ACM Awards To Make History Monday As First Major Awards To Livestream Exclusively

The Academy of Country Music Awards, the longest-running country music awards show, will make history on Monday as the first major awards to livestream exclusively. The 57^th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards will be hosted by Dolly Parton at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas and will stream live on Prime Video beginning at 8 PM ET/5 PT in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Monday’s awards also are a return to Las Vegas after Covid-19 forced the predominantly west coast show to film in Nashville the past two years. Academy of Country Music CEO Damon Whiteside says the pandemic allowed the organization to rethink how they do things and how to market to fans.

Whiteside started with ACM in January 2020, months before Covid-19 forced the postponement of the April 2020 awards in Las Vegas to September in Nashville. Whiteside says the team immediately pivoted from a live and in-person awards show to a pre-taped, at-home show titled “ACM Presents: Our Country.” The show came together in three weeks and featured country artist performances at home or on the tour bus.

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Months later, the ACM decided to move the awards to Nashville in an effort to keep artists safe. For the first time in the awards’ history, the show was filmed in Nashville across several venues.

“What that taught us was how much heart we could have in the show,” Whiteside tells me. “We’ve had ‘Party of the Year’ as our tagline, but [the awards] showed that we could comfort fans with heartfelt performances from the artists.”

Following another Nashville ACM Awards in 2021, news broke that the ACM would not renew its television deal with CBS. The decision led the organization to have “really interesting meetings with a lot of different potential partners in the television and streaming space,” Whiteside says.

“One of the goals given to me by my board was we need to think about the future of an award show,” he says. “The format itself is getting a little bit tired and fans are starting to get less engaged.”

Whiteside says “everything clicked” during a meeting with Amazon. “Strategically, we were all on the same page and have the same goals,” he says, adding that there is a big crossover with the country music fan base and the Amazon customer base. “It was this match made in heaven and it allowed us to totally change the format of the show.”

The ACM team was challenged to think out of the box in partnering with Prime Video, Whiteside says. As a result, the former three-hour award show shortened to two hours with no commercials. The ACM Awards also will be streaming live in five countries, allowing the show to have a global footprint for the first time.

“With respect to every other award show out there, I think it’s allowed us to really leapfrog past all of them in the sense that we can now take a lot more risks and we can really change up this format, and, I think, become way more appealing to fans,” he says. “In our research, we constantly see that fans actually think that content programming on a streaming platform is more interesting than what’s on broadcast television.”

Whiteside adds that this year’s show will be an education process for everyone involved. One of the major tasks at hand is explaining to country fans how they can access the show. Viewers can gain access by visiting the Amazon Prime Video homepage on March 7 at 8PM ET through an existing Prime account or can sign up for a 30-day trial.

The show streams at 8PM ET with Parton as host. The country legend was an obvious first choice as she appeals to everybody, Whiteside says. “She’s such a pioneer in her own right and she’s always at the forefront of technology,” Whiteside says of the Country Hall of Famer. “We thought she and her team will understand this opportunity and how big it is to be the first and for her to be the face of the first award show to crossover.”

A major mission of the Academy is how it serves the genre’s new artists. Fittingly, 2021 ACM New Male Artist of the Year Jimmie Allen and 2021 ACM New Female Artist of the Year Gabby Barrett will co-host. That mission is further exemplified through this year’s nominations as 31 artists and industry creators received their first-ever ACM Awards nomination in 2022.

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“To see the industry recognizing artists that haven’t been nominated before was really exciting,” Whiteside says. “I think it says a lot about the industry right now and the fact that we are hungry to grow the tent of country music and to bring more artists under the tent.

“There’s more opportunity than ever now with digital platforms for artists to breakthrough so I think because of that, and the fact that streaming is growing so much, it’s allowing more artists to get discovered.”

With countless new and veteran artist collaborations at the upcoming awards show, several newcomers will find themselves in the limelight and on the ACM Awards stage for the first time.

“There’s going to be some heart moments like we’ve had the last couple years, but it’s definitely going to be a return to the party,” Whiteside says. “I can’t wait to hear from our international fans that don’t get super served with country content and I think [the ACM Awards streaming on Prime Video] for them is going be a game changer.”