Perhaps the producers of the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys and other ratings-challenged award-show programming should check out tonight’s telecast of the CMT Music Awards at 8 p.m. ET. CMT’s ceremony is always an inventive, grandly entertaining affair and one of many in the MTV Networks group that continue to prove award show telecasts can indeed be a good time for home and auditorium audiences alike.
Formerly known as the Flameworthy Awards, the annual CMT Music Awards are in their own right every bit as exciting as MTV’s Video Music Awards, depending on one’s taste in music and music videos. The CMT’s consistently pull together an impressive lineup of current and veteran country music performers for a live telecast from Nashville that rivals similar productions out of New York City or Los Angeles. Tonight’s show is scheduled to include performances by American Idol winner Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, Rascal Flatts, Trace Adkins, Gretchen Wilson, Brooks & Dunn and Sugarland. Hank Williams Jr. will receive the 2006 Johnny Cash Visionary Award.
Underwood has received several nominations. So has another young country artist with strong ties to television: Miranda Lambert, a finalist from the first season of USA Network’s Nashville Star. Winners in each category are determined in advance by fan voting.
The CMT Music Awards also are known for including celebrities not primarily associated with country music. Last year’s ceremonies featured a reunion of the cast of the classic television series Dukes of Hazzard (a happier group of people never graced an award show stage) and appearances by such stars as Jeff Daniels, William Shatner, Dennis Hopper, Andie MacDowell and Ricky Schroder, some of them creatively involved in country music videos.
There is an interactive component to CMT Music Awards telecast, as well. Fans are able to vote throughout the show at www.cmt.com for the event’s top honor, Video of the Year. The nominees for that award this year are: Alcohol (Brad Paisley), Desire (Brooks & Dunn), Like We Never Loved at All (Faith Hill with Tim McGraw), All Jacked Up (Gretchen Wilson), Better Life (Keith Urban), Who You’d Be Today (Kenny Chesney), As Good as I Once Was (Toby Keith) and Honky Tonk Badonkadonk (Trace Adkins).
It seems that making an award show entertaining requires increasingly elusive skills. Every year the annual telecasts of the Academy Awards, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards and the Grammy Awards are followed by dismal news about ratings declines and largely negative reviews from critics. Only the Tony Awards ceremony escapes a yearly critical thrashing of its telecast, if not generally glum news about its audience size. As problematic as the Oscars and other major ceremonies have become, at least as they play on television, they continue to attract audiences considerably larger than awards shows on cable. But that’s likely more a function of tradition, distribution and appeal to older demographics than one of creativity and entertainment value. When it comes to sheer inventiveness and creativity and a grand determination to entertain, nothing beats the awards programs on the networks of MTV. From performances to presentations, they’re all about entertaining the home audience.
The veteran of the group–the Video Music Awards–routinely delivers huge ratings with its late-summer premiere telecast. VMA awareness among young people (and the adults who grew up watching MTV–some now entering middle age) seems to be as vast and vivid as that for the Oscars, Emmys or Grammys within key demographic, suggesting their ratings may actually be underreported. Since their debut in 1984, the VMAs have been nothing less than a media phenomenon–a stunningly vivid yearly reflection of current popular culture.
There are many other award shows within the MTV Networks group that merit special mention–especially the MTV Movie Awards, the Kids Choice Awards on Nickelodeon and the TV Land Awards. The Movie Awards and the TV Land Awards consistently show the Oscars and the Emmys how award-show presentations should be done. The short film spoofs sprinkled throughout the Movie Awards are some of the best comedic film work of any year. The splendid blend of television personalities past and present at the TV Land Awards makes for a true celebration of everything people have loved and continue to love about television. It is a joyous affair. The only complaint to be made is that the Movie Awards and the TV Land Awards are not telecast live.
