Reba Mcentire

IT HAPPENS every May: The broadcast networks announce their schedules for the following season and it's as if we're seeing double. It usually takes three to declare a trend, but TV seasons tend to get filled like Noah's Ark, with new (or recycled) ideas arriving in pairs. A year ago, it was '60s dramas — NBC's "Playboy Club" and ABC's "Pan Am" — and shows in which fairy tales turned out to be true — NBC's "Grimm" and ABC's "Once Upon a Time. " If there was any surprise, it wasn't that the "Mad Men" wannabes didn't make it to Season 2, but that the other two did. (And that CBS ordered its own '60s drama, "Vegas," for this fall.)

For Reba McEntire, there is no ploy too crass, no gimmick too shamelessly hokey, no gesture too ridiculously over the top. The woman will stop at nothing. "Tonight I'm getting to do the very thing I love the most," said country music's bestselling female artist from the Spectrum stage Saturday night. "And that's entertaining nice folks like y'all. " You couldn't say she didn't put all her guile and showmanship into the task. (The question of whether her heart was in it was another matter.

Reba McEntire, the pint-size strawberry blonde who's been named top female vocalist four times running by the Academy of Country Music, is an Oklahoma cowgirl with big-city ambitions. "Whoever's in New England," a 1986 "countrypolitan" ballad sung from the perspective of a wife suspicious about her husband's frequent business trips to Massachusetts, broke new ground for McEntire. As expected, Northerners identified with the scenario and the locale. Increasingly, her tour bus traveled the Northeast.

The Judds and Reba McEntire got five nominations each for the 1986 Country Music Association awards, it was announced yesterday, and George Strait and Randy Travis were nominated for four awards each. The announcement of the five finalists in each of 12 categories was made at a news conference at the Grand Ole Opry. The winners, chosen by vote of the membership of the industry organization, will be announced during a nationally telecast show in October. The Judds, daughter Wynonna and Naomi, were nominated for awards as entertainer of the year, the top award, plus vocal group, single, album and video.

Whether you're an awards fan or not, even the most casual viewer of the last several Grammy shows would have had to imagine that Lady Antebellum had taken over as hosts. Those broadcasts found Nashville's finest in front of the cameras, winning song of the year and record of the year for "Need You Now," as well as the prize for best country album. The American Country Music Awards? Lady Antebellum won top vocal group, song of the year, and single of the year. It's almost annoying how ubiquitous the band is during awards season.

ABC'S GOING a little bit country this fall. On Wednesdays at 10, Connie Britton ("Friday Night Lights") will star in the drama "Nashville" as a country-music star whose career is beginning to flag and whose record label thinks the answer might be having her join forces with a younger singer (Hayden Panettiere, "Heroes"), who turns out to be a bit of a schemer. Callie Khouri ("Thelma & Louise") wrote the pilot, which was directed by documentarian R.J. Cutler ("The War Room"). In November, actual country- music star (and sitcom veteran)

8 tonight CHANNEL 6 Highlights of the annual four-day event in Nashville, Tenn., are scheduled to include performers Tim McGraw (right), Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Alan Jackson, and Reba McEntire, among others.

It's a Reba McEntire world. The red-headed entertainment empress was the top nominee-getter when the contenders for Country Music Association awards were announced yesterday by George Jones and Pam Tillis at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. McEntire - whose current Read My Mind and double platinum Greatest Hits Volume Two are both in the Billboard Country Top 20 - snagged six nominations, including the prestigious Entertainer of the Year, which she won in 1986. And the unremittingly perky Oklahoman's further nominations in the Female Vocalist, Album, Single, Music Video and Vocal Event categories (the latter three for "Does He Love You," her catfight duet with Linda Davis)

It's getting to be that Bob Dylan is as consistent a summer attraction as the Beach Boys. (The Boys, incidentally, are playing Great Adventure on Sunday.) For the last two years, Dylan has played Philadelphia backed by bands with contemporary clout - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and the Grateful Dead. Wednesday at the Mann Music Center, he'll be fronting a guitar-bass-drums trio headed by G. E. Smith of the Saturday Night Live band. (Marshall Crenshaw, originally slotted to play bass, reportedly dropped out of the tour to begin writing his next album.

