Amazon’s ACM Awards Forget Rural Fans Resulting in Tech Issues
The 2022 Academy of Country Music Awards transpired on Monday, March 7th, and there was a lot of interest in the awards well beyond the country music realm for one specific reason: this was the first legacy awards show in any industry that had spent over half a century on network television trying to make the jump to exclusively streaming online.
This seemed like a smart, forward-thinking approach to the embattled American awards show that has seen rapidly declining ratings, lack of attention from younger demographics, and difficulties with the appointment television model, especially when you have to broadcast in different time zones, or even to different countries. So what better way to solve these problems than to stream it online, and make it accessible to everyone, on any device, and in real time no matter the market.
For many people, the experiment appeared to be successful, though the ACMs were not exactly the “easily accessible to everyone” online model they were sold as initially. To watch the ACMs, you either needed an Amazon Prime subscription, or you had to pay. Basically, it was a big Amazon Prime membership drive. Many did sign up for Amazon Prime to be able to access the program. But unfortunately, for many people in rural areas, they didn’t get what they paid for.
There was a pretty catastrophic oversight by both the ACM Awards and Amazon in their streaming awards show experiment, and one that alienated the most key demographic for a presentation such as the ACM Awards: country fans who actually live in the country. And no, it wasn’t that these fans were furious with the amount of contemporary pop in the presentation—though that might have been an issue for some as well. It’s that out in rural areas where broadband internet is either unavailable or inconsistent, fans either couldn’t access the stream, or got such a terribly inconsistent feed, it rendered the presentation unwatchable.
As the 2022 ACM Awards transpired and shortly after, social media and Amazon’s own review forum filled up with irate viewers unable to access the awards due to connectivity issues. In fact, Amazon’s own reviews are dominated by disgruntled customers.
Loved the show but out in rural America we have limited to no bandwidth so the true country people who watch ACM awards every year probably weren’t able to see it. It’s sad that it was streamed but not broadcasted. We have AT&T and the buffering kept us from watching quite a bit of the show. Please please please next year broadcast this! –Megan Malin
Why is this not on a major network on TV?? I have Amazon Prime and it will not work. Totally disappointed in the Academy of Country Music for not having this on a major network station. This really sucks!!! You have lost a lot of viewers doing it this way. –Terry A.
It is so pixelated you cannot see the artists! Sound is bad, too. Rather watch on network tv. —Zachary H.
Spending more time restarting than watching…..gave up! — Tim Freet
Won’t load. Don’t try this again. –-Mike C.
Horrible streaming service. Keeps freezing up, sound cuts out, and sound and picture not matching up. I’ve restarted several times and tried watching on a few minute delay. After working for about 2-3 minutes it craps out. Absolute horrible! I would never recommend watching any live streaming on Prime. Complete garbage! – J. Esposito
Poor streaming and reception! Couldn’t even hear one full song. 🙁 —Brownyn K. Meyer
This is horrible! We always watch the ACMs but not this year because it keeps buffering & can’t see clearly because very blurry! So disappointed! Wish I could select 0 stars! —Scott Gohlke
Too pixelated. Leave the award show live streams to the seasoned big dogs. Will NOT watch a live event on Prime again. As if they care.. –Kristin D.
First my country radio station and now the awards shows???? Very disappointed that I had to watch on Amazon prime this year. I’m a loyal country fan my entire life and I look forward to the award shows. This year was the worst ceremony I have watched. The quality on Amazon prime video was pixel aged and low audio. The show is always on network TV. Do better!!!! –Danielle C.
Though many of the problems experienced were with people who do not have consistent broadband internet, some in more urban areas with more consistent internet access seemed to also have issues. 42% of the reviews on Amazon for the 2022 ACM Awards are 1 star, and the majority are negative, with the vast majority of those reviews complaining specifically about the quality of the stream. At the least, Amazon should have warned viewers that a certain level of broadband service was required to experience the show.
Amazon and the ACMs just didn’t account for people who didn’t have high speed internet connections. Even many viewers who regularly use streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu without issue had issues with the Amazon stream. This could be the result not of Amazon’s stream being so low quality, but being too high of quality, taxing local ISPs and the bandwidth of connections. In other words, trying to deliver a high quality 4K streaming experience meant many end users got pixelated video that regularly froze up, and terrible audio quality.
Another complaint by many viewers was the impossibility of being able to rewind, fast forward, or record the presentation, which many viewers can do through the traditional television medium. The awards were also not available on replay initially, only the red carpet presentation was.
