CMT Music Awards Move to April, and to CBS, for 2022

The CMT Music Awards are making a big move in 2022. Not only will the annual awards show move to a new network, it'll take place two months earlier than usual.

CBS, the new home of the CMT Music Awards, announced on Thursday (July 8) that the 2022 CMT Music Awards will take place on April 3, a Sunday. Both CBS and CMT are owned by ViacomCBS; the move to one of the "Big Three" TV networks comes after the CMT Music Awards experienced a 10 percent increase in total viewership in 2021, per Nielsen.

The fan-voted show has traditionally taken place in June, just before Nashville's annual CMA Fest. Moving the CMT Music Awards to April will help CBS replace its usual broadcast of the ACM Awards after, as the Wrap reported in June, network executives "balked" at a $22 million per year price to license the show — an approximately $2 million increase in price despite declining viewership.

The ACM Awards' departure from CBS ends a relationship that dates back to 1998. Per the Wrap, the annual awards show's producers, Dick Clark Productions, have been negotiating with NBC, but no further information about the future of the ACM Awards is yet available.

Ahead of the 2022 CMT Music Awards, CMT will present its first-ever Country Music Week, a press release reports. The week's worth of special programming and events will culminate in the airing of a "director's cut" version of the CMT Music Awards on CMT and other ViacomCBS platforms.