Kelsea Ballerini and Anthony Mackie to co-host the 2022 CMT Music Awards – Billboard

Kelsea Ballerini and actor Anthony Mackie are set to co-host the 2022 CMT Music Awards on April 11. This will be the show’s first run on CBS, where it will effectively replace the ACM Awards, which aired on CBS from 1998 through 2021. The year’s ACM Awards aired on Prime Video on Monday, March 7.
Ballerini co-hosted last year’s CMT Music Awards with Kane Brown. It’s Mackie’s first time as host or co-host, though he featured perennial CMT favorite Carrie Underwood with the Video of the Year award for “Hallelujah” (featuring John Legend) during the 2021 show.
The 2021 show took place at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on June 9. This year’s three-hour show will take place at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium and various locations around Music City.
Nominations for the 2022 CMT Music Awards, which bill themselves as “the only awards show entirely voted for by country music fans,” are set to be announced on March 16.
Ballerini, 28, won a CMT Music Award last year for “The Other Girl,” a collaboration with Halsey. Ballerini then won two CMA Awards in November – Music Event of the Year and Video of the Year for “Half of My Hometown,” a collaboration with Kenny Chesney.
Mackie, 43, has acted in films such as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the Oscar winner The Hurt Locker. He is the first actor to host or co-host the CMT Music Awards since Nashville star Charles Esten five years ago.
Both CMT and CBS are part of the ViacomCBS family. The CMT Music Awards were originally scheduled to air on Sunday, April 3, but the Grammys, a CBS mainstay since 1973, moved into that slot after the pandemic forced a delay from their original January 31 air date. The Grammys decision forced the CMT Music Awards to find a new date. On February 1, they announced that they would push back the show for eight days.
At that time, Jack Sussman, executive vice president, specials, music, live events and alternative programming for CBS, said in a statement, “The CMT brand is preeminent in the world of country music, and we We’re thrilled their team was able to coordinate a new date to bring this premier television event to CBS and maximize the power of the ViacomCBS universe behind it.
The 2022 CMT Music Awards are produced by Margaret Comeaux (CMT), John Hamlin (Switched On Entertainment), Leslie Fram (CMT) and Jason Owen (Sandbox Entertainment). Patrizia DiMaria (Ladypants Productions) is co-executive producer. Jackie Barba and Heather D. Graffagnino are executives in charge of production. Shanna Strassberg and Taryn Hurd are talented producers.
The show will also be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.
For more information, follow @CMT on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok.