After fading away, award show tries a comeback

The American Music Awards had a foolproof route to high ratings.
It honored popular people, many of whom performed on the show. Viewers saw Michael moonwalk, Prince rock, Mariah soar. It couldn’t fail.
And then it did. Ratings crashed; the AMA’s almost vanished. The next awards (in May of 2025) will be the first in 30 months.
Before that, a special – 8-10 p.m. ET Sunday (Oct. 6) on CBS – will be the first step in a comeback attempt. It will have lots of new performances (including Jennifer Hudson, shown here), plus clips that go back 50 years.
ABC had aired the first Grammy telecasts (in 1971 and ‘72), then was upset when the show planned to move to Nashville in ‘73. The network dropped the show; CBS stepped in and has had it ever since.
Then ABC decided it really wanted some music awards after all. It asked Dick Clark to create what became the AMA’s.
At first, the winners were determined by sales and airplay; later, that was changed to a viewer vote. Either way, this was simply a popularity contest.
That was enough for a while. The show averaged 33 million viewers in each of the years from 1989-91; then the totals fell.
In 2018 and 2019, the show had 6.6 and 6.5 million – just one-fifth of what it had three decades earlier. During the pandemic, it had 4 million in 2020, 4 million again in 2021, 3.5 million in 2022. Then it vanished.
Now the show has jumped to CBS for a comeback attempt. That starts with the Oct. 6 “American Music Awards 50th Anniversary Special.”
It will have new performances from Hudson, Brad Paisley, Mariah Carey, Kane Brown, Green Day, Chaka Khan, Raye, Gladys Knight, Nelly, Sheila E and Nile Rodgers & Chic, plus a Stray Kids tribute to boy bands.
It will also have interviews and clips from past AMA’s. With a 50-year span, there should be a lot to show and talk about.