Another major blow for CMT.

Once one of the beacons for country music and entertainment, Country Music Television (CMT) has experienced some brutal losses over the past few years. Notably, last year marked the first time the CMT Awards did not air due to CMT’s parent company, Paramount Global, merging with its new owner, Skydance Media.

Yesterday, it was announced that CMT’s last original regular music program on the channel, the Hot 20 Countdown, will be concluding at the end of 2025 after 12 years on air on the television channel.

Hot 20 Countdown, which is hosted by Cody Alan and Carissa Culinar, has run on the channel since its debut in 2013. As 3-hour weekly program running on CMT every Saturday morning, the show would do exactly what the title suggests: air the 20 hottest music videos in the genre while simultaneously featuring guest appearances/interviews from country artists.

Over the past 13 years, the show has hosted the likes of Dolly Parton, Luke Combs, Luke Bryan, Lainey Wilson, Jon Pardi, Dierks Bentley, Tim McGraw, Reba McEntire, Kenny Chesney, Ashley McBryde, Kip Moore and a countless number of other artists.

As previously mentioned, the cancellation of Hot 20 Countdown comes in the midst of a tumultuous time for CMT. In the past year and a half, the company has lost the likes of Leslie Fram, senior vice president of music strategy and talent, Stacy Cato, vice president of production, Quinn Brown, another vice president of production, Ray Sells, senior manager of production, Darrell Hughes, senior producer of Hot 20 Countdown, Melissa Goldberg, vice president of digital and social, and most notably, Donna Duncan, vice president of CMT music and talent. Additionally, Margret Comeaux, the highest-ranking executive still on board at CMT, also announced that she is leaving the company after a 24-year tender at the end of 2025.

Further diving into the lack of original content present as CMT over the past two years, since Paramount took over in June 2024, they stopped producing original content from CMT’s website. Instead of seeing the once thriving site that was dedicated to country music, their homepage now reads as an advertisement for Paramount+, showing television shows such as Taylor Sheridan’s The Last Cowboy, 1883 and 1923 as well as NFL games on CBS.

Even on the channel itself, CMT has changed rapidly from a music-first outlet to a channel running a mix of re-runs of sitcoms and movies such as Reba, Roseanne, King of Queens, Raiders of the Lost Ark and more during the day while music videos, once a staple of programming, get delegated to an over-night spot from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m.

While it’s certainly a blow to legacy music media, the dwindling success of CMT should not come as a huge surprise. Between the rise of streaming services and social media in particular, the way we consume our content (both music and in general) has evolved in way that makes it hard for companies such as CMT to compete with. Of course, there are multiple factors at play here.

First, the rise of short-form content, primarily on TikTok, has changed the way many interact with traditional, long-form content such as Hot 20 Countdown’s 3-hour programming. In many consumers’ eyes, why would they sit down and watch music videos and interviews for three hours (with commercials) when they can instantly find them online with one quick Google search? For many nowadays, the format simply feels outdated.

Secondly, given how good social media and streaming services algorithms have gotten over the past few years, it’s very possible that nearly everything present on CMT’s programming, save for some exclusive interviews, will have already been watched, interacted with and consumed well before a show like Hot 20 Countdown airs simply due to how plugged into social media younger fans of artists are today.

Ultimately, the cancellation of Hot 20 Countdown is another huge blow for CMT as they continue to lose their identity as one of the leaders in country music content and music discovery. With that being said, however, it should not come as a huge surprise given the tumultuous two years they’ve experienced coupled with the fact that social media will continue to reign supreme in today’s media landscape