Ryan Seacrest Preps Music Show for NBC; Says It Won't Compete With 'American Idol'

Ryan Seacrest is in early talks with NBC to do a music themed show.

Unlike American Idol, the Ryan Seacrest Productions project is not a traditional competition show, nor is it clear that Seacrest would serve as host. At this stage, the potential series is in the preliminary stages of development, with the concept still being fleshed out.

What is clear is that Seacrest has no plans to have a show that would compete with Idol, the Fox juggernaut that he’s currently paid $15 million a year to front. Worth noting: that pact, with Idol parent CKX, bars him from appearing on any other broadcast network until 2012. It expires at the end of next season.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to host a show competing with Idol,” Seacrest said during an interview in his office in late March. “I think it’s possible [to be the face of another show in the future], but at this point I certainly have not even gone down that road because Idol is in a great place, so I think we’re just enjoying that and we want to focus on that.”

In recent years, the multi-hyphenate has been as — if not more -- focused on expanding his footprint behind the camera as a producer, with a string of shows at E! (four iterations of the Kardashian franchise, The Dance Scene), ABC (Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution) and TLC (upcoming I Kid, hosted by Brad Garrett).

The musical offering is one of some 20 shows that RSP has in development, many of them with NBCUniversal networks. As Seacrest told The Hollywood Reporter in a cover story last month, the long-time Comcast Entertainment talent went into the merger with NBCU saying, ‘Hey, what do you got? What can we do? Yes. Let’s go.”

The New York Post first broke the news.

Email: Lacey.Rose@THR.com
Twitter: @LaceyVRose