Oh Great. Yet Another Country Music Awards Show Is Coming
No, we’re not talking about the inconsequential “CMT Awards”—country music’s third-tier video-centric participation trophy bonanza that has never been and will never be relevant to anything aside from trying to keep the last dying gasps of a decrepit cable franchise alive. Yes, they announced their “nominees” earlier this week, but don’t let anyone fool you into believing that anything happening there is of any importance.
Any awards show hosted by Kane Brown and Kelsea Ballerini begs to not be taken seriously. And the fact that the CMTs are inexplicably being held in Austin this year makes it even more of a curiosity. Hopefully the waves of homeless impede all of their efforts. The CMTs will be broadcast on CBS on April 2nd, because nobody knows how to locate CMT on their televisions anymore, while many folks under 30 don’t even have a television.
I’m also not talking about the ACM Awards, operated by the Academy of Country Music. They’re coming up on May 11th, and just as inexplicably have decided that Texas is an ideal location for their hogwash, broadcasting next to the stinky socks of the Dallas Cowboys football team at their practice facility called The Star. Granted, even a Cowboys practice facility is quite grand. But in 2015, the ACMs broadcast their 50th Anniversary presentation at the AT&T Stadium where the Cowboys actually play. How the mighty have fallen.
The ACM Awards have also been relegated to streaming on Amazon Prime after basically being cancelled by CBS, who replaced the ACMs on the network with the CMTs. Yes, it’s country music awards show musical chairs. Problem is, so many of country music’s rural fans don’t have proper access to broadband, and so broadcasting the ACM Awards online makes for a buffering nightmare.
But forget about all of those secondary and tertiary awards shows for a second. There is yet another awards show that is coming online in country music, as if three isn’t enough when you count the CMA Awards, which is probably the only one that should truly count.
After NBC Universal purchased a 30% stake in the Grand Ole Opry’s parent company Ryman Hospitality in April of 2022, you knew there would be an effort to cross-pollinate the two companies for better or worse. Lo and behold, come September we will now have the “People’s Choice Country Awards” a.k.a. a country music spinoff of the existing and stupid People’s Choice Awards on NBC.
Set for a two-hour presentation from the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, it’s promising to be the “year’s biggest celebration in country music” (it won’t be), and the only completely fan-voted awards show in country music. The CMTs are also fan-voted, but CMT execs choose the nominees. Presumably with the People Choice Country Awards (PCCAs?), the people will get to choose the nominees, which means they will be terrible, and probably monopolized by Morgan Wallen fans.
Country music needs another awards show like it needs another Kane Brown or Kelsea Ballerini. The idea that you can squeeze yet another annual awards show into the packed calendar has been tried before, and failed. FOX tried to launch the American Country Awards from 2010-2013. They were generally bereft of talent and attention, and went defunct. They tried to rebrand them and bring them back as the American Country Countdown Awards in 2014 and 2016, and they also failed and were cancelled.
And none of this mentions the Grammy Awards, American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, and so on and so forth that also cover country. Awards show ratings have stabilized since the all-time lows during the pandemic, but these presentations still in many ways feel like relics of the past, and are well off their ratings highs. The People’s Choice Country Awards feel like a Hail Mary to make the NBC/Opry partnership work. And if inexplicably it does, it will likely come by cannibalizing another awards show, potentially the CMTs, which aren’t real anyway, or the ACMs, which kind of are, and have nearly 60 years of history behind them.
Instead of launching an awards show, why not start broadcasting the Grand Ole Opry in full on television again, or at least, a prime hour every Saturday night leading into Saturday Night Live? Who knows, maybe the PCCAs will surprise us. But it feels rather improbable. There may be an appetite for more country music on TV. But it seems that appetite is probably not for yet another awards show.
We’ll see I guess.