Though to many living in cities, online streaming is much more convenient, to many rural dwellers, over-the-air digital television, satellite, and sometimes Cable is the better option. This is the reason the Grand Ole Opry’s recently-launched Circle Network chose launch on local television channels as opposed to online to reach those rural consumers.
Though the ACM Awards on Amazon were sold as a technological advance, for many country music fans—especially ones who actually live in the country—it was a giant leap backwards, while national reviews written by people in big cities were unaware of the issues facing rural fans, and decreed the move online as a success due to the lack of commercials and the speed of the presentation.
Perhaps this is an issue that will be solved over time. But in 2022, and with the first awards show of its kind to move to streaming, gross miscalculations resulted in the disenfranchisement of many of country music’s fans who so commonly get overlooked by the greater American culture.
Captain Bellmeyer
March 8, 2022 @ 11:27 am
You know this reminded me of how Aloha from Hawaii by Satellite managed to broadcast from Asia and Ocenia from Sattelite in 1973 managed to air the concert with no hiccups even when it seemed like it was going to bomb in the runup. Maybe it was the power of Elvis or maybe he really was God’s chosen rock star, but it is absolutely insane that an almost fifty year old event that used 90% analogue equipment went off without a hitch while this event with tried and true digital everything bombed. Maybe they should get the United States Navy to lend led sheet.
robbushblog
March 8, 2022 @ 12:54 pm
I heartily approve of positive Elvis comments. Especially when true, like this one. A lot of preparation went into the Aloha concert. I think Amazon figured they had this and didn’t have much that needed to be worked out. Good luck with Thursday Night Football, Amazon!
Linda
March 10, 2022 @ 6:25 am
We went to the awards , worse venue I have been to ! Spend 140.00 pp and it was bad could not see any of the stages . I wish I would have not gone ! So disappointed this was my 36th anniversary and saw nothing !
DJ
March 8, 2022 @ 11:30 am
The epitome of empty suits, educated beyond their intellect.
Michael S
March 8, 2022 @ 3:27 pm
Sadly, I have to agree DJ.
Will
March 8, 2022 @ 11:40 am
The fact is, no one with half a brain cares about these awards shows . What a waste of time.
Douglas Trapasso
March 8, 2022 @ 11:41 am
Someone is welcome to correct me, but didn’t Amazon air an NFL game in 2020 that was equally blessed with technical glitches? -THIS- is the where the NFL sold the Thursday night rights?
robbushblog
March 8, 2022 @ 12:55 pm
Yup!
hoptowntiger94
March 8, 2022 @ 1:46 pm
Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime just signed Kirk Herbstreit to anchor its broadcast booth. That’s huge. They initially went after Al Michaels. So Amazon is going huge with its football production.
Tom
March 8, 2022 @ 11:52 am
The upside is that this is the first time in recent memory that my Facebook feed hasn’t been inundated with comments from disgruntled viewers on the night of a country awards show.
MJ
March 8, 2022 @ 1:21 pm
Definitely tone-deaf in terms of reaching rural fans. Maybe country music could champion efforts to bring broadband to rural areas.
robbushblog
March 8, 2022 @ 1:27 pm
Maybe FGL could start a new TVA.
Mike W.
March 8, 2022 @ 6:51 pm
Majority of fans of the acts on these award shows live in the suburbs and exurbs now. They wear suits and ties to the office, throw on some flannel and jeans on the weekend and cosplay as Country.
In short, none of these acts even know what “rural” is anymore, much less the plight of rural broadband.
Bama mike
March 13, 2022 @ 3:09 pm
Worst acm awards ever. It was like top 40 b.s. It was country light. No big stars . It had nothing to do with real country music. It was country slow jam. Where is the real country, stars from Pennsylvania and Delaware with fake southern accents. WTF. TERRIBLE.
hoptowntiger94
March 8, 2022 @ 1:42 pm
What other options were there? No network wanted it and its dismal ratings. It’s not like there was a bidding war. I thought Amazon streamed it out of pity.
Trigger
March 8, 2022 @ 1:50 pm
CBS definitely wanted to renew the contract. They offered $20 million, which was the fee for 2021, and the ACM’s decided they deserved $22 million, even though the ratings were tanking. So CBS said no thanks. I don’t think Amazon streamed it out of pity. They definitely had an agenda, which was to get folks to sign up for Amazon Prime, and push their other streaming products. However, looking at all the negative feedback, they may have done themselves more harm than good. It will be interesting to see what happens for next year.
