NASH TV Launches, But Is Anyone Paying Attention?
While nobody was paying attention, the Dickey Brothers of Cumulus Media added yet another tentacle to their increasingly tentacle-rich country music venture known as NASH. About this time last year we were yucking it up out about how the media company was proposing to make NASH-branded clothing, restaurants, food, furniture, and even paint. Cumulus is looking to turn NASH into an all-encompassing lifestyle brand that can snag consumers hook, line, and sinker, and carry them from cradle to grave, and breakfast to dinner, immersed in the NASH corporate cultural experience.
So far NASH hasn’t made it to your local Home Depot’s paint department, or your grocer’s freezer, but they have launched a new venture to offer parallel pop country television programming to go along with their network of NASH and NASH Icon radio stations. It is called NASH TV, not to be confused with a fairly popular YouTube fishing program of the same name, or the semi-successful police drama and Don Johnson vehicle from the late 90’s Nash Bridges. NASH TV is an on-demand cable channel where very niche program can be served to people who like a visual equivalent to what they hear on their NASH radio stations most every day.
NASH TV boasts videos and programs from some of NASH radio’s biggest shows, including the syndicated America’s Morning Show out of New York City, and a proxy of Kix Brooks’ weekly American Country Countdown show called Kickin’ It With Kix. Then you can get extremely niche-like with a show called Picks From The Sticks—a poorly produced sports show where B-level country stars expound on the point spreads of upcoming sportsball games, or HickXtreme which looks like it was devised in a high school media tech lab by stoner kids who like to splash in mud pools and emulate Jackass, completely produced by pulling content off of YouTube. This makes CMT’s reality show lineup look like PBS.
Here come the finger guns!
Oh, the incidental comedy…
Maybe one of the most remarkable things about NASH TV so far is just how little promotion or chatter it has generated for the format. It formally launched on January 26th, apparently, but it’s sort of unclear if anyone is even paying attention, or just how seriously invested Cumulus is in the NASH offshoot.
NASH TV”s creedo is, “Giving 85 million country fans access to the best country lifestyle content across any device at any time. These men & women pledge their allegiance to family, work, friends, nature, fashion and of course, music all based on what it means to be COUNTRY FOR LIFE.”
…in other words, building corporate consumers who can be sold the same branded goods across multiple consumable platforms with no questions asked. Right now there’s a total of twelve NASH TV “shows,” but even though the format appears to have launched in full force, there doesn’t appear to be much real content available beyond some pilot episodes on some of the subchannels.
Cumulus, just like Clear Channel, continues to post quarterly losses amidst massive debt, and the question remains if the entire NASH branding campaign is a serious move to sustain the company, or if it is smoke and mirrors to show investors the Dickey Brothers are trying something simply to save their hides. Certainly they’ve had some recent success with NASH Icon in the Nashville market, but so far, NASH TV looks more like an attempt to make the brand look more broad-based than it actually is, and maybe to test the waters and gauge reception before funding a bigger launch. So far it all seems very undercooked.
Hawkeye
February 10, 2015 @ 5:18 pm
Based on the amount of comments i’d say no one cares
Lil Dale just chillin it
February 10, 2015 @ 6:02 pm
I’ll tell u wut hawk eye, I garen-damn-tee ya uncle sam is payin attenshun. President Obumas plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works, the plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband”¦ These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and more hidden fees that they have to pay. The plan saddles small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations that will push them out of the market,as a result, Americans will have fewer broadband choices. This is no accident. Title II was designed to regulate a monopoly. If we impose that model on a vibrant broadband marketplace, a highly regulated monopoly is what we”™ll get.
an I dont like that won bit.
Hawkeye
February 11, 2015 @ 4:46 am
Holy crap you actually spelled words right 😂
Charlie
February 11, 2015 @ 5:19 am
Lil Dale–did you get yourself kicked in the head by a mule–again?
Hawkeye
February 11, 2015 @ 4:32 pm
He did I really think he did
NPC
February 13, 2015 @ 10:03 am
Out of curiosity, where can one watch this channel (or find out where to watch it)?
Trigger
February 13, 2015 @ 11:14 am
It simply says it’s available “on demand” through cable and satellite carriers. Since I have neither, I’m not much help beyond that.
Diana
February 16, 2015 @ 9:35 am
I don’t think most people care about this. In fact all of my friends and family who are huge country music fans didn’t even know about this.