My Day: John Hamlin, Senior VP of Music Events & Talent at CMT, Executive Producer of CMT Music Awards
John Hamlin is used to wrangling on-camera talent. After 20 years as a "60 Minutes" producer working with Mike Wallace and Anderson Cooper, Hamlin now corrals the likes of Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan as executive producer of the CMT Music Awards, which drew 3 million viewers in 2012. This year's 12th annual event is set to air June 5 (8 p.m. ET/PT on CMT and CMT.com).
7:30 AM YMCA. I only have the attention span to be in the gym for 45 minutes–30 of these minutes are spent reading the New York Times, USA Today and the Tennessean on the elliptical.
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9:00 AM Breakfast meeting with Ken Levitan [of Vector Management]. He manages so many artists, we're always working together on something.
10:00 AM Conversation with CMT president Brian Philips about the upcoming CMT Music Awards that usually starts with me saying, "What if…"
11:00 AM Conference call with department heads on the CMT Music Awards. We've already started loading into the Bridgestone Arena [in Nashville, where the show will be held].
12:00 PM Lunch with Luke Bryan at the Palm to discuss his awards show performance. He's part of a new and increasingly rare breed-a hot star with virtually zero attitude. He is one of the nicest, most considerate superstar musicians I've ever worked with. He knows what I want. I know what he wants. Trust works.
2:00 PM Call with designer John Varvatos and team about styling for our awards show house band.
3:00 PM Call with our show hosts this year, Jason Aldean and Kristen Bell, to go over scripts and the opening performance for the show.
4:00 PM Watch the latest "CMT Crossroads" we recently taped. This one is with Willie Nelson and friends including Neil Young, Sheryl Crow, Nora Jones and Jack White. I'm sure MTV standards and practices won't let us show Willie smoking a joint on camera…although it obviously wouldn't bother Willie one bit.
5:30 PM Meeting with Cindy Mabe, senior VP of marketing at Universal. Cindy understands the impact of the CMT Awards for her artists. Last year she helped us hit it out of the park with Little Big Town. This year, she convinced George Strait to perform on the show for the first time ever.
7:00 PM Dinner with Scott Borchetta of Big Machine. This is another guy who has so many hot artists, like Taylor Swift and Florida Georgia Line, we can hardly make a show without him. I'm putting three of them on the awards show. He wants four. He gets three…and the check. This time.
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