ACM Awards 2025 highlight mainstay country legends like Reba McEntire, new talent
The 2025 Academy of Country Music Awards marks a significant transition for the prestigious ceremony.
Country music's cultural influence and industry evolution are at an inflection point as the industry embraces pop music, inspired by crossover success like Post Malone's "F-1 Trillion" album and others. This year's awards show also fully embraces the streaming era.
The 60th annual ACM Awards will not only be livestreamed, commercial-free on Amazon Prime Video for the fourth consecutive year, on May 8 at 8 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. CT. The show, hosted by Reba McEntire, will also be available on Twitch's Amazon Music channel.
A Prime Video membership is not required to watch the show, streamed from the Dallas Cowboys' world headquarters at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.
Only a decade ago, music award shows like the ACMs performed 20% better than, on average, the year's top primetime television programs, according to Nielsen Media Research data,
Times are different now. Broadcast and cable television use is waning, while streaming-first programming — including National Football League games being first-run on Netflix, Peacock and Prime Video — is entrenching itself as a marketplace leader.
Reba McEntire presents Lainey Wilson with the Female Artist of the Year at the 59th ACM Awards at the Ford Center at the Star in Frisco, Texas, Thursday, May 16, 2024.
Academy of Country Music Awards 2025 performers
ACM CEO Damon Whiteside and ACM Awards veteran producer and showrunner Raj Kapoor are each keenly aware that the future of awards shows, and TV programming in general, is in streaming.
"We know fans are on streaming platforms," Whiteside said in 2021. "We've seen in research that they feel programs [that] are on streaming platforms seem more interesting to them than traditional broadcast. We felt this was a great opportunity for us to get a foothold in the future."
That future has arrived — and it's not just for young people. A 2023 study from DeepIntent and Roku found that 79% of adults aged 50 and older are streaming viewers. Up to half of those polled also said they were willing to grow their engagement with streaming platforms. In June 2024, Nielsen data also showed that time spent streaming equaled 40.3% of total TV usage, doubling broadcast numbers.
The streaming format also shaped the show's content.
It will open with a 12-minute performance featuring Clint Black, Dan + Shay, Wynonna Judd, Reba McEntire, LeAnn Rimes, and Sugarland.
"We're giving a super-sized breath of fresh air to the award-show concept by opening with a 12-minute musical performance honoring the 60th anniversary," said ACM Awards showrunner Raj Kapoor. "We're delivering a show full of performances with awards mixed in."
Music and tech industry executives alike are watching online viewers closely.
"Partnering with programs that could reach viewers (like country music fans) who've yet to jump to digital "is genius for [Amazon]," said streaming industry research group Conviva's president and CEO Keith Zubchevich to The Tennessean in 2021. "Nobody's talking about late adopters. That's the only greenfield market left. Everybody else is fighting over the digital natives. There's this entire late adopter base that nobody's talking to."
Country music awards show future
Subscription-based streaming platforms surged to record popularity amid COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.
Streaming's rise has profoundly impacted the music industry. Consumer tastes diversified and broadened as the medium grew 500% in a decade to become the top revenue driver.
Super-sizing existing concepts to super-serve streaming's unprecedented boom in the music and television industries seemed necessary.
Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton host the 58th ACM Awards at the Ford Center at the Star in Frisco Texas, on Thursday, May 11, 2023.
A near tie exists between the TV ratings of the 2021 ACM Awards and the viewership on Prime Video in 2023, with 7.6 million homes tuning in for the 2021 broadcast and 7.7 million viewers watching in 2023. The 2025 awards represent the next chapter in this technological evolution.
ACM Awards seeks to hold onto existing viewers while courting new
Award programs like the ACMs face the challenge of balancing the recognition of numerous new No. 1 stars emerging from the streaming era with the familiarity needed to engage dedicated industry followers and casual viewers alike.
Creating a show that appeals to everyone and keeps viewers from switching to other available programming in an environment with abundant viewing options is difficult.
For the 17th time, Reba McEntire hosts the Academy of Country Music Awards on May 8, 2025 in Frisco, Texas
ACM Awards: Backstreet Boys, Rascal Flatts, Jelly Roll, Alan Jackson, more
The ACMs address this challenge by featuring 50-year country veteran and pop-crossover icon Reba McEntire as the event's host. McEntire has hosted approximately one in four ACM Awards throughout the program's history and nearly every other year for the past 40 years. The "Fancy" vocalist remains a prominent and recognizable figure associated with the broadcast.
"Amazing legends with career longevity who connect with the fans as well as supporting the rise of eventual Entertainer of the Year talents along their journey to that honor (are also important)," said Kapoor, highlighting the event celebrating the 35th anniversary of ACM-nominated duo Brooks & Dunn, who will join Cody Johnson for a performance.
