CMT Launches News & Docs Division, Preps Documentaries

CMT will launch its News & Docs division with a full slate of documentaries and projects from producers including Ridley Scott, Morgan Spurlock and many others. Jayson Dinsmore, Exec. VP of CMT Programming and Development, made the announcement at the network’s upfront presentation at TimesCenter in Manhattan, which included a three-song set from Lady Antebellum.
“We’re fulfilling our promise to create a CMT News & Docs division with a slate of bold and compelling stories that reflect big personalities and monumental events that helped define America, our music and our spirit,” said Dinsmore. “We’ve partnered with some of the most respected and visionary filmmakers working today, all charged with producing unique documentaries through an authentic and distinctive lens.”
The forthcoming documentaries include Promiseland, from executive producer Ridley Scott. The four-hour miniseries Promiseland will highlight an often unsung American hero, the American farmer.
They Called Us Outlaws, an eight-hour documentary from Eric Geadelmann and Mark Johnson, will focus on the happenings in Nashville and Austin in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when artists including Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and others were breaking the rules and making music their own way.
Freedom from Morgan Spurlock explores the meaning of freedom in America.
Meanwhile, Urban Legend: When A Nation When Country from John Dorsey and Andrew Stephan (producers of ESPN’s Pony Excess) examines the Country music scene in the 1980s.
Additionally, there is Johnny Cash—American Rebel, as well as episodes of the returning CMT series Inside Fame, which will spotlight Florida Georgia Line and Hunter Hayes. No air dates have been set for the documentaries or Inside Fame series.