Roots, Toots n' Hoots Blog

CMA nominations take time, a lot of time

Jeffrey Remz  |  August 30, 2010

Come Tuesday morning, only some of the nominees for the 44th annual Country Music Association Awards will be known. At a Nashville press conference from the Ryman, Chris Young and Justin Moore will announce finalists in seven categories.

That same day, the duo Steel Magnolia will tell fans who the finalists are for the CMA Broadcast Award Personality and Radio Station of the Year in four areas along with the names of finalists for the National Broadcast Personality.

The CMA is not done there though. That's because you'd better tune in again on Wednesday morning and get a look at Dierks Bentley and Miranda Lambert (actually all these folks have enjoyed excellent years, especially Lambert, Moore and Young, and Bentley released one of the best discs of 2010). Bentley and Lambert will pronounce nominees in five more categories. This time, the CMA is going big time though because the word is coming straight outta Time Square and "Good Morning America."

The country theme is hammered home yet again Wednesday night with "CMA Music Festival:Country's Night to Rock" on ABC at 8 p.m. eastern. This takes a look at the CMA Music Fest held in early June in Nashville.

This is all in prelude to the show itself, which comes your way Nov. 10 from Nashville.

No one has said exactly what is at play here, but why does it take twice the amount of days to tell you who was nominated? I have a pretty good idea - Marketing with a big, huge capital "M." The idea seems to be to keep the awards in the public eye as much and long as possible. Giving as much oomph to the nominations is one of the key steps in getting the news out to the public.

While it sure seems like overkill at some level, in this day and age, the music industry also needs to do all it can to perpetuate itself. More publicity equals more CD sales (which doesn't mean that these folks are necessarily getting rich).

Do the CMAs honestly need two days to tell you the nominations? No way. Will it increase sales? For sure. And so will the big event itself.

I may not see the need from a news standpoint in milking the nominations event for as much as the CMA can, but who can blame them?

Can the Grammys and various other award shows be far behind?