Fox broadcast the first Billboard Music Awards in 1990. The inaugural ceremony was held on December 10, 1990, at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, and was presented as a televised celebration of Billboard chart success.
The first event was hosted by Paul Shaffer and Morris Day, with Jerome Benton also involved in the hosting presentation. Unlike later ceremonies, which became strongly associated with Las Vegas venues, the 1990 awards were staged in the Los Angeles area. The show established the format of combining chart-based honors with live entertainment and celebrity appearances.
The Billboard Music Awards originally took place annually from 1990 through 2006, then went on hiatus from 2007 to 2010. When the ceremony returned in 2011, it moved to ABC, creating a separate broadcast era. That history explains why Fox is correct for the first ceremony even though viewers may associate the awards with ABC or NBC today.