ACM Fan Voting: Disrespecting The Artist or Engaging The Fans?

Nashville is a close knit community and changes are carefully scrutinized. Publicity leading up to this year’s new fan voted ACM Entertainer of the Year was mostly positive. But shortly after Kenny Chesney was awarded the trophy on Sunday’s telecast (5/18), the four-time ACM Entertainer winner was backstage criticizing the new methodology. “It’s complete disrespect of the artist, what they’ve lowered it to,” said Chesney. “It really diminishes the integrity of the music that we’re making. They took it from what the award really represents into a sweepstakes to see who can push people’s buttons the hardest on the Internet.”

Chesney label head Joe Galante suggests that fan voting may be more appropriate for a newly created award. “There seems to be a movement across a lot of media platforms to get fan involvement and that is obviously part of what we are doing from a marketing standpoint on lots of properties,” says the Sony BMG Nashville Chairman. “And it is probably very good for the show to bring the fans closer. However, there is no problem creating a new fan voted award. Kenny, in the sense of the Entertainer of the Year category, has a valid point. It is the pinnacle of your career, everything you do—writing, performing, selling records and TV performances.”

The Facts
The ACM fan-voted Entertainer of the Year award is a three step affair. It is exclusively voted by the industry through two nomination rounds. This process serves to fact check the eligibility and qualifications of the final five nominees and ensures that whoever receives the award is a valid candidate based upon the official criteria. The third and final round takes the final five nominees to the fans.

Voting security was high for this first year experiment. Votes were limited to one per IP address and scanned daily. When Rascal Flatts offered those who voted a free, previously unreleased MP3 download (which technically did not violate the rules), the ACM voter group quickly asked them to remove the offer and all parties agreed not to count the votes acquired in that manner. As expected, all the nominees took steps to mobilize and urge fans to click for them.

The Internet vote was not a wild ballot box stuffing exercise ruled by exuberant fan club junkies, hard wiring auto-dialer software to produce millions of bogus votes, it was orderly and monitored. It may also be fair to note—for comparison and contrast—that the previous industry-only voting system should not be likened to a room full of objective scientists wearing white coats and measuring quantifiable artist metrics with microscopes. Reality is that many industry voters skew according to relationships and business ties.

A brief and unscientific blog survey reveals that fan sentiment is evenly mixed over Chesney’s charges. His diehard fans support his every word while others ask, “Why he didn’t just walk off and not accept the award if he was so upset?” In recent years the ACMs have suffered sagging ratings. Moving further into fan voted territory is seen as a possible remedy to help differentiate the ACMs from the CMAs plus create more fan interest and viewer tune in. (This year’s ACM ratings did increase almost 30% over last year, also partially due to a new Sunday time slot.)

ACM Viewpoint
“Bottom line as Executive Director of the Academy, I have a mission that is two fold,” says ACM Executive Director Bob Romeo. “One is to protect the integrity of the vote, and the second is to promote our country music genre. Engaging the consumers is the right place for the Academy. Is that a hard pill for Nashville to swallow? I’m sure it is. Is it tough for people to perceive that they are perhaps losing some control? Probably. However, given the changing times we are facing, if the Academy doesn’t engage the consumers we’ll have issues going forward.”

Romeo continues, “The board wanted us to do a fan vote and keep it as honorable and pure as we could. The voting was monitored daily to make sure there were no spikes that were out of the ordinary and minute-by-minute during the show. I can look the industry in the eyes and say we had a true, honest vote. I’m proud of it, and excited that Kenny won.”

“We’ll go back to the board to consider what to do for next year. I’m one of those crazy out-of-the-box guys that thinks that maybe we should also give the fans a chance to weigh in with our newcomers races. Maybe even at some point the board will entertain the thought that the fans should weigh in on everything we do. But one thing for sure, it’s time we empowered the fans.”

(Disclosure: David M. Ross currently sits on the ACM Board of Directors)