There will be no American Music Awards this year

In what seems like a tacit admission that there are simply too many music-related awards shows but definitely is not that, Dick Clark Productions has reportedly decided not to do the American Music Awards this year after the Billboard Music Awards took over its usual November airdate. That comes from Variety, which explains that the AMAs are owned by Dick Clark Productions, which are also owned by Penske Media Corp., the parent company of Billboard, and so “insiders suggest that the thinking was to promote [PMC’s] own brand.” Variety also says that there’s “chatter among music industry professionals” that the AMAs are “becoming stale.”

That may have something to do with the fact that the AMAs have been around for a (relatively) long time. Dick Clark himself created the American Music Awards in 1973 after ABC lost the broadcast rights for the Grammys to CBS. The show was a real competitor to the Grammys (which have been “becoming stale” for decades, by the way) for a while, but in recent years the ratings have been declining—as have the ratings for most awards shows, to be fair. The Billboard Awards are more recent, starting in the ‘90s and then getting revived in 2011, when it started airing in May to avoid the AMAs in November.

Variety expects the AMAs to take over Billboard’s usual May window in 2024, and PMC told the outlet that “networks and streamers” are currently in talks over the broadcast rights for both shows, but Variety also points out that neither show has a broadcaster lined up yet. The story suggests that this could be a problem, since you need some kind of broadcaster in order to be broadcasted, but even the Golden Globes found a partner for its revival. If that show can live on, there’s no reason for any other awards thing to have trouble.