Billboard Music Awards make room for newcomers along with legends

Celine Dion is back for another round of Billboard Music Awards. But this year she can roll out the welcome mat for Fifth Harmony and Ty Dolla $ign.

Sunday’s ABC broadcast from T-Mobile Arena is paying closer attention to the charts that brand the awards show this year.

“Every artist can remember when they opened up the magazine and saw when they entered the Billboard chart,” co-producer Robert Deaton says of Billboard magazine, the music industry’s bible for sales and airplay.

And some of this year’s performers won’t need long memories.

Along with big Grammy-style moments, such as Madonna’s tribute to Prince, the three-hour broadcast makes time for recent hits: Fifth Harmony’s “Work from Home,” or “Cake by the Ocean” by the Joe Jonas-led DNCE.

Performance slots for arena-filling Pink, Rihanna and Justin Bieber are shared with young pop stars such as Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Shawn Mendes and Troye Sivan — “a brand-new artist who we feel is going to be something” Deaton says. “That’s a unique thing, I think.”

“That’s a pretty different landscape, to have that many performers who weren’t on network television last year,” he adds. “That just reflects how music is in constant motion, constantly changing.”

But the Billboards want parents to watch too. And unlike the recent Academy of Country Music awards, this one is not confined to any one genre. The Billboard charts are “a big, huge representation of everything, so we want our show to be reflective of that,” says Deaton, who is helping oversee the show for Dick Clark Productions.

Announced highlights include:

■ An elaborately staged medley from Britney Spears, the Planet Hollywood concert headliner who is receiving the third Billboard Millennium Award, previously given to Beyonce and Whitney Houston.

■ Celine Dion, another Las Vegas-based star, will perform Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” as well as receiving the Icon award previously given to Jennifer Lopez, Prince, Stevie Wonder and Neil Diamond.

■ Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani will perform their new duet “Go Ahead and Break My Heart.” “I don’t know if I would have put them together” if Cupid had not done the job for him, Deaton says. “But the record works. It’s fantastic.”

■ The debut of the video for Adele’s new single “Send My Love (To Your New Lover).” Some critics bashed last year’s decision to open the show with Taylor Swift’s conceptual video for “Bad Blood” instead of a performance in the arena. This year, Adele’s video will come later in the broadcast.

“I’d do it again, (but) you’re not going to do it with everybody,” Deaton says of the show-opening slot. “You have to look at the circumstances and the specific artist.”

■ The Prince tribute from Madonna. “Is that cool or what?” Deaton says. “That speaks volumes of what she thought of Prince as an artist.”

Pink is set to perform her new single “Just Like Fire” from the big Memorial Day weekend movie “Alice Through the Looking Glass.” The Go-Go’s preview a farewell tour (which brings them to Mandalay Bay on Aug. 26).

Ludacris and Ciara host the broadcast, which starts at 5 p.m. in the arena for East Coast prime time, though local affiliate KTNV-TV, Channel 13, delays it for West Coast prime time at 8 p.m.

The Billboard awards lack the prestige of the Grammys, since they are based on sales, and TV time favors the artists who attend. But they led the way for the Grammys, ACMs and other TV award shows to spend more time on singing and less on acceptance speeches.

Presenters for those awards that are handed out include Jessica Alba, Kristen Bell, Lauren Cohan, Kathryn Hahn, Wiz Khalifa, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Idina Menzel, Keke Palmer, Rebecca Romijn, Serayah, Steven Tyler, Lindsey Vonn and Pete Wentz.

This year’s show is also the network TV debut of the new arena, which so far has been seen only on pay-per-view sports broadcasts. “That creates its own challenges and excitement. Our set has to be bigger this year because that arena is bigger,” Deaton says. However, “it’s really kind of cool, like driving a brand-new car.”

Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.