The American Music Awards show is one of several annual major American music awards shows (among the others are the Billboard Music Awards, the Grammy Awards, and the Country Music Association Awards). The AMA's (in current chronological order, the first of the "Big Three" music awards) were created by Dick Clark in 1973 to compete with the Grammys after the move of that year's show to Nashville, Tennessee led to CBS picking up the Grammy telecasts after its first two in 1971 and 1972 were broadcast on ABC. 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 and the AMAs 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.
Although the American Music Awards is held in United States, international artists like Elton John, George Michael and Shakira have also won awards on the show.
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) and allows for ABC to have a well-rated awards show during November sweeps.
The most American Music Awards for a group belongs to Alabama who have collected twenty-two awards. The record for a solo artist belongs to Whitney Houston who has amassed twenty awards.
The record for the most American Music Awards won in a single year is held by both Michael Jackson (for 1983's Thriller), and Whitney Houston (for 1992's The Bodyguard Soundtrack), each with 8 awards to their credit (including the Award of Merit, with which both artists were honored in the respective years).
