Q&A: Tim Daley discusses the evolution of the CMC Music Awards

Tonight, Foxtel’s24-hour Country Music Channel will take its annual Awards to another level. From its humble beginnings as a digital initiative, to its inclusion in the CMC Rocks Festival where it just had four awards and acoustic performances at Hope Estate Winery in country NSW, to now, where an onsite crew of over 40 people will stage a televised ceremony at QPAC in Brisbane.

Featuring six live performances from US acts including Maddie& Tae, 7x Grammy winners Lady Antebellum, 2x Grammy winner Kasey Musgrave and Lee Brice as well as beloved Australian acts Adam Brand and Troy Cassar-Daley – complete with full backing bands, the 5th CMC Music Awards is the start of a clear push not only for the CMC brand, but for country music in South East Queensland.

When TMN chats to a surprisingly composed Tim Daley, CMC’s Program Director, he was sorting the music for the presenters as they walk onstage. He discusses how and why the Awards made such a big leap, the Awards’ host Morgan Evans, and how he hopes this year’s edition will spark a heavy interest from the label sector.

Going from its humble staging at the 300-capacity venue at Hope Estate Winery to a televised ceremony at QPAC in the heart of Brisbane city seems like a big leap for the awards, does it feel that way?

It absolutely does. I’ve been telling people it’s like 20 times bigger, that’s kind of the scale and scope of it.

Last year was a big jump from the previous years when we rendered it as a casual cocktail party for 80-100 people.

It’s been good. No alarm bells going off or anything; we’ve been having regular ‘work in progress’ meetings. It’s a big project, it’s definitely the biggest project that we’ve ever done on CMC.

We’ve done CMC Rocks for eight years now and that’s a pretty big multi-day project, but this is just a lot more concentrated and more intense as an hour and 15 show – there’s lots of moving parts.

Why did CMC move the awards away from Hope Estate Winery?

The main reason was the festival moved. When the festival moved to Ipswich it made sense, we’ve always the awards on the Friday night of CMC Rocks The Hunter. With the scale being so much bigger this year that’s why we’ve moved it to Thursday night so that we’re not competing against our own event. [Before] we ran the awards at about 6 O’clock so there was minimal conflict but this year we’re upsizing the awards to six full performances this year.

What are the biggest differences between last year’s Awards and this year’s?

This is the first year that we’ve had everybody working in a professional manner both from an event and a TV standpoint. The first three years we just created a little interstitial, we’d do four or five interviews and a couple of overlays of the acoustic performances. We kind of did the same thing last year but it was stretched to about 22 minutes. But last year, because we used a sidestage at the festival we didn’t have proper TV lights.

Every part of it is lifting this year. We’re multi-tracking the performances for the first time, so we can really bring people the best audio. This is the first time we’ve ever had proper set design; the first time we’ve had proper light design.

Do you think the move would have happened on the current scale without the support of Tourism and Events Queensland?

We applied for some funding from Tourism and Events Queensland and they’re keen to position themselves as a centre for country music. They already have the Gympie Muster, the Kaboolture Festival and now CMC Rocks, it just makes sense for them to continue to build on that.

We were successful and that kind of formed the financial backbone of what we’re able to do.

How much bigger is the budget now?

What I can tell you is that this is the first year we’ve had one for it. Last year when we put that together, we had no annual budget for the CMC Music Awards. We pulled a little money here and a little money here and we said ‘oh we haven’t spent that much money in marketing, that’ll pay for drinks’. We kind of cobbled it together last year and this year it’s a properly produced, professional event and TV production.

You had a vision similar to this when it first launched.

It really is amazing. The seat of it was I pinched an idea from Channel [V} back in 2006 to run a viewer-voted thing for the CMC Oz Artist of the Year. So we ran that for a few years before the CMC Music Awards actually began. It’s grown from just one award many years ago, really just a digital initiative to try and engage fans to give us something to talk about on the channel, and it’s grown into this.. It’s really a wonderful thing to see international performers, there are I think nine Grammys on the performers list between Kacey Musgrave – I think she’s won two – and Lady Antebellum have won seven. Just the level of talent and to be able to run an event that can show the wider audience that this music is not the cliché that people think it is.

Tourism and Events Queensland are pushing to position South East Queensland as the new home of country music, what role does CMC play in that?

Rebecca Batties,General Manager –FoxtelMusic Channels and Head of Digital:

When CMC Rocks announced the moved to Ipswich, a Rob Potts and Michael Chugg initiative, it opened up the door for us for the awards to make the move also. The partnership with Tourism and Events Queensland has certainly helped to make this happen, and it has all been turned around very quickly and we have achieved so much in such a small amount of time.

We wanted to create an award show that could ‘stand up’ anywhere around the world, and this move and the scale of these awards will prove that.

Hosting duties have been given to CMA Global Artist Award winner/CMC presenter Morgan Evans. What is it about Evans that aligns him so well with the CMC brand?

First his talent but also the person that he is: he’s a guy in his twenties, he loves country music, he represents a lot of the audience that we want to reach.

Traditionally with say the Tamworth Festival the average age is well into the 60s. Country music is often seen as, in Australia, for old people. Morgan actually interned for us eight years ago or something; I’ve known him for a long time from when he won the Road To Tamworth talent competition in 2007. We’ve had an eye on him, he’s easy to work with, he’s friendly to everybody, every box was ticked really.

What kind of support would you like to see from the major labels in order to grow the profile of the CMC Music Awards?

I think when we can show that the awards can benefit them, that question will kind of answer itself. When they see they get more PR and more coverage in the press, when they see a bump in sales because of the higher profile.

This is one of the things that has caused them to not be so involved with the Tamworth Festival over the last ten years or so, Tamworth Festival stopped having an impact as it transitioned into more of a ‘grey nomad’ festival and not as much money was spent by the punters over a period of time. It used to be the vibrant, dynamic place where it all happened. And labels would go up and spend a lot of money on signage and all sorts of things. They did it because it worked, but that’s kind of come off the boil.

We’re not having Lady A on the show just because it’s cool, [it’s] because we see it working for the band, their management and the label and we want to help make Lady Antebellum as big a star here as they are in the US. And hopefully the labels and management see a result from that. This is not just the support that we’re aiming for it’s the support that we’re hoping to earn.

What are your hopes for Brisbane in terms of harbouring a country music scene?

They already have the Kaboolture Festival, they already have the Gympie Muster, there’s 98.9 which plays almost 100% country. We’ve seen historically that shows that sell out in Sydney will sell out in Brisbane too, so South East Queensland is a little bit more of a country friendly place. I think CMC Rocks and the Awards will really magnify what’s happening already.