When country music legend Reba McEntire took the stage on Sunday night to host the annual ACM Awards show, it quickly became clear that this would be unlike most other modern award shows in the entertainment industry. Thanks to Reba, one thing was missing from the ACM Awards that has taken over virtually every other awards show: politics!
Reba has been earning praise from viewers all week for keeping politics out of the awards show and instead focusing on fun! Viewers found it refreshing that in Reba’s opening monologue, she did not take one shot at President Donald Trump or even mention politics at all. Instead, she poked fun at herself!
“I first hosted this show in 1986,” she said. “To put that in perspective, not only was [singer] Kelsea Ballerini not born, her parents weren’t even dating yet.”
Twitter users made it clear that they thought this was one of the best awards shows in recent memory:
Watching the ACM Awards tonight and not one mention about politics. Just good music. Way to go ACM. #ACMAWARDS. 851, 58 and 1
— Tom Griffey (@GriffeyTom) April 16, 2018
I don’t even like country music but I want to watch and support the ACM awards because NO POLITICS! ?
— Brye Ashley ?? (@BryeAshley) April 16, 2018
FINALLY an awards show intro that isn’t full of tired political jokes. Thank you @reba! #ACMawards
— Katie? (@_katie_014) April 16, 2018
Not mentioning politics during the show was no accident, as Reba had made it clear days before that she was intend on making the ACM Awards non-political.
“This year the idea is to have fun. There’s a lot of political things you can address, stuff going on in the world,” she said. “That’s not our theme; our theme is to have fun, not to be mean, not to be catty, just to have a great night of entertainment, great music, seeing everybody and introducing new music.”
“It’s going to be a fun night … I want it to be positive and uplifting and so does everybody at the ACM,” Reba added. “They first came to me and said, ‘Our theme this year is fun. Let’s go have fun.’ I said, ‘Absolutely, I’m for it.’”
In the end, Reba’s efforts paid off when the ratings came in! While viewership was down for both the Oscars and the Grammy Awards this year, they were up for the ACM Awards! This proves once and for all that most Americans want to watch award shows to celebrate and be entertained by the arts and music without having politics spoil the the fun.
Check out Reba’s monologue in the video below, and SHARE this story if you thought she was a great host!
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