Does it seem as if every other time you turn on your television these days, some Nashville performer is either singing or talking?
It’s not your imagination. TV’s major networks and cable channels are in the midst of a rush to the rural-rooted musical genre that used to be all but persona non grata in the mainstream.
Powered by the high-profile success of such country megastars as Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus, country music finds itself not only welcome but in markedly increasing demand on pop music awards shows, mainstream musical specials, sitcoms, soap operas and local stations buying syndicated material.
Historically, the country audience had been regarded as having insufficient income to interest national advertisers, but no more. An infusion of new country stars reared as much on rock ‘n’ roll as country, and new yuppie listeners repelled by rock radio’s rap and heavy metal, have given country new Mercedes-driving fans personifying what admen revere as the “upscale” demographics.
Result? Nashville nirvana.
“It used to be that the only national exposure a country star could hope for was a once-in-a-lifetime shot on `The Tonight Show,’ ” says Nashville video authority Jeff Walker of Nashville’s Aristo Media. “Now every show from the Grammy Awards to `Maury Povich’ to `Regis and Kathie Lee’ is looking for a country angle.”
“Everybody’s trying to jump on the bandwagon,” says Terry Lickona of the acclaimed PBS-TV series “Austin City Limits,” which has been seriously showcasing country music coast-to-coast for years and is carried on nearly 300 stations.
In May, NBC accorded an unprecedented three hours to the awards show of the Los Angeles-based Academy of Country Music. And CBS recently announced that on Sept. 29 its annual broadcast of the awards presentations of the Nashville-based Country Music Association, also will be expanded to three hours.
In addition to all-day cable programming of country music and related material by the Nashville Network and the CMT video channel (whose demands for fresh faces, over the past decade, quietly transformed country’s star corps from an aging cult crowd to youthful mainstreamers), there is burgeoning interest at such non-country venues as VH-1, which recently initiated a weekly “Country Countdown” show and presented country artists such as Wynonna Judd on its eclectic “Center Stage” performance series.
Nowhere, though, does the contrast between country music’s TV past and future seem better illustrated than in syndication, where longtime and new country TV syndicators in both Nashville and Los Angeles are being buoyed by the suspension of production by “Hee Haw,” a 25-year-old rural phenomenon that had begun to outlive its time.
Several new shows are rushing into its wake, but the most promising include:
– Buena Vista Television’s “Countdown at the Neon Armadillo,” the so-called country “Solid Gold” series whose test pilot debut on ABC turned off critics with daringly clad, slick dancers and a New Jersey-style approach. But it still boasts enviable Disney clout as well as leverage with stations, thanks to Buena Vista’s distribution of such in-demand properties as “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee.”
– Manhattan Sierra Entertainment’s “America’s New Country,” an MTV-influenced country video-and-interviews series that concentrates on Nashville’s new faces and has been in production for two years-but in 1993 added a host, glib and irreverent John Davis, and now finds itself nearing the 100-station plateau nationally.
– Jim Owens Productions’ “Number One Country,” described by Owens as an ” `Entertainment Tonight’ type of country show” to be hosted by Dennis Stone and Nashville recording artist Lisa Stewart and scheduled to be on the air by fall.
– Home Team Inc.’s “Nashville Skyline,” a thoughtful and award-winning series initially aired on 140 PBS-TV stations a few years ago. It has been accepted for broadcast this year on 40 stations.
How this all happened, says Jeff Walker, is that under a video-driven push for new faces, Nashville got a corps of hipper faces positioned for stardom just as a horde of yuppies raised on the Beatles discovered country’s attractive, lyric-centered music.
Shortly after the yuppies warmed to country, the new Soundscan system started measuring record sales and showed country going through the roof. When national advertisers learned that, thanks to the yuppie influx, country listeners’ demographics had risen into the luxury-automobile bracket, the TV rush was on.
“Today there are four times as many video outlets for country music as there were five years ago,” Walker says, “and the outlets that were already there five years ago have mushroomed. For example, TNN, which reached about 20 million viewers then, reaches 57 or 58 million now, and CMT, which reached 10 million then, now reaches 18 million.”
Grist for this revved-up mill is being supplied by a continually proliferating and increasingly expensive country music video production scene. Producer Marc Ball of Nashville’s Scene Three Productions recalls that whereas video budgets were in the $10,000 to $15,000 range a few years ago, the average today is around $50,000 with “many well over $100,000.”
One reason the budgets have increased so sharply, Ball indicates, is that the market for them has gotten huge.
“Not only do you have the cable networks, TNN and CMT and VH-1, there are university outlets and more than 1,000 clubs that play them,” Ball says.
Another reason budgets went up is that country videomakers must now produce clips that satisfy the die-hard fans of TNN while simultaneously impressing non-country audiences and non-country-based TV producers on other network, cable and syndicated productions.
California-based Rob Smith of Manhattan Sierra Entertainment says he was no huge country fan when he launched “America’s New Country” two years ago-just before Garth Brooks hit national stardom and Soundscan started showing just how popular country music really was. Soundscan is a computerized system that keeps track of every CD or cassette sold over the counter at participating stores.
Smith points out that even now, with country music booming at unprecedented sales rates, TV shows still have to appeal to a lot more country non-fans than fans.
“Where I live, around Sacramento, there are four country music radio stations that all together have a 25 or 30 share of the market,” he says. “That sounds big, but it means 70 or 75 percent of the listeners out there still aren’t into it.”
To try to interest such viewers as well, Smith and Manhattan Sierra “decided we wanted to look at country with a little bit different point of view: that you don’t have to drive a pickup truck to listen to it.”
Smith, Owens and Peter Kimball of Home Team all say that the diminution of “Hee Haw” in the national syndication picture has been a boon to their own efforts, opening up programming niches at some stations that aren’t eager to continue running a show that has passed out of production.
The difficulty of syndicated country production, however, is illustrated by the fact that Kimball has been trying for eight years to commercially launch his “Nashville Skyline” and just this year finally acquired the financial backing to produce 13 shows. His hope, he says, is to get the series on 100 or more stations in September.
“The void created by `Hee Haw’ is helping, along with the fact that country is so hot,” he says.
Not everything country works everywhere. An example is “Hee Haw,” which will run on the Nashville Network in the fall as reruns. Industry sources say the show remains hotly popular with viewers aged 50-plus, but is attracting no one younger. Last summer, NBC broadcast Dick Clark Productions’ “Hot Country Nights” series, featuring Nashville’s new country talent, and found it couldn’t garner sufficient viewership to stay on.
So . . . how permanent is the current rush?
“TV is all mimicry,” Rob Smith says. “When we started `America’s New Country,’ a lot of people laughed at us, and now half of them are making attempts at doing it. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, they’ll all rush to something else.”