Eric
March 8, 2022 @ 1:49 pm
Why can’t alt-country have their own award show? Network television formats are dying. People want authenticity.
Mama&Trains&Trucks&Prison&GettinDrunk
March 8, 2022 @ 3:38 pm
I really like this idea. And not the Americana awards either. Maybe call it the Independent County Music (ICM) Awards.
Corncaster
March 8, 2022 @ 6:20 pm
Just do a variety show. Awards are BS.
Eric
March 9, 2022 @ 7:46 am
I think there is a level of BS in award shows, but if you look at 90’s Country award shows on Youtube, nearly all of the nominated songs are popular today. They basically all stood the test of time. That’s unheard of in the past 20 years.
Ben Parks
March 9, 2022 @ 10:19 am
Maybe we need a Saving Country Music streamed award show
wayne
March 8, 2022 @ 2:07 pm
What a dumpster fire.
Carter Burger
March 8, 2022 @ 3:30 pm
As long as the federal government keeps handing out money like party favors to get rural broadband, we’ll never have rural broadband.
brucewayneworksatDisney
March 8, 2022 @ 3:52 pm
This was a nightmare, even in major cities. I live in Philly, and all this did was bring back memories of playing with the rabbit ears , trying to get a signal to watch Batman reruns
Ells Eastwood
March 8, 2022 @ 4:02 pm
As a bit of anecdotal evidence: My Mom, who lives in a rural area and often has issues with internet connectivity, was able to watch it. I don’t know if it was 100% problem free, but she had it on the TV in the background during our weekly video chat. Both the ACM stream and our conversation were free of buffering and pixelation.
Trigger
March 8, 2022 @ 4:30 pm
I live in a rural area, and don’t officially have “Broadband.” I’ve got a radio antenna that points to a tower, and at times it can be intermittent and inconsistent. Other times it’s fine. I had absolutely no problems streaming the ACMs. In fact I remarked during the live blog how impressed I was with the quality of the feed and audio. When I went back to attempt to rewatch some of the performances, that’s when I noticed the event was getting trounced in the reviews. Then I found scores more people on social media complaining. It clearly didn’t effect everyone, and certainly not a majority of viewers. But for sure, a lot of folks tuned in and were disappointed, and most of them were in rural areas, including some who say they can stream other services just fine.
I’m not an expert on such matters, but when YouTube senses a connection is weak, it will throttle down the quality until it finds the right bandwidth where it is consistent. Netflix and others will buffer until it can maintain a quality feed. I’m not sure the Amazon feed was provisioned for that. It just tried to serve it at top quality the whole time to everyone, and since it was live, it tried to keep up in real time as opposed to buffering.
Mike W.
March 8, 2022 @ 6:56 pm
I was speaking to a rural isp provider tech guy once and he said 99% of it is the video compression algorithms that Netflix and YouTube use are too of the class. Less so Hulu or Amazon or HBO. Basically Netflix and YouTube are better at compressing video to show higher quality, while using less data than their competition. Surprising Amazon would have this problem since Amazon Web Services is the main economic driver for revenue and is the dominant player in web hosting these days.
NPC
March 9, 2022 @ 12:22 pm
I have 16 Mbps “rural Internet”, and I had almost no issue streaming it from a 2016 tablet to a Chromecast. I had one moment of extreme artifacts, but the rest of it was clear and in high definition. Many people do not realize just how much bandwidth their devices use while doing nothing. Sure, they were only actively watching the ACMs, but how many were passively scrolling their socials or had their iPhones or laptops latently downloading updates or attempting cloud backups? When you have limited bandwidth, every device matters; when I want to do online gaming or stream something uninterrupted, I have to shut the WiFi off on most any other device I own aside from the one I need.
That being said, Amazon Prime itself could absolutely be the culprit, especially if their US servers weren’t able to handle the capacity. I did start watching from the very start of the preshow, so maybe those trying to join later had more issues?
helen
March 11, 2022 @ 8:05 am
felt like the acm award show was more of a concert, not award show. couldn’t watch live because of wk, but the imdb.tv version was awful. didn’t see many awards given out. when dolly came out with the cohosts at the end to present the entertainer of the year award, they went right to a closing song. I love awards shows to see the awards. yes, like some performances, but want to see artists accept the awards
LB Newton
March 8, 2022 @ 4:27 pm
Egg the Yacht !!
