CMT and CBS announced Wednesday night that “The CMT Music Awards” will be moving away from its traditional base in Nashville to Austin for 2023, with the broadcast taking place from that city’s Moody Center next April 2.
The news means that the CMA Awards telecast (which is about to air on ABC Nov. 9) is now the only one of the three major country music awards shows still taking place in Nashville — with the other two suddenly both earmarked for Texas. The third show in this triad, the ACM Awards, which aired from Nashville during the pandemic but otherwise have had the out-of-town novelty factor in airing from Las Vegas in recent years, recently announced a move to Dallas for 2023.
The CMT/CBS announcement was made at a Carrie Underwood concert at that new facility, where the star was joined on-stage — by Kelsea Ballerini, who will be returning for her third year as co-host. As part of the interlude in the show (pictured above), Ballerini presented Underwood with a massive, possibly unwearable belt buckle commemorating her 25 previous awards from the CMTs, the most in the show’s history. Underwood was also revealed as the first official performer for the 2023 show, five months out.
The move to Austin from the longtime Nashville home for “The CMT Music Awards” came as CBS prepares to host the show’s premiere for the second consecutive year, with airings to follow on CMT and other Paramount Global other platforms. Not surprisingly, the move to a major broadcast outlet for the premiere of the 2022 show resulted in a huge boost in initial viewership, up 529% from 2021, when the show last had its premiere on CMT.
A statement from Moody Center indicated that luring the CMT Awards to Austin had been a couple of years in the making. Said Michael Owens, VP of programming at the venue, “The programming team at Oak View Group and Moody Center has spent the past two years cultivating this relationship and working to endear CMT, CBS and Paramount to Austin and our new, world-class arena. CMT’s commitment to Austin reflects those efforts and we couldn’t be more grateful and excited to host them next year.”
The lineup of executive producers for the 2023 edition remains the same as for 2022: CMT’s Margaret Comeaux and Leslie Fram, John Hamlin, and Sandbox Entertainment’s Jason Owen, who has lately been planting his flag in television (with Fox’s “Monarch”) as much as artist management. Comeaux, Fram and Owen just shared exec-producer duties on Sunday night’s Loretta Lynn memorial concert, which brought CMT its highest ratings for an original program in four years.
In a joint statement, the executive producers wrote, “Both Austin and Nashville are two of the world’s greatest music cities… Our fans are in for an unforgettable night of music with plenty of surprises, as the Live Music Capital meets Music City for the first time ever on a national stage in what will be a true country music extravaganza.”
“The CMT Music Awards” became CBS’ flagship country music broadcast after years of airing the ACMs, a relationship that came to an end with that show’s 2021 telecast. In July, Amazon and the ACMs announced a move to a Dallas-area arena for 2023; that show’s airdate will be May 11, 2023, just a little more than a month after the CMTs go out from Austin.