March 11, 2023 @ 9:40 am
Well I dont feel we need another awards show but we also don’t need to keep on kicking Morgan Wallen and his fans for that matter around. Also knocking the fact that people get to pick the nominees is silly especially considering that you just knocked the fact another show didn’t allow that. I bet if Zach Bryan’s fans come together and get his name on there, this show will be center stage for an article. If he actually wins an award, we will be inundated with tons of articles about how it’s a history making moment for country music akin to the Alan Jackson moments of standing up for George Jones and country music in general. I love this site and I love most of the articles but no need to keep tripping on one guy and bowing down to another. They can both do their thing and the world will be just fine.
March 11, 2023 @ 9:42 am
I mean in order for Zach to win he would need to be on the ballot. And considering he wasn’t up for anything at the CMA awards. And declared he never wants to be up for any Nashville based award. It’s possible to say that bridge is forever burned
March 11, 2023 @ 10:48 am
Well trigger said it’s fan nominated so it’s possible. I don’t know how these things work so I guess it’s possible. I guess it would depend on whether this show considers him country. I don’t but that’s just me.
March 11, 2023 @ 10:06 am
Dude. Morgan Wallen is the biggest artists in country music by a three fold margin over the next closest competition. Pointing out that in a fan-voted awards show he’s likely to dominate the categories he’s eligible for is not “kicking” him. Morgan Wallen fans need to stop coming across as so damn entitled, like he’s beyond reproach. You want true country fans to stop criticizing him? Maybe he shouldn’t release an album where half the songs are hick hop like he just did. Don’t want the “woke” media to criticize him? Perhaps not blurt out the N word on camera.
If anything, I’ve been an apologist for Morgan Wallen, and said he’s been treated unfairly. But to fly off the handle over a mention like this really illustrates how the unhinged nature surrounding Morgan Wallen is a two-way street.
You want to be pissed off at someone? Ask why the “CMT Awards” didn’t nominate the biggest artist in country music for a single award. That’s where he got done dirty. Not in this dumb article.
March 11, 2023 @ 10:45 am
I’m not flying off the handle. You basically pointed out wallens fans for no reason. I see nothing positive that it added to the article by including it. The flip side is if you hadn’t put it in there, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
March 12, 2023 @ 1:39 pm
His music is awful. I tend to not take people seriously who have so little self respect that they listen to dog shit.
March 12, 2023 @ 6:18 pm
I tend to think that people that respond like this are ten year old kids. That’s how opinions are.
March 11, 2023 @ 9:57 am
Its fan voted…
So this means Carrie Underwood, Kane Brown, and Blake Shelton will win every award?
More like “The Country Award show for the biggest Toxic Fan Base”
March 13, 2023 @ 6:27 am
Then Wallen is a shoe-in. His stans are some of the craziest and frankly, most terrifying I’ve seen in music. It reminds me of the BTS Army.
March 13, 2023 @ 9:50 pm
Actually no. Most of Wallen’s fans are young and have other stuff going on in their lives (school, dating etc)
There’s a lot of Blake and Carrie fans that live, breathe this stuff. They are probably retired as well, so they have a ton of time to vote hundreds of times a day.
March 11, 2023 @ 10:28 am
SNORE
March 11, 2023 @ 11:39 am
The Star and the surrounding area in Frisco are pretty spectacular — probably a much better venue for an awards show than an 80,000-seat stadium in Arlington.
March 11, 2023 @ 12:55 pm
Dang! I miss TNN when it was The Nashville Network, GAC when it was Great American Country, and CMT when it was Country Music Television. The original music oriented programming, like Ralph Emery’s Nashville Now, Crook and Chase show, and Bill Anderson’s Fandango game show, slowly eroded in favor of network owned TV series. Although it was cool to revisit and re-watch The Dukes of Hazzard (with Waylon’s narration and Catherine Bach’s Daisy Duke) and a few other former rural based network shows. the initial intent of the country music was erased. But I digress… yeah, we don’t need another two or three country music award shows, no matter of the broadcast origin.
