The Grand Ole Opry is Finally Returning to Television

Back on April 24th, the Opry Entertainment Group announced they would be launching a “Lifestyle television channel” in early 2020 with the help of Atlanta-based Gray Television to focus on “Country music artists and the passions, hobbies and love of music they share with their fans.” With Gray Television’s presence in 93 separate media markets in the United States covering roughly 25% of U.S. households, and the Opry’s parent company Ryman Hospitality claiming they can reach a digital audience of 46.6 million people, the idea sounded promising from a business standpoint, but they didn’t really fill in a lot of information about exactly what country fans could expect. Would it include interesting country music programming similar to some of the programs RFD-TV currently serves, or would it be similar to CMT, running reruns of Smokey & The Bandit all day and bad reality TV competitions? On October 17th, the name of the new network was finally announced. Called “Circle,” it promises to offer entertainment news, documentaries and movies, licensed programming and archival content, as well as, “Entertainment experiences celebrating the country lifestyle [to] enrich the artist-fan connection that is the backbone of country music,” according to President of the Opry Entertainment Group, Scott Bailey. Again, this could mean just about anything. But the biggest piece of news to come out of the official announcement of the Circle Network is that it will finally mark the return of the Grand Ole Opry to television. Right now all they’re promising is a “…weekly broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry.” No word if it will be a live broadcast, taped, a compilation of Opry performances from a week of shows since the Grand Ole Opry regularly runs on multiple days during the week, or something else. Though audio of the Grand Ole Opry has always been broadcast by WSM-AM out of Nashville, and though the longest-running program on radio was syndicated across the country for decades (and now can be streamed online via WSM’s website), it’s been many years since the program that made country music famous could be seen on any screen...MORE