Kapoor added that veteran acts with over two decades of experience have key roles in the show, including Alan Jackson, Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton.
In previous years on Prime Video, mainstream superstars of the moment, including Dua Lipa, Noah Kahan and Ed Sheeran, have appeared. However, country music is now a genre where pop crossover success has elevated Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Post Malone and Morgan Wallen to broader acclaim. Thus, this year's program finds the Backstreet Boys — superstars superseding country and pop's present moment, but still familiar to country's core audience — appearing with revived 2000s era chart toppers Rascal Flatts.
"I can't wait for everyone to hear two vocal supergroups with great harmonies," Kapoor said, adding that he served as the Backstreet Boys' creative director for the 2017 Las Vegas residency and as a production designer for Rascal Flatts' 2015 tour, among many others.
ACM 2025: Emerging talent Ella Langley snags most nominations
The 60th ACM Awards will continue to "honor (and break) new talents," Whiteside said.
Alabama-born rising country star Ella Langley snagged eight nominations. Before the Prime Video program on May 8, she was awarded Best New Female Artist and Visual Media of the Year for her "You Look Like You Love Me" video with Riley Green.
Ella Langley poses for a portrait before the Opry NextStage Live concert at Lava Cantina in The Colony, Texas., Wednesday, May 15, 2024.
Being able to strike a balance in ensuring that genre's seemingly now-perpetual and streaming-led star-making potential is properly represented against popular established acts is "tough," Whiteside said.
Even in a broadcast format that, for 2025, has been expanded to 2 hours and 30 minutes, maintaining visibility for the genre's legacy acts who can drive the program's long-familiar viewers to the show is essential.
In 2023, the ACM Awards achieved greater global reach that "overwhelmed" executives like Vernon Sanders, head of television at Amazon MGM Studios, because of the involvement of icons like Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton on the show.
"We look forward to continuing the success and bringing even more star-studded and captivating shows to fans worldwide," he said, in a press statement.
The jury is still out on how this year's show, available to 200 million Prime Video subscribers and an untold number of new-to-Prime Video and Twitch users, will resonate with its blend of classic and modern country performers.
ACM Awards traditions evolve, remain vital
In 2015, the 50th anniversary of the ACM Awards resulted in a 15% ratings spike, reaching an estimated 16 million American homes.
Reba McEntire jokes with Dan + Shay at the 59th ACM Awards at the Ford Center at the Star in Frisco, Texas, Thursday, May 16, 2024.
Trends suggest that this year's move to streaming during another anniversary year could help the program achieve ratings comparable to pre-COVID-19 levels.
According to Kapoor, the program's enduring appeal and potential streaming success highlight the ACM Awards as one of the country music industry's most cherished traditions.
"Being the executive producer of the ACM Awards means I'm the caretaker of a historic (vital property) that the country music community stands up and supports," Kapoor said.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Amazon streams ACM Awards to tap in with new, younger audience
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"The Gilded Age" season 3 premieres on Sunday, June 22 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and will be available to stream at the same time on Max.• U.S. — HBO/Max/Max on Prime Video• CAN — Crave• AUS — Paramount+ • U.K. — Sky Atlantic• Watch anywhere — try NordVPN risk-free As the old-money world of the van Rhijns co-exists uneasily with new-money families like the Russells, series creator Julian Fellowes - employed to perform his usual shtick - plays the friction and resentment for all its worth whilst believing he is the first person to realize that bad things lurk beneath the surface of every self-satisfied elite. And so, Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) has a serious diminution of power and status to consider at home while Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) somehow maintains the energy necessary to scale, and then ultimately control, the upper echelons of New York society. But is her family on the brink of collapse? 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Don't panic. You can still watch the show from your usual domestic streaming platform with a VPN. We recommend NordVPN. Here is the full episode schedule for "The Gilded Age" season 3: Season 03 Episode 01: "Who Is In Charge Here?" - Sunday, June 22 S03 E02: "What The Papers Say" - Sunday, June 29 S03 E03: "Love Is Never Easy" - Sunday, July 06 S03 E04: "TBA" - Sunday, July 13 S03 E05: "TBA" - Sunday, July 20 S03 E06: "TBA" - Sunday, July 27 S03 E07: "TBA" - Sunday, Aug 03 S03 E08: "TBA" - Sunday, Aug 10 Mark Twain. It was a cutting reference to the ostentatious, shallow and politically corrupt elites of 1870s America who insisted they were living in a "Golden Age". Aside from widespread viewer acclaim, the show has also been nominated for 59 awards including: One Primetime Emmy (winning for production design), Two Satellite Awards; and, One Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award for best ensemble in a drama series. No, not right now. 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