The Ellen DeGeneres Show (3 p.m., NBC10) - Gwyneth Paltrow; Darren Criss & the Warblers perform. The Oprah Winfrey Show (4 p.m., 6ABC) - Chris Rock. Friday Night Lights (8 p.m., NBC10) - The Lions are off to a good start, but Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) is surprised to learn not everyone is happy. Vince (Michael B. Jordan) discovers stardom has perks, but Luke (Matt Lauria) learns his aggressive playing style has consequences. Girls' Night Out: Superstar Women of Country (9 p.m., CBS3)

IT HAPPENS every May: The broadcast networks announce their schedules for the following season and it's as if we're seeing double. It usually takes three to declare a trend, but TV seasons tend to get filled like Noah's Ark, with new (or recycled) ideas arriving in pairs. A year ago, it was '60s dramas — NBC's "Playboy Club" and ABC's "Pan Am" — and shows in which fairy tales turned out to be true — NBC's "Grimm" and ABC's "Once Upon a Time. " If there was any surprise, it wasn't that the "Mad Men" wannabes didn't make it to Season 2, but that the other two did. (And that CBS ordered its own '60s drama, "Vegas," for this fall.)

Whether you're an awards fan or not, even the most casual viewer of the last several Grammy shows would have had to imagine that Lady Antebellum had taken over as hosts. Those broadcasts found Nashville's finest in front of the cameras, winning song of the year and record of the year for "Need You Now," as well as the prize for best country album. The American Country Music Awards? Lady Antebellum won top vocal group, song of the year, and single of the year. It's almost annoying how ubiquitous the band is during awards season.

ABC'S GOING a little bit country this fall. On Wednesdays at 10, Connie Britton ("Friday Night Lights") will star in the drama "Nashville" as a country-music star whose career is beginning to flag and whose record label thinks the answer might be having her join forces with a younger singer (Hayden Panettiere, "Heroes"), who turns out to be a bit of a schemer. Callie Khouri ("Thelma & Louise") wrote the pilot, which was directed by documentarian R.J. Cutler ("The War Room"). In November, actual country- music star (and sitcom veteran)

The god of television is, in my imagination, a rugged cowboy type who looks and sounds a lot like Lorne Greene during the Bonanza era. Whatever tube deities you worship, it is time to give them thanks for the extraordinary programming bounty they have provided us on Sunday night. Amen and pass the remote. This is a feast beyond all reckoning - or recording, for that matter. Just don't make the rookie mistake of filling up on Shahs of Sunset reruns before the main courses are served.

The most thankless task in show business - besides being Chelsea Handler's sidekick - has to be hosting an awards show. You simply cannot win. Ask Ricky Gervais. Last year he was widely reviled for being too mean, too insulting on the Golden Globes. This year he was pilloried for being too bland. How are you supposed to take direction from that? Whatever you're doing, we don't like it. It's like having Goldilocks as a porridge- taster. Good luck getting that temperature just right.

Scotty McCreery vs. Lauren Alaina. All those of you who foresaw this tandem of Dixie-fried adolescents facing off in the American Idol finals, raise your hands. Well, if you ain't the grandpappy of all liars! Tuesday night's unexpected showdown, with the winner to be announced Wednesday night, is a fitting end to Idol 's surprise-stuffed 10th season. Going into this year, the primary question was: Could Idol survive without its presiding personality, Simon Cowell?

The Ellen DeGeneres Show (3 p.m., NBC10) - Gwyneth Paltrow; Darren Criss & the Warblers perform. The Oprah Winfrey Show (4 p.m., 6ABC) - Chris Rock. Friday Night Lights (8 p.m., NBC10) - The Lions are off to a good start, but Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) is surprised to learn not everyone is happy. Vince (Michael B. Jordan) discovers stardom has perks, but Luke (Matt Lauria) learns his aggressive playing style has consequences. Girls' Night Out: Superstar Women of Country (9 p.m., CBS3)

Wednesday at noon, Philadelphia immortalized a big part of its entertainment history. The 300 block of South Broad Street was renamed Gamble & Huff Walk, in honor of prolific hit-monsters and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame mainstays Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff , phounders of the Philly Sound. That block contains the Philadelphia International Records building, where G&H penned 3,000 tunes and produced hundreds of hits and lots of Number Ones and Grammy winners, including "Back Stabbers," the ubiquitous "Love Train," "If You Don't Know Me by Now," "Don't Leave Me This Way," "Only the Strong Survive," and "TSOP" (the Soul Train theme)

8 tonight CHANNEL 6 Highlights of the annual four-day event in Nashville, Tenn., are scheduled to include performers Tim McGraw (right), Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Alan Jackson, and Reba McEntire, among others.