American Music Awards

The American Music Awards first of the “Big Three” music awards show, is one of four annual major American music awards shows (the others being the Billboard Music Awards, the Grammy Awards, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony).

The American Music Awards were created by Dick Clark in 1973 which he produces annually. Intended as competition for the Grammy Awards, in some years it gained a bigger audience than the Grammys due to being more in touch with popular trends. Michael Jackson and Donny Osmond co-hosted the first award show with Rodney Allen Rippy and Ricky Segall. While the Grammys are awarded based on votes by members of the entertainment industry, the AMAs are determined by a poll of music buyers.

The “big three” established awards shows (AMAs, Billboard Music Awards, and Grammys) compete for prestige and television ratings, with the Grammys nominally rewarding quality and both the AMAs and Billboard Music Awards rewarding popularity. Stories of artists being pressured to participate in one awards show over the other have been fodder for tabloid gossip and controversy. The only other major difference between the Grammys and Billboard Music Awards is that the AMAs do not currently have an award for Best Single/Record but the Grammys and Billboard Music Awards do. In 1996, the AMAs instituted a new award, Favorite Artist of the Year, which was awarded to Garth Brooks. Brooks gave a short speech essentially saying he didn’t deserve the award in a year he didn’t do anything, and left the award on the podium. The category was discontinued.

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Since the establishment of the Billboard Music Awards in 1989, there have been instances where artists (such as The Dixie Chicks and Céline Dion) have won all of the “big three” major music awards (including the AMAs). But the need for a unified music awards system (on the mold of horse racing’s Triple Crown) only complicates the competition between the AMAs and the other awards shows.

For the first decade or so, the AMAs had multiple hosts, each representing a genre of music. For instance, Glen Campbell would host the country portion (Campbell, in fact, has co-hosted the AMAs more times than any other host or co-host), while other artists would co-host to represent his/her genre. In recent years, however, there has been one single host.

From its inception in 1973 until 2003, the AMAs have been held in mid- to late-January, but were moved to November beginning in 2003 so as not to further compete with other major awards shows (such as the Golden Globe Awards and the Academy Awards).

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