The Songwriters returns for a fourth season with songwriter Kent Blazy

The Songwriters returns for a fourth season from September 5, with Kent Blazy, who wrote "If Tomorrow Never Comes", among the writers appearing across the run.

The weekly series goes behind the songs with members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and reaches an estimated 85 percent of US households through PBS affiliate stations. Ken Paulson, a long-time journalist, hosts.

The season four lineup runs deep in standards. Sharon Vaughn ("My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys"), Mike Reid ("I Can't Make You Love Me"), John Scott Sherrill ("Nothing But the Wheel"), Tom Shapiro ("Never Give Up on a Good Thing"), Rafe Van Hoy ("What's Forever For"), Steve Bogard ("Carrying Your Love With Me") and Gary Burr ("Queen of Hearts") all take episodes.

Two writers get double the room. Two episodes are given over to the work of Jimmy Webb, who has an album of his own out ahead of his 80th birthday, and two more to the legacy of John Prine, whose unreleased songs have been surfacing on new projects.

The show is produced at the Scott Borchetta College of Media and Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University, where Paulson is dean emeritus. All in-studio production is done by students in the college's Media Arts department, with department chair Robert Gordon directing.

"Ken's one of the best in the business, and he takes you up close and personal," said Pat Alger, himself a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member, describing the series as an archive of interviews with writers deeply connected to the city. It is one of the few television projects that treats country songwriting as its own subject rather than as background to a performer.