Brad Paisley proves he’s a CMA Awards show timesaver

Brad Paisley shares hosting duties with Carrie Underwood for the third time at this year’s CMA Awards. The two also have to balance being nominees and performers, and admit that their hosting responsibilities come first on that night. 

The 2009 show is a prime example, as Brad probably saved the producers thousands of dollars in network fines by gaining several minutes back so they wouldn’t run over their allotted time. “Last year, our hosting was the most fun you could have,” Brad tells The Boot. “Our monologue went over fantastic. Everything landed, and then we had the moment with Little Jimmy [Dickens]. But all of these things went a little long, because one thing we’ve learned is that we’ve got to build in the possibility that a joke will work, because that adds 10 seconds. Every time a jokes works, you could be a minute over. We ended up being four minutes over! They can tell this at about the two-thirds point of the show. They were freaking out, because they’re ready for two minutes over — they have ways to cut two minutes out of it — but they cannot cut four minutes out of it.”

“They’re freaking out, they don’t know what to do,” Brad continues. “I said, ‘I tell ya what, if I win Male Vocalist, I’ll get you back some time.’ And I did. They’ve built in this walk down the aisle for people, which takes twenty or thirty seconds. I was right there [on the side of the stage] … walked right out, did a 20-second acceptance speech, came back, they got back on-time when I was done with it. I went right back to the table, and [executive producer] Robert Deaton was there, and I went, ‘You’re welcome.’ [laughs] And he got the time back. We came in dead-on time at the end of the night. It was such a victory because we had been behind all night long.”

As to how they’ll keep the show running on time this year, Brad says, “I think we’re more prepared for some of those things, and we’re building in a little bit of [time]. We realized what would happen when Carrie and I would walk out and something would work, it would lift the show. So we’re trying to pick our punches and make sure that we have that built-in a little more this year, for a little breathing room. It’d be nice to able to deliver a joke or two and literally be able to say, ‘How we doing on time?’ [laughs] As opposed to knowing we’re four minutes over!”

The ’44th Annual CMA Awards’ will be broadcast live — and hopefully on time — from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday, November 10 beginning at 8:00 PM (ET) on ABC.

Courtesy of TheBoot.com.