Is A Country Super Show Even Possible?

Old school Hip-Hop scored big for the NFL at this year’s Super Bowl. As much as you saw plenty of negative about it on social media, the halftime had just the right ingredients for a 2022 Super Bowl.

Knee jerk Country music fans hated the show and suggested a Country halftime.

Well, it did happen one and a half times in the past to mixed reaction. In “Rockin’ Country Sunday,” Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt and The Judds performed. It was in the Georgia Dome on January 30th, 1994. Shania Twain split the show with No Doubt in 2003, and that’s it for Country performers.

Things have changed. The NFL stays mired in diversity problems. I’m sure there are reasons, but why would you not put on Garth Brooks, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Kane Brown and a Dolly Parton/Taylor Swift duet, plus an all-star Country band with Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, Chris Stapleton and backup singers Lady A? It hits all bases. Get them to agree. Let a great team of music producers do it. The stadium has cards and lights, and you present it to the NFL. Do it at an AFC or NFC halftime as a Super Bowl audition.

It would be a big statement by Country that we can put together an even more audience-grabbing show. They could play “Wagon Wheel,” or who knows what? Big, fan-familiar songs.

You show diversity, popularity, the musical family, and high name brand acts that normally fill up stadiums on their own. So many ways and names you could interchange and add: Kenny Chesney, George Strait, Eric Church – stadium-filling acts singing familiar songs.

In my dreams!

The Country award shows are going to sink and sink until someone finds a way to mix the old and new. The Super Bowl went all old school. I’m not suggesting that.

All these new names are great, but they don’t attract a mass TV audience. It takes years to be a true national figure. It takes time and exposure. Having a known figure surrounded by strangers is not going to succeed.

Dolly is hosting the ACM award show on Prime Video. A smart move to get a name that draws, but it will need more. It needs a promoted event, not just a promise of newbie stars singing their latest tune. It’s going to be a real push up the hill to get anything close to a broadcast rating/audience. It’s on an app.

Should be an exciting time for Country radio, a time to bring back some fun and not just be a Pandora with commercials!

I’m hearing gasoline card giveaways, concert ticket giveaways, bring the fun back. Contests and content.

Sure hope CRS will push these ideas that music alone is not going to save the day. Less canned voices and more live, more real, more unpredictable. Please, someone do something before a big hand shuts the power to the transmitter off.