CMT set for country music change
When executives at Country Music Television earlier this year began watching the first cuts of Racing Wives, their new show about the spouses of NASCAR stars, something felt off. Producers had taken women with complexity and depth and reduced them to extensions of their husbands.
“It just seemed residual,” said Chris McCarthy, the president of MTV, VH1 and Logo who in the fall had CMT added to his portfolio. “Why isn’t the show about the women themselves?”
Though much of the season was already completed, McCarthy and his programming president Nina Diaz told producers to recut what they had and even shoot new footage.
“They wanted to highlight the strength of the women, to make the show more empowering by showing their individual aspirations,” said Racing Wives executive producer Jenny Daly. The series, which debuts today, now centres more on the inner lives of the women, which includes Ashley Busch, a world-class polo player and swimwear entrepreneur whose husband is NASCAR driver Kurt Busch. Producers also added a female driver, Amber Balcaen, who recently raced for Kyle Busch Motorsports.
While the network is not abandoning country’s core demographic, which tends to be whiter and more conservative than other musical genres, McCarthy and Diaz are attempting to nudge it in new directions – toward feminism and racial diversity and away from its historical white roots.
This is, after all, the summer of Old Town Road, when Lil Nas X, a 20-year-old gay African American, has dominated the charts with a country-rap smash. (On Monday the song landed at No. 1 for its 17th week on the Billboard chart, an all-time record.) A countrymusic network that crosses the genre’s traditional lines couldn’t be more timely, says McCarthy, who has helped turn around MTV with a slew of new programming.
But achieving success with that strategy is easier said than done. America remains enmeshed in a culture war, and country music often sits at its centre. Last month, the country host Blair Garner was prohibited by his employer, Atlanta-based Cumulus Media, from airing an interview he recorded with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.
Whether the genre’s traditional audience in the South and lower Midwest wants to follow New York executives known for MTV shows like Ex on the Beach remains to be seen. Feeling woke is one thing. Trying to move a base that eyes it skeptically is another.
“It’s nice to say that this is a good moment for change because of Old Town Road. But those are mainly hip-hop fans discovering country, not the other way around,” said Phil Gallo, senior editor at Hits, a music-business trade publication. “I don’t know how far (the country audience) has really moved.”
At the heart of CMT’s shift is a question bedeviling much of Hollywood: how to deliver content for an under-served red-state audience while satisfying an impulse for progressivism.
The network has done well enough in recent years with shows including Guntucky, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders ,Redneck Island, and My Big Redneck Wedding.
But McCarthy and Diaz, given control of CMT in October after a Viacom executive shakeup, felt there was a way to update the network’s sensibility without losing viewers.
“CMT has always been distinctive and had its own voice; it appeals to different places and different demographics than other networks,” said Diaz, a veteran producer and executive who counts shows such as The Osbournes and Mob Wives among her credits. “But it’s always important to be reflecting the times and where we’re headed, not to get stuck in tropes and stereotypes.”
In addition to the retooled Racing Wives, Diaz and McCarthy have put into development Sweet Jesus, a baking competition show set in the south that showcases a variety of religious perspectives – well, a lot of Christian ones, anyway.
Dan Cesareo, the producing force behind Sweet Jesus, says the goal is to signal to parts of the audience they’re being considered without being exclusionary. “We’re embracing all faiths, but it’s not a faith-based show,” he said.
He added the series was inclusive “by being about the best pie, cobbler and sticky bun.”
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, a making-the-squad program about the team’s iconic dancers, has enjoyed a long run of 13 seasons. But producers say the 14th will look a little different, thanks to the new CMT regime.
“There are still a lot of myths in country music, particularly about women, and they can become selffulfilling prophecies,” acknowledged Leslie Fram, CMT’s Nashville-based senior vice president of music and talent.
She checked off a few of them, including the longtime canard embraced by some country-radio programmers that playing consecutive songs by female artists was bad business. “But we think we can help address them with what we’re doing.”