Gunnar play a song at the Bluebird Cafe in the premier of “Nashville.” Image courtesy ABC

Nashville’s tourism industry is making the most of the city’s new primetime spotlight. The ABC show bearing Music City’s name premiers Wednesday night. Tourism officials say they couldn’t have written a better script themselves.

If it weren’t enough that the show is spending $4 million per episode to shoot on location here, local songwriters are penning the soundtrack and the opening footage rolls like a set of glamour shots – aerial views of the Nashville skyline, hilltop mansions and the winding Cumberland River.

“There are billboards and posters and signs all over LA and New York that just say ‘Nashville,’” says Butch Spyridon, president of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau. “I mean, I couldn’t buy it. I can’t thank them enough, and keep it up.”

Spyridon is all smiles. He jokes – though hard to know if he’s kidding – that maybe he wouldn’t have shown so much southern hospitality if the show were about homicides, not country music.

Government officials have helped the producers shoot just about anywhere they like – Music Row, a Metro school, and the state capitol. It’s used as city hall.

The state has already ponied up $7.5 million in incentives, with more expected to come from Metro coffers if “Nashville” makes it.

A Local Idea

The concept didn’t exactly fall in the city’s lap. It’s the brainchild of a local executive.

“It’s more about the city than really any other show I can think of,” says executive producer Steve Buchanan.

Buchanan’s day job is in the tourism industry. He heads the business unit that owns country music attractions like the Grand Ole Opry and Ryman Auditorium. Not by coincidence, they are heavily featured in the show. The company’s Opryland Hotel even gets some face time in the first episode.

Buchanan wants to drive business to the city, though he says artistic quality comes first.

“It’s critical for the show to succeed, for us to ultimately be able to enjoy the other benefits,” he says.

But venues are already prepping for a bump. A major character is a waitress at the Bluebird Café. Series star Connie Britton (playing Rayna James, reigning queen of country) refers to the Bluebird as “the mecca” in the first episode.

The cast of Nashville includes Connie Britton as country music queen Rayna James and Hayden Panettiere as starlet Juliette Barnes. Image courtesy ABC

The show’s producers built an exact replica of the Bluebird in their North Nashville sound stage, down to the can of WD-40 sitting behind the bar.

And the Bluebird manager is played by the Bluebird manager, Erika Wollam-Nichols.

“When people come to the Bluebird after they’ve seen the show, they’ll see me,” she says. “They’ll see Jimmy who works our door. They’ll be like, ‘oh my gosh. This really is real.’”

Keeping the Character

If audiences like “Nashville” as much as critics do, the Bluebird will become much better known. But it’s still a hole-in-the-wall with beer-stained carpets.

“The risk and the balance that I’m working on is how to be able to get new carpet and have some financial help through this notoriety and still be the place that people want to play,” Wollam-Nichols says.

More gawkers in the crowd, she says, could mean fewer record executives dropping in to find the next hit, like they did with Garth Brooks or Taylor Swift, to name two.

It’s impossible to nail down the economic impact of primetime placement, but the city of Dallas with a now-revived series of the same name shows the possibilities..

“You can go anywhere in the world – I swear – and be able to just say, ‘I’m from Dallas,’” says Dallas Film Commission director Janis Burklund. “The first thing out of their mouth is, ‘oh, J.R.’”

In 1980, 360 million people worldwide tuned in to see who shot J.R. Ewing.

The knock on “Dallas” was that it was sort of a caricature, putting everyone in boots and hats. There have been similar concerns about “Nashville,” but Burklund says better that people have a misperception of a city, than no perception at all.