American Music Awards Likely To Skip 2023 As Billboard Music Awards Take Over Their Date

The American Music Awards have taken place every year since 1973, when Dick Clark created the show after ABC’s contract to air the Grammys expired. It first aired in February, spent most of its early years in January, and since 2003 it’s been airing in November, insulated from most of the other big awards shows on the calendar. But it looks like the AMAs won’t be happening in November — or at all in 2023 — possibly because they’ve been edged out of their calendar by their corporate sibling, the Billboard Music Awards.

As Variety reports, neither the AMAs nor the BBMAs have a TV contract in place for next year, with ABC opting not to renew its contract for the AMAs and NBC pulling the plug on the BBMAs. Billboard has moved its 2023 telecast to Nov. 19, which traditionally would be the AMAs date; the thinking is that the AMAs will now have to move to the spring, when the BBMAs have traditionally taken place. Sources for the report speculated that Penske Media Corp., which now owns both Billboard and Dick Clark Productions, was making the move to prioritize the Billboard brand over the AMAs, a brand they believe is becoming stale.

A spokesperson for Penske told Variety, “We have offers on both shows from networks and streamers.” It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out.