CMT, The New, Watered Down MTV

“How CMT is making cowboy boots, pickup trucks, and woeful ballads cool. But not too cool.”

That’s the premise for an article that Fast Company ran in its magazine last week. It sounds interesting, but then you think about what CMT has become recently and it’s just a watered down MTV, bad taste and all. They haven’t really done anything original with the channel but rip off what has already been done by their older brother. Country Fried Videos is Jackass, Trick My Truck is Pimp My Ride, and what does the Miss America Pageant have to do with country music? In their obsession to garner high ratings they’ve cut back on the country music videos and stocked up on the crap that every other channel already airs. Dukes of Hazzard re-runs are the only good thing that have come from MTV-lite. That show rocks.

These two city guys, Hitchcock and Engleman, who are heading the re-branding effort, don’t seem to understand what country music is. They’re trying to make it mainstream by alienating the people who really love country music and playing stuff that appeals to the masses, like pop music. All for a few extra bucks. It’s a little condescending if you ask me, but you can decide for yourself.

Besides, cowboy boots, pickup trucks, and “woeful ballads” were cool long before these two guys got a hold of them.