Fox on Wednesday (Dec. 14) will launch its music-themed series Star, the latest entry in a genre that so far this year has hit several sour notes.

The series, which takes over the prime time timeslot of Fox’s hit music series Empire, will look to strike a chord with viewers who tuned out of several cable-based music shows this year.

After much fanfare and a second season green light, HBO’s Martin Scorsese/Mick Jagger ’70 s executive-produced rock ‘n’ roll drama Vinyl failed to hit with viewers, and was canceled four months after it premiered this past February.

Showtime hoped viewers would dance to the beat of its drama Roadies, which followed the lives of crew members for major performers. But the network canceled the Cameron Crowe-produced show before it opened for a second season.

FX’s Denis Leary-helmed comedy Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll was silenced this past September after two seasons of so-so ratings.

While Empire continues to deliver big ratings for Fox, the task of developing a successful scripted series around the music business is not an exact science, according to Eric Deggans, the media and TV critic for National Public Radio, who is also a musician. While music has broad appeal, Deggans said viewers tend to gravitate to shows that weave music themes into otherwise dramatic, soap opera-esque storylines rather than shows that focus on the nuts and bolts of the music industry itself.

 “I think the way to have a successful show has been shown by Empire and [FX freshman series] Atlanta — you have to figure out ways in which the music is paired with some other attraction so that you get a wide range of viewers,” he said. “When you do feature the music, it has to be strong and authentic.”

Indeed, the Donald Glover-created Atlanta, which focuses on two cousins trying to navigate the ATL’s rap scene, has found an audience. The series’s Sept. 6 premiere drew the network’s second-biggest audience for a series debut, with 3 million viewers. Atlanta has already been renewed for a second season.

CMT is singing the praises of ABC’s cancelled country music-themed Nashville. The cable network will offer an early preview of its season-five premiere on Dec. 15 and  will officially launch the season on Jan. 5.

Star will get its chance to serenade television viewers with the hopes of making beautiful ratings music within a genre that’s delivered mixed results in 2016.

Pictured (from left):Jude Demorest, Ryan Destiny and Brittany O'Grady, the stars of Fox's new series Star, premiering Dec. 14.

Read more TCA '16 summer tour coverage

HBO Casey Bloys’ won’t soon forget his first appearance at the Television Critics Association summer tour since being named the network’s programming president after taking some critical questions from TV writers.

As Bloys confirmed the end of the network’s biggest show Game Of Thrones after its eighth season he was hit with several questions from reporters about Thrones and new series Westworld's sexualized violence against women, including rape.

While Bloys said that the concerns are valid, he said that the violence cuts across both men and women, jokingly adding “we’re going to kill everybody.”

Bloys -- who took over the position this past spring from the departed Michael Lombardo -- said Game Of Thrones will not be eligible for the 2017 Emmys season because of the late summer launch of its seventh season, but added he’s confident the network will still have enough content to continue its run as the top Emmy-nominated network in the industry. Game Of Thrones earlier this month earned an industry high 23 Emmy nominations.

“Even without Game Of Thrones my hope is that we will have some new candidates that will help keep our count up,” Bloys said.

HBO Renews 'Real Time With Bill Maher'

Bloys also discussed several other issues during the session, including being open to a third season its anthology crime series True Detective if the network can find the right take on the franchise. He added the network could continue the franchise without creator/writer Nic Pizzolatto taking the lead.

-- The new Jon Stewart digital animated series could debut later this fall, according to Bloys. The series will be revolve around a parody of a fictional cable news network.

-- Bloys also said canceling the The Mick Jagger/Martin Scorsese music series Vinyl was a difficult decision. The series had been greenlit for a second season after its first episode, but the show struggled from a ratings perspective.

 “We didn’t think it was worth the producer’s time our time our resources to try to thread the needle just a little bit,” he said.

HBO said Wednesday that it has decided to cancel its high-profile series Vinyl, four months after renewing the series for a second season.

The Mick Jagger/Martin Scorsese drama starring Bobby Cannavale and Ray Romano was renewed for a sophomore season this past February days after the show's premiere on the channel, but in subsequent weeks the series, which chronicled the 1970's rock music scene, failed to drive ratings for the network.

Overall, Vinyl averaged 4.3 million viewers across multiple plays and screens, according to HBO.

HBO officials said in a statement: “After careful consideration, we have decided not to proceed with a second season of Vinyl.  Obviously, this was not an easy decision.  We have enormous respect for the creative team and cast for their hard work and passion on this project.”

Cable networks and streaming services are turning up the volume on music, cueing up scripted shows designed to hit the right notes with audiences.

From Million Dollar Quartet, CMT’s historical look at the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, to Roadies, Showtime’s series about a concert setup crew, to BET’s biographical miniseries New Edition Story, cable networks are mixing pop music with drama in an effort to strike a chord with a broader young audience.

“Music is the great unifier,” Cherie Saunders, TV editor for black entertainment-news website EurWeb.com, said. “If you can tap into a fan base and just feed them a constant diet of that genre of music through whatever drama vehicle you’re presenting, I think that combination can generate a hit series.”

The music component also allows programmers to extend the marketing mix for a series beyond television, into digital album and single sales for original music tied to the show — another way to reach younger viewers.

“Music is an element that brings in younger audiences to drama that might otherwise skew typically older,” TV One president Brad Siegel said. “It’s a way to bring 18-34 and 18-49 viewers into drama.”

