There is lots of conversation going on around the industry concerning Rascal Flatts not being nominated for the CMA Entertainer of the Year award. I had a meeting with an exec who works closely with the hot group. He can’t understand, and justifiably so, why Rascal Flatts can be overlooked in the voting because they pack every venue they get booked into. AND the stations that bring them to the markets are the country stations. I understood and appreciated his complaints.

However, there was a letter-to-the-editor in the Nashville Tennessean that said, “It is no surprise to me and perfectly appropriate that CMA voters should snub Rascal Flatts, as reported Thursday. The stuff they are putting out lately is certainly not country. It is just noise. It’s something I turn the volume down on, or switch stations.” The arguments will go on and on concerning this. However, over the years, the CMA has done weird things on a regular basis. We’ve written time and again about the snub of the Wilburn Brothers not being in the Hall of Fame.

The Wilburn Brothers deal is one helluva lot more glaring to me than the Rascal Flatts controversy. As you look at both these situations, you’ve got to realize that today’s radio personalities and execs, for the most part, are not folks with either country music backgrounds or histories. In many, many cases, they don’t give a darn, either….P.S. the current Rascal Flatts “Here” has been added to 49 reporting country stations this week. But the story doesn’t end here. Also not included in the final ballot for Entertainer of the Year are Tim McGraw and Toby Keith. This is a good example of the safeguards the CMA doesn’t have: The major labels control the voting and the major label employees have more CMA members that are eligible to vote.