Country music fans are literally in alphabet soup tonight trying to remember which of their awards shows is on what network.
Involved in this story are CBS, NBC, and ABC dealing with CMA, CMT, and ACM. Get out your Scrabble pieces and follow along.
The Country Music Awards recently signed a big deal to stay on ABC TV through 2026. It’s a genius deal because the CMA’s are like the Oscars of country music. They’re the big Kahuna, so to speak. The CMAs were long ago on CBS but ABC lured them away and have turned them into an even bigger commodity. CBS should never have let them get away.
CBS was home to the Academy of Country Music Awards for years. They’re like the Golden Globes or the American Music Awards, produced by Dick Clark Productions. But after very low ratings this year, apparently DCP — more initials — came back to CBS and asked for $22 million for a multi year contract. CBS said no, and DCP walked.
So now CBS, the most country friendly network because of its older skewing audience, needed a country music show. So they’ve turned to Country Music Television, which they own, for the CMT Awards. The CMTs had been on CBS networks via Viacom, but now they’ll come to the Big Network next year. It’s like an understudy finally getting to go on.
So what about those ACM’s? DCP is said to be negotiating a deal to bring them to NBC, where the Golden Globes air. Of course, this coming January there are no Golden Globes as the HFPA (yet more initials!) has yet to bring in one Black member after a massive scandal broke out this spring over their membership. So no Globes in 2022. Or maybe ever. Who knows? But the ACMs will be a good look for NBC, and each of the Big 3 will have lots of twangin’ and pluckin’ for years to come! Yee hah!