Scripted series that play off popular music trends aren’t new to television. Sitcoms like The Monkees (1966-68) and The Partridge Family (1970- 74) had a long shelf life in reruns. More recently, Fox’s Glee and ABC’s recently canceled Nashville took music-themed TV into new terrain.

And on the cable side, music-themed biopics like last year’s Whitney, Lifetime’s take on the life of pop diva Whitney Houston, and HBO’s Bessie, which starred Queen Latifah as blues icon Bessie Smith, have generated big ratings and garnered critical acclaim.

But it’s the success of Fox’s hip-hop themed Empire that’s helped the genre hit a high note with viewers. Music serves as a strong backup player to the dramatic series’ soap opera-like storyline.

Empire, which depicts the triumphs and struggles of a family-run music enterprise, was the top freshman show on both broadcast and cable during the 2015-16 television season and remained among the most-watched shows by adults 18-49 during its sophomore campaign.

“The music is important, but I think the other elements of storytelling, production value and amazing characters are just as big a contributor to the show’s success as having music and music performers,” Siegel said of Empire, for which TV One in April secured rare in-season distribution rights.

Last month, the network scored the biggest Memorial Day weekend ratings in its history by running an Empire marathon.

While just about everyone has an emotional relationship with music, not everyone likes the same types of music, Showtime president and CEO David Nevins said.

Ultimately, music serves as a way to draw viewers to the drama, with the characters and the storyline providing the glue that keeps them coming back each week, said Nevins, whose Showtime will launch Roadies on June 26.

Produced by Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous) and J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Roadies follows the backstage workers who build and break down the stage for a touring rock band.

STORY MATTERS, TOO

Other distributors have been successful in melding music themes with strong storylines. Amazon scored a hit with its sophomore dramedy series Mozart in the Jungle. The classical music-based series won two 2016 Golden Globe awards for best comedy series and best actor in a comedy or musical series for star Gael Garcia Bernal.

FX’s Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll, which follows Denis Leary (also a producer) as an aging rock star trying to resurrect his career with the help of his musically inclined estranged daughter, returns for a second season in July, while HBO’s 1970s rock music-themed series Vinyl — despite so-so reviews and less than stellar audience numbers — returns for a second season in 2017.

Netflix will also revisit the 1970s in The Get Down, a series that will focus on the rise of hiphop music late in that decade.

CMT is hoping viewers will make hits of two music-based scripted series: Million Dollar Quartet and Still the King, which stars countrymusic veteran Billy Ray Cyrus as a one-hit-wonder-turned-Elvis impersonator who hits rock bottom before discovering he has a 15-year-old daughter.

CMT’s first scripted-series foray would naturally be rooted in music, given the channel’s country-music pedigree, CMT executive vice president of development Jayson Dinsmore said. But both shows will offer music that extends beyond the traditional Nashville sound, he said.“We didn’t just put the expected songs in Still the King — you’ll hear everything from the Rolling Stones to Modest Mouse, in addition to current country artists,” he said.

With Million Dollar Quartet, the network will look to extend the show’s brand to the Billboard charts by selling the show’s performances in music stores and on digital platforms, Dinsmore said.

All of the performances from Million Dollar Quartet will be available for purchase on iTunes after each episode airs. CMT is exploring the idea of a music tour involving the series’ stars once filming of the first season has ended.

Indeed, Saunders said Empire and Nashville effectively incorporated popular music both as part of the storyline as well as promotional tool to help expose the series to new audiences by selling songs from the series as part of digital single downloads and full albums.

Empire’s season-one soundtrack, released in March 2015, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart — the first TV soundtrack to launch at the top of the charts since Glee in 2010. By the time Empire launched its second season last October, the album had sold more than 431,000 copies and had been streamed online, either in part or in full, more than 122 million times, according to Nielsen.

SPINOFFS ARE KEY

“We have to look at all kinds of different benchmarks in order to determine what is a successful television series today, and a big part of that is fan engagement,” Dinsmore said. “The more we can offer up experiential things like a tour, the more goodwill we have around the channel.”

BET will also look to generate music sales from New Edition Story, the documentary miniseries based on the 1980s R&B boy band that spawned the careers of Bobby Brown and Bell Biv DeVoe.

BET president of programming Stephen Hill said the industry is just now striking up the band for even more music-based shows to serenade viewers. “There are some stories that can be told,” he said, adding that the network is exploring several music-based series of its own, although he would not disclose specifics.

Added EurWeb.com’s Saunders: “As long as the ratings continue to soar for these types of shows you’ll see more of them. It won’t be too long before we get a polka show or a bluegrass series.”

HBO series Vinyl, a bawdy look at the music business at the intersection of disco, rap and punk rock, will premiere Feb. 14 in the Sunday-9 p.m. slot. The premiere will fill two hours.

Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter is Vinyl's showrunner and, along with Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, Rick Yorn, Victoria Pearman, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, John Melfi and Allen Coulter, is also executive producer.

Vinyl has a 10-episode first season. HBO describes it as “a ride through the sex- and drug-addled music business at the dawn of punk, disco and hip-hop … seen through the eyes of a record label president, Richie Finestra, played by Bobby Cannavale.”

A week later, comedy pair Girls and Togetherness debut, starting at 10 p.m. on Feb. 21. Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Separately, HBO announced it has canceled the Jack Black-Tim Robbins comedy series The Brink.