The Academy of Country Music Awards’ producers are hitting the reset button on the show in all kinds of ways for the 2022 show. Amazon Studios, which announced on Thursday that the ACMs would move exclusively to Prime Video and not a broadcast or cable channel, also announced that the event will move from its Las Vegas venue to a new stadium. This will allow for a bump in the air date by one month.
Allegiant Stadium will host the ACMs in 2020. This venue has a capacity of nearly 70,000 and was built in 2020.
And the airdate will be March 7, 2022 — about five weeks earlier than where the ACMs traditionally landed on the schedule when the show was being aired on CBS. This year’s broadcast took place on April 18.
The latest news in a musical chair or chess game that many country music awards shows are playing is the new air date. After negotiations between CBS and the Academy of Country Music for a contract renewal came to naught, and it was known that the ACMs were looking elsewhere for a new deal, the broadcast network announced this summer that it was picking up the CMT Awards, which traditionally had been aired on the ViacomCBS sister network of that name, and would bump that show up from mid-June to April 3, 2022 — right before the traditional berth for the ACMS.
The Academy of Country Music responded by moving its show to the front of the CMTs for nearly a month. The Academy of Country Music has moved to a venue that can hold three times as many people as its previous homes, indicating a desire to be bigger and better.
“We are thrilled to return to Las Vegas to celebrate country music’s Party of the Year in this incredible brand-new stadium and on the Prime Video streaming service for the first time ever,” said Damon Whiteside, the ACM’s CEO, in a statement. “We can’t thank the city of Las Vegas and Allegiant Stadium enough for welcoming us for the 57th Academy of Country Music Awards, a party so big only a stadium can hold it.”
This is believed to be the first time that major TV awards shows have been moved to livestream. The ACMs’ hand may have been somewhat forced by the paucity of choices left among the top broadcast networks. Many see the bold move as a glimpse of the wave of future. Networks are losing money on expensive awards broadcasts and big-pocketed digital outlets have ample motivation to bring in existing tentpoles with large audiences.
The affiliation with Amazon will allow for plenty of cross-promotion, as the announcement hastened to note that Amazon Music’s Country Heat brand has passed the 13-billion stream mark since launching five years ago.
With the show less than four month away, ticketing information for the event will be announced in coming weeks, the org stated.
Whiteside and R.A. Clark will return as the show’s executive producers.