CBS Sets American Music Awards’ 50th Anniversary Retrospective Special for Sunday, Oct. 6

American Music Awards 50th Anniversary Special, a two-hour retrospective special, will air on Sunday, Oct. 6, in the time slot that the 2024 AMAs was going to fill. That show has been bumped to May 2025. It will be the first yearly AMAs show since the one that aired on Nov. 20, 2022 with Wayne Brady hosting.

CBS and Dick Clark Productions announced on April 26 that the 2024 AMAs would run in the Oct. 6 timeslot. It was to have been the show’s debut on CBS after nearly 50 years on ABC. Instead, the AMAs franchise will debut on CBS with an anniversary special which promises to be more ambitious than a standard “clip show.”  

American Music Awards 50th Anniversary Special will feature new performances, artist interviews, special guests, and exclusive never-before-seen footage from DCP’s extensive archives. 

The program will feature themed highlights from AMAs’ expansive show archives, each culminating with an original performance or artist interview. Segments will look back on the evolution of specific artists and genres at the AMAs, as well as award and performance milestones. The performances, created just for American Music Awards 50th Anniversary Special, will include collaborations, debuts from today’s top stars and appearances from AMAs legends. Performers will be announced in the coming weeks.

The special will air concurrently on both coasts, from 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET/5:00-7:00 p.m. PT on CBS and streaming on Paramount+ American Music Awards 50th Anniversary Special is produced by Dick Clark Productions.

ABC aired a 20th anniversary American Music Awards special in 1993. Kenny Rogers hosted the two-hour program.

Nominees on the AMAs are based on key fan interactions as reflected on the Billboard charts – including streaming, album sales, song sales and radio airplay.

The AMAs were created in 1973 as a fan-based alternative to the Grammys. The first two Grammy live telecasts in March 1971 and March 1972 aired on ABC. When the Grammys shifted to CBS for the March 1973 telecast, ABC looked for a show to fill that void and went with Dick Clark’s fan-based show.

In December 1973, Clark was working on the first AMAs, which would launch on Feb. 19, 1974. The veteran producer knew a little publicity couldn’t hurt, so he found time for an interview with Billboard’s Bob Kirsch which ran on page one of the Dec. 15, 1973 issue under the headline “ABC-TV Slates Favorite Acts’ Awards Feb. 19.”

At the end of the piece, Clark attempted to take the long view of his fledgling show and said “If this is done properly, we may have a show that will last 20 years and will finally get the general public involved in popular music awards.”

Clark underestimated the longevity of his own creation. Next year’s AMAs will be the 51st. (There were two shows in 2003 and none at all in 2023 or 2024.)

That first show in 1974 ran just 90 minutes. It has been allotted three hours for many years, though the length of the 2025 show has not been announced. The show in the first five years had a tight focus on three broad genres – pop/rock, soul/R&B and country. It now recognizes far more genres, including hip-hop, Latin, inspirational, gospel, Afrobeats and K-pop.

But, for the most part, the vision that Clark outlined to Kirsch in 1973 still guides the show.

“This is probably the first time a major effort has been made to sample the U.S. public music taste through popular vote. … To date, we have received extremely favorable response from those in the music industry we have talked to about the show. They seem delighted at the opportunity to be honored by the music-buying public.”

Helen Reddy, Smokey Robinson and Roger Miller co-hosted that first show – each representing one of the three main genres. Reddy, who was red-hot at the time, was also the inaugural winner of favorite pop/rock female artist.

Clark, a master showman, was a legend in both music and television. He received a trustees award from the Recording Academy in 1990 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1992. He died in 2012 at age 82.

 DCP is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a Penske Media Corporation (PMC) subsidiary and joint venture between PMC and Eldrige. PMC is the parent company of Billboard.