Country music is big business in the US, but behind the glitter is a machine that is churning out glossy, young, multimillion-dollar earners while veterans like Willie Nelson can't get a record deal. Tomorrow night Naked Nashville, (part two in a three-part series concluding Sunday) Channel 4, 8 p.m.-9 p.m. follows a newly signed singer/ songwriter as he becomes the beneficiary of his record company's marketing strategies. It takes a lot of money and if he doesn't make those record sales, and soon, he becomes another could-have-been.
"I am worth about £10 million," says restaurateur Liao Changguang, "We plan to become the McDonald's of China." He and his wife, both former Red Army guards, represent a new class of self-made capitalists. But others, like a single mother without state benefit, find they cannot survive. Reporter Isobel Hilton visits China's most populous city Chongqing in Correspondent Special: City On The Brink, tomorrow, BBC2, 7.15 p.m.-8 p.m. to expose the human face of China's "economic miracle".
On Wednesday, Deals on Wheels, Channel 4, 8.30 p.m.-9 p.m. takes a hard look at the used car market in Britain, which is worth £23.3 billion. Presenter Richard Sutton gives away a few trade secrets to help buyers make the most of their money.
The story of Coca Cola and its competition with rival Pepsi is explored in For God, Country And Coca Cola, a three-part series starting on Thursday on Channel 4, 11.55 p.m.-12.55 a.m. The first programme, The Big Sell, concentrates on the triumph of image over substance how did an innocuous soft drink come to wield such enormous power?
Tomorrow's World on BBC1, Wednesday 7.30 p.m.-8 p.m. includes an item on nuclear fusion, an energy-producing process which occurs naturally in the sun and which scientists at the Joint European Torus in Oxford believe is the energy of the future.
Finally Looking Good, Wednesday BBC2, 8.30 p.m.-9 p.m. visits New York to see whether successful businesswomen there work as hard at their looks as they do at running a corporation.