Colter
March 8, 2022 @ 4:33 pm
Yeah that’s the bad part in living in rural areas in today’s world where everything is run through the internet. I had my hopes up for starlink but it says my area is already at capacity
Mike W.
March 8, 2022 @ 7:01 pm
Starlink will help, but the entry cost to the service eliminates a lot of rural folks. They might be able to swing the $100 monthly service fee, but the $500 equipment fee up front and limited customer service options probably eliminates the service for many people. I know my parents could never have hooked up their Starlink unit without having me do it since I am a relatively technical person. And even I had to troubleshoot using Reddit for help on some of the stuff. It’s great if you live out on the prairie, but can be a nightmare to set up if you have trees nearby.
Craig
March 8, 2022 @ 6:12 pm
The key will be how many people actually viewed the show?
Mike W.
March 8, 2022 @ 6:49 pm
Rural Co-Ops are the answer to helping solve the digital divide in rural America. Comcast, Spectrum, etc. will never build out because the return on their investment is pathetically low due to a lack of density. Starlink will help, but they can’t ship enough dishes right now, the service is expensive up front, and nobody truly knows what the max capacity of users they can handle is. I don’t see any other way.
Joe Johnson
March 8, 2022 @ 9:27 pm
I find it a little hard to believe that large numbers of rural people still have interest in watching this.
Keepin’ it Country
March 9, 2022 @ 1:00 am
What rural people are watching this dumpster fire that barely qualifies as country. Says a lot when a country show has very few artist wearing cowboy hats….. like Chris Young. Damn didn’t he sell out….
Joni Johnson
March 9, 2022 @ 6:12 am
I too am SERIOUSLY DISAPPOINTED in the direction our country music is going. As they want to CALL themselves country, and it isn’t! They come out with new artists who I really love, then sooner or later they make these songs with rappers or pop feel!, Tim McGraw, Morgan wallen, Thomas Rhett, Jimmie Allen, Maren Morris, even Dolly,… There r many more!! But u get my meaning.
I love alot of these artists but I DONT WANT TO C OR HEAR THIS when I turn on my country!!! Another words sing those songs in another genre and different stations, awards shows etc…. Keep country country…. Quit trying to integrate city slicker crap with country folk!! When we want to hear country rap, pop etc we would of turned that on!!
kross
March 9, 2022 @ 8:17 am
sounds like Amazon has done the same thing that nashville and the mainstream media has done. Forgotten why it’s called “COUNTRY” music.
Kevin Smith
March 9, 2022 @ 8:27 am
Kross, i hearby proclaim you comment of the day!
Bill Brown
March 9, 2022 @ 11:42 am
This was the worst ACM ever.
Diane
March 9, 2022 @ 1:33 pm
I don’t live in the country, but I couldn’t get ANYTHING that night. I just kept getting an error message that it was unavailable & to go to amazon.com/primevideo. I was able to watch it on my computer. Small screen & not the most comfortable chair. They did a lousy job of setting this up. Of course, now my Amazon Prime is working fine on my TV. Go figure!!!
Mark T Salwasser
March 9, 2022 @ 2:16 pm
country music don’t need saving; Cody Jinks and Sturgill already saved it.
Trigger
March 9, 2022 @ 2:24 pm
The name of this site predates the country careers of both Cody Jinks and Sturgill Simpson. Also, Saving Country Music was the first outlet to ever talk about Sturgill Simpson, and the first print outlet to talk about Cody Jinks.
John Garrett
March 9, 2022 @ 2:27 pm
I have T-Mobile and live in Daytona Beach Florida and could not watch this show. Could watch other programs and movies, but not this live show. What a sad showing for Amazon. This gives me a good reason to drop my Prime account.
Tracy
March 9, 2022 @ 4:32 pm
I’m surprised so many people had trouble. I live in a rural area but have Comcast and we didn’t experience a single blip. I want to reassure everyone who couldn’t watch: you really didn’t miss much!
Sherie Lynn
March 12, 2022 @ 1:38 pm
My boyfriend got us tickets to this show for my birthday. My birthday was March 7 the day of the show. I always wanted to attend a country music award show and I have to say we were ripped off! We also could not see any of the stages. Everyone around us had to get their phones out to stream the show and watch it on their phones! it was like we weren’t even there. I know my boyfriend spent a lot of money on the tickets and we were both completely disappointed. Wish we could get our money back!