March 11, 2023 @ 1:14 pm
Now we have Circle TV and it’s not much better. Most evenings it’s old movies and series reruns, not very much Country Music oriented content. I had hoped for better when it started.
March 11, 2023 @ 6:31 pm
I like the classic “Austin City Limits” on the weekend. And some of Clint Black’s interviews.
March 11, 2023 @ 2:11 pm
The only awards show I enjoyed was the Music City News awards back in the day. Too bad they are gone now. At least we have the Ameripolitans.
March 11, 2023 @ 2:19 pm
I miss tnn and the old cmt and gac when you could see videos and Opry. Don’t like circle not being on cable things changed for the worst. I remember the 80s and 90s when music was better.
March 11, 2023 @ 9:20 pm
I don’t watch anything on “TV”- I live stream The World of Outlaw Sprint Car races on Dirtvision and an occasional (ever couple 3 mos) movie on netflix using an HDMI cable to my TV …
I would rather play a guitar, write a song, play solitaire or read (like Triggers book for instance), or any number of books, or articles, than see fools preening for their over blown ego’s.
SMH-
March 11, 2023 @ 9:39 pm
My home, ain’t in the hall of Fame….
March 12, 2023 @ 1:03 am
I could save them quite a bit of time and effort. Simply go to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or whichever social media site people waste their time on nowadays, and look at follower count. Whoever is highest and released an album during the year wins an award. The end.
March 12, 2023 @ 2:53 am
Well if ya don’t like turn the fucking tv off!!!!!!
March 12, 2023 @ 5:43 am
Any country music show not broadcast from the Capital of Country Music is worthless.
March 12, 2023 @ 3:46 pm
I watched this video on YouTube of a CMA Awards show from the early 80s and Anne Murray hosted and also inserted herself whenever possible into performances.
I have a sentimental attachment to Anne Murray; also she did record the greatest Beatles cover ever…if they can get Anne on board, well so am I.
March 12, 2023 @ 6:00 pm
They’re just priming the pump to sell off the Opry once it hits the 100th anniversary mark. Colin Reed has zero business acumen and was the wrong guy to have ever been put in charge.
March 13, 2023 @ 8:03 am
The People’s Choice Awards have been around a long time. Originally, the Gallup poll would call people at random to ask who their favorites were in the various categories. This established the nominees and winners, and they were always spot on. It was actually a fun show to watch. Once they switched to internet voting it went off the rails as rabid fan bases took over the voting. if they could establish a better voting system that actually represents a true cross-section of America, then it could work. I’m not opposed to a fan-voted awards show for country music if the voting is fair. We’ll see, and let’s at least give it a chance. I also love the idea of showing the Opry on NBC Saturday nights. You can’t use ratings as an excuse not to…the networks air repeats anyway, so why not something original and inexpensive like the Opry? Maybe they could attempt a new country variety show as a companion…like a country version of Solid Gold. Saturday on NBC used to be home to the Mandrell sisters, The Nashville Palace and Hot Country Nights. Bringing back country to pro
Ime time Saturday nights isn’t the worst or riskiest idea. It would actually be a much needed breath of fresh air.
March 13, 2023 @ 2:31 pm
Lmfao what an idiot this author is – Kelsea Ballerini is literally the best artist in the genre currently and you all should be grateful she graces your airwaves.
March 14, 2023 @ 2:15 am
Country music don’t need saving!!! It’s been around for a long time and it will always be around, yeah I know we have all these crossovers but hey it’s the world we live in, but real country music will never die.
March 29, 2023 @ 10:54 pm
What’s borderline offensive about the ACMs, is that the organization was CREATED to promote country music on the West coast. They’re also older than the CMAs. Now the award show has left “the West coast,” presumably forever. (Although THE ACADEMY is still headquartered in Los Angeles. Bizarre.) In addition, this May will feature their fifth different venue for the show in seven years. (I’m counting the three locations they used in Nashville as one.) And, they’re not even on television anymore. What a HUGE fall-from-grace for a once-proud award show. Sad.