No branding opportunity was left unexploited at this year’s CMT Awards, which the country music television network broadcast live Wednesday night from Nashville’s Music City Center.
A tire company had its name on one of the venue’s stages, while a candy company had its name on another. One award, bestowed on Keith Urban for his skillful deployment of social media, was sponsored by a soft drink.
And then there was CMT itself, which used the award for performance of the year to remind viewers of its other shows; the network did the same by having Charles Esten, a fine actor from CMT’s “Nashville,” serve as the evening’s deeply awkward host.
Business as usual in our age of corporate patronage? Sure. But the promo-palooza made Wednesday’s performances feel like mere branding exercises too, as when Miranda Lambert did her song “Pink Sunglasses” and you kept waiting for a Ray-Ban logo to loom into view.
At another point in the show, the Brothers Osborne teamed with Peter Frampton to do their “It Ain’t My Fault,” an unintended parody of…
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