'AUSTIN CITY LIMITS' Music festival drives changes in TV show

More than 200,000 people attended the recent 'Austin City Limits' Music Festival.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
It's not a midlife crisis, per se. But on its 30th birthday, "Austin City Limits" is getting a new personality.
Gone, for the most part, are the country acts that have been a staple of the PBS TV show since the '70s. This year's lineup -- which debuts Oct. 2 -- reads more like Spin's table of contents: The Flaming Lips, the Pixies, Wilco, Elvis Costello and the Polyphonic Spree are some the modern-rock acts playing the show this season.
The driving force behind the change is the growing popularity of the "Austin City Limits" Music Festival. Launched in 2002, the two-day concert event drew about 75,000 people.
It has mushroomed into a three-day rock festival that drew more than 200,000 people recently to a 15-acre site in Austin's Zilker Park.
That's a far cry from the TV show -- a low-key concert program that's taped in an intimate, 450-seat TV studio at the University of Texas. But by booking many of the same rock acts that play the festival, the TV show is courting a new crowd, says Terry Lickona, the program's longtime producer.
"We're exposing the TV show -- the brand, whatever you want to call it -- to a much younger audience," he says. "Until recently, they might have thought, '"Austin City Limits" is that show my parents watch.'"
Lickona is in charge of getting acts to play "ACL," a job he's been doing for 27 of the show's 30 years. At age 56, he has more in common with older, Waylon-loving "ACL" viewers than with the teens who flocked to Zilker Park to see Dashboard Confessional and Franz Ferdinand. But he's adamant that the show needs to attract younger viewers to survive.
In a recent interview, Lickona talked about all things "ACL."
ON MUSICAL CHANGES AT THE SHOW
"The easiest way for me to answer the questions about 'why?' is one word: evolution. I've always tried to push the show further than what people would let me. I think that's necessary to survive. Branching out musically has given the show a cool, hip edge -- even though I felt it had a cool, hip edge in the first place. I've learned to keep an open mind to booking modern acts. ... I'm pretty much open to booking anything these days, including urban music."
ON THE SHRINKING ROLE OF COUNTRY MUSIC
"This will be the first year in the history of the show that we have not had a quote-unquote 'country' act. ... I'm not going to book country music just for the sake of booking it, and frankly, I feel the state of country music today is pretty pathetic. I'm not a big Kenny Chesney or Toby Keith fan. ... When we started getting away from country music [in the '90s], we'd get calls and letter and e-mails saying we're not country enough. But either people have gotten used to it, or the people who were disgruntled tuned out, but I don't hear much about that anymore."
ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TV SHOW AND THE FESTIVAL
"This festival has had as much impact on the show as anything we've ever done in the history of the show. Not that we're obsessed with going after the younger demo, but we know there are younger fans out there that appreciate our show, and part of it is tied into the success of the "ACL" festival. ... And I think the festival has managed to capture and maintain the vibe of the show, even though it has the trappings of a big rock festival. It has a much different feeling than if you go to Coachella or Bonnaroo, which are specifically geared toward a younger rock crowd. When I walked around the grounds last year, I saw people of all ages: People who've watched the show from the beginning, high-school kids playing Frisbee in the middle of the park, hippies, jocks, freaks -- you name them, I saw them."
ON BRUCE SPRINGSTEENAND BOB DYLAN
"They're on the top of the list of people who've still never done the show. I've talked to everybody but Bob Dylan -- his manager, his publisher, people at his label, people in his band -- and they're all very supportive. Everybody says, 'Look, Bob is just weird.' Apparently, he filmed three or four nights of performances in a row in New York City years ago, then rejected the entire thing because he didn't like what he was wearing. With Bruce Springsteen, I really don't understand. I've got to believe he's hip to our show, but to this day, I've never been able to get his manager to return a phone call."