For the past nine years, the iHeartRadio Music Festival has been a staple of the music calendar. Every September, for two nights on the third weekend of the month, some of the biggest names in music, including: Bon Jovi, Bruno Mars, Fleetwood Mac, Pink, Jack White, Harry Styles and The Weeknd, converged on Las Vegas to fill an arena filled with 18,000 screaming fans (the festival started at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and has since moved to the T-Mobile Arena).
The 2020 edition, of course, faces considerable challenges when it comes to a human audience, but the tenth anniversary show will continue, albeit virtually, for millions to stream on the CW app on cwtv.com or on iHeartRadio stations. Performers booked for the Sept. 18-19 event include BTS, Coldplay, Kane Brown with Khalid, Keith Urban, Migos, Miley Cyrus, Thomas Rhett, Usher, and more. Ryan Seacrest is ready to host. The show will be filmed from the stages in Los Angeles and Nashville and will air on CW on September 27 and 28.
John Sykes, president of entertainment companies at iHeartMedia, explained the rigorous procedures the company is implementing to ensure the safety of artists. For starters, the band’s recordings will be limited to their approved gear, and after each performance the stages will be removed entirely for another artist to perform there the next day. What is the advantage of a stage in front of a living room? In addition to better sound, it is an opportunity to perform live after many of these artists had to cancel major tours. The K-pop sensation BTS, for example, was due to start their 35-date Map of the Soul Tour in April. The stadium walk was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Because so many acts live in Los Angeles or Nashville, we found a way to drive the place,” says Sykes. Variety in an exclusive interview to accompany today’s announcement revealing additional procedures implemented for the festival.
How will festival performances adjust to coronavirus restrictions?
John Sykes: The ongoing pandemic has caused the narrative to literally change on a daily basis. Therefore, it is challenging for the entire radio and television community to reinvent how we connect artists with their audience. At iHeart, we’ve been reinventing ourselves since March 29 when we hosted the Living Room Concert after the iHeartRadio Music Awards were canceled. We discovered a strategy to put security first and still deliver a live music experience. Than [chief programming officer for iHeartMedia] Tom Poleman and I did it, we sat down and said we have a theater, the iHeartRadio Theater in Los Angeles, that will be completely scrubbed and cleaned without an audience. We will put a set of Zoom fans there so artists can look and see, but they won’t actually be there. And we will have a production team off-site remotely in a parking lot and the artists will have the place for them for an entire day. They will be able to rehearse, connect and play live, we will have video and sound effects.
We will give each of the 10 artists the theater, we have one in Los Angeles and we also have a sound stage in Nashville, we will record all the performances, we will gather them and we will transmit them in the period of two days (September 18 and 19), five artists a night, just as we would at the festival in a live radio broadcast and video broadcast on CWTV.com. Then we’ll take the best moments from those performances, just like we’ve done for the past nine years, and put them on a two-part special at the CW the following week. Soto the fan, will almost feel the same as in the last nine years, except that we will not be at T-Mobile Arena, there will be no audience. But artists will perform plugged into a stage.
So will everyone in the building be selected by the artist?
Sykes: All, all, all! I won’t be in that room. I’ll be outside, greet you when you come in … The handful of people with cameras will be screened daily and interviews with Ryan Seacrest will be conducted with cameras in different rooms. There will be fans who will be connected talking one on one in the locker room with artists. We could never put a normal fan in an artist’s dressing room, but we can do it on a video screen. We also have some virtual ideas where fans can perform with one of the artists on stage. So we are using challenges to reinvent and create creative things that may never have been done before.
How has the industry been responding when it started reaching people?
Sykes: Some artists only take the year off, they just decide they are going to part. But artists who have music this year, or want to stay in the game and stay connected, accepted it for two reasons: They knew we were putting their safety first, and we’re giving them a way to basically play millions of fans in front of the broadcast. radio, broadcast and television show. If you are an artist on this bill. They will see you more than just people in a room or in a place. We wanted to make sure this was airtight for the artist and everyone who presented the plan felt 100% comfortable participating.
Will any of these ideas continue at future iHeart events?
Sykes: Many of these ideas will remain in place: Providing fans with intimate experiences and conversations with artists is something we could never do in an 18,000 seat arena. But there is nothing like live music and we are just trying to do our best to connect our fans to music instead of giving up. Because if you give up, you lose.
This lineup is younger …
Sykes: We are talking to an artist who is more of a classic artist, an amazing name the festival has never done before. Hopefully, we will soon reveal someone special from the iconic category.
