Is anyone gonna miss that?
Announced yesterday in a The Hollywood Reporter exclusive, Paramount Global, a mass media conglomerate which owns networks like CBS, MTV, CMT, BET, Comedy Central, TV Land, all the Paramount branded networks and m0re, is working on a merger with David Ellison’s (son of multibillionaire and Oracle Corporation co-founder Larry Ellison) Skydance Media, and that means they’re going to be pausing a handful of their major awards shows… including the CMT Music Awards.
I think I can speak for most country music fans when I say… nobody will miss it.
Other shows being paused include the MTV Europe Music Awards, the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards Mexico and the MTV MIAWs. The VMAs and the Kids’ Choice Awards will stay put. Honestly, I had no idea they even hosted that many different awards shows around the globe, but speaking as a country music fan, if they’re run anything like the CMT Music Awards are… they’re a C-list (at best) production.
Focused specifically on music videos, my real bone to pick is that CMT doesn’t even show music videos anymore unless you’re up at 2 in the morning…. sandwiched between endless re-runs of Last Man Standing and the Golden Girls. They run a countdown show on the weekend, but flip over to their Monday schedule and it’s Rosanne bright and early, followed by hours and hours of Mike and Molly, King Of Queens, Mom, Reba, and more of The Golden Girls until we get back to music videos at 2AM.
Part of the Paramount memo also stated:
“Our world-class events remain a key component of Paramount’s music offering as we continue to raise the bar in delivering iconic, unforgettable performances and moments that drive pop culture. We have the best team in the business, and we are grateful for your hard work and dedication in bringing these events to life.”
World class, eh?
Truth is, the show actually started to see some signs of life when the broadcast moved from CMT to CBS and Paramount Network in 2022. The 2022 broadcast earned 5.16 million viewers, which was up a jaw-dropping 521% from the year before. Granted, nobody watched it in 2021, so and you’d expect to see a big spike moving to a major network, but still, it was a relative success for the CMT Awards. For comparison, the 2o21 CMA Awards (not the same thing) brought in a record low 6.5 million and the ACMs brought in 6.28 million for CBS in 2021, another record low. The past few years (2023 and 2024), the CMT Music Awards have hovered in that mid-5 million level. Not great at all, but better than they were doing I suppose.
Last year, Roger Clemens gave a touching tribute to his good friend, the late, great Toby Keith, but aside from that and Kelsea Ballerini’s drag queen debacle in 2023, the only memorable moment that comes to mind was actually quite hilarious, and it is from relative recent history. The only reason I remember it is because I had to catch a flight to Nashville the next morning for some kind of “business” trip, although I can’t for the life of me remember what that meaningless “business” was being conducted.
But back in 2019, right before Zac Brown crawled into his weird mid-life crisis and started rapping about Gucci bags and Patrick Swayze, Zac Brown and company accepted the Group Video of the Year award for their song “Someone I Used to Know.” During his acceptance speech, which read more like an on-stage rant, Zac spent some time thanking the fans before things went off the rails.
“We’re so grateful and we get our award every night when we get to show up and do what we love. This award is for all of you, my band and all the outsiders that waited through everyone’s doubts.
For you young artists, have courage to stand up against the machine, be yourself, work hard, and one day you can stand up here and tell all the haters to f*** off.”
The way everyone just kinda stands there…. HILARIOUS.
Later that year, Zac Brown Band would go on to release The Owl, which is by far the worst thing they ever put out, and the Zac doubled down with an even worse solo project called, The Controversy, which he would later blame the fans for not being cultured enough to understand his glorious art… it was quite comical.
Zac told The Tennessean, that it was “an impossibility” for people to “really listen and artistically understand my music,” basically implying that they were too stupid and uncultured to understand it. Us simple American country folks, who haven’t traveled as much as Zac has, couldn’t possibly understand the complexities of the art:
“It’s a matter of what other people have been exposed to. If all they’ve known is to hate things that are foreign to them and to not listen for something that moves them and to be open, they’re (not going to understand). I think my traveling has given me the ability to be open and take in so many different things. All of those tastes combine into making me who I am. I’ll dive deep into someone’s music and … I’ll start to realize what’s really good about something.”
So let’s take a look at some of this cultured art, born out of Zac’s illustrious world travels. Here’s chorus from a little song called, “Swayze.”
“I can’t be your Tom Cruise b****, I’m Patrick Swayze. Every time I get a new b****, I need a new b****. I’m just sayin’, I’m so Swayze. ‘Bout to ghost on you, b****.”
Beautiful, so poetic and deep… definitely WAY too hard for a moron like me to comprehend and appreciate. Then again, that sounds pretty uniquely American to me… unfortunately.
Honestly, I’m getting WAY off the rails with the Zac Brown stuff, but that’s the main moment from the CMT Music Awards that I can remember in the past 10 years. Literally the only one that comes to mind and it’s because of how insanely unexpected it was. Kelsea Ballerini parading around with drag queens? Not exactly shocking in this day and age…
It sounds like they might bring the awards back someday, but don’t bother… I promise you, the LAST thing the world needs is more pointless awards shows… country music or otherwise.
Here’s “Swayze” if you feel so inclined to punish yourself:
