Past Internet Articles About Amy Grant

'Three Wishes' finds home at CMT
Future of show on NBC is murky, but local network will run existing episodes.
By NAOMI SNYDER
Staff Writer

Episodes of Amy Grant's feel-good reality show Three Wishes, although off the air at NBC, will be rebroadcast on CMT, the country music network announced yesterday.

The show, billed as an "inspiring and heartwarming unscripted series," features Nashville native and Christian music artist Amy Grant and her co-hosts granting wishes to people in towns across America.

In one show, a boy gets his wish and becomes chief executive at Microsoft for a day.

Three Wishes debuted this fall and ran for 10 episodes.

"It's kind of a no-brainer for us," said Mary Beth Cunin, CMT's vice president of program planning and scheduling. "She's very popular with our viewers and our world."

She didn't have estimates of the numbers of viewers expected to watch the reruns, but the show on NBC was estimated to draw an average of 7.7 million viewers per week at one point. Recently, it hit No. 1 in its time slot, 8 p.m. Fridays.

NBC could not be reached yesterday about the show's future on NBC.

CMT liked it enough to put it in prime time, and took an option to rebroadcast any future episodes, should NBC make them.

The rebroadcasts on CMT will air at 7 p.m. Mondays. The first episode, however, will run after the Miss America Pageant on Jan. 21.

The show has gotten mixed reviews. Mark Perigard at the Boston Herald regretted the absence of Three Wishes from the NBC schedule lately: "Sure, it sometimes ran amok with product placement, but it was always for a good cause."

Joel Rubinoff of The Record in Kitchener-Waterloo Ontar-io asked why the show was off NBC: "Was it the swirling violin score accompanying every maudlin, over-the-top sob story?"

CMT is a part of Viacom's MTV Networks, and its offices are in Nashville. CMT reaches some 78.7 million homes. �