American Bandstand

An American teenage dance-party TV show; it ran from the mid 50's to the late 80's. It was a local half-hour show in Philadelphia when Dick Clark became the host, and ABC took it national (it was broadcast on weekday afternoons, followed by a game show hosted by Johnny Carson). The formula was typical: "wholesome" local kids, dressed in the latest bourgeois styles, danced the latest dance steps to the latest Top 40 hits; a couple of bands or singers would appear, to lipsync their latest 45.

Clark would move the show to Hollywood, the epicenter of youthcult, and begin to build his media empire, with AB (which became an hour-long Saturday-afternoon program), Where the Action Is, and later, a series capitalizing on the Rock and Roll Revival, et al.

"Bandstand" premiered on October 13, 1952 in Philadelphia, and then began airing on the network on August 5, 1957 from 3:00 to 4:30 Eastern time, with an additional half hour that was seen in Philadelphia only.

Johnny Carson's "Who Do You Trust?" moved from 4:30 to 3:30 as of November 18, 1957, thus cutting "American Bandstand" into two separate segments, except in Philadelphia. This lasted for 10 months, until ABC moved "American Bandstand" to 4:00.

On October 2, 1961, the show was shortened from 90 minutes to 50 minutes, with the remainder of the full hour taken up by an ABC news program intended for teenagers called "American Newsstand."

When "American Bandstand" made the move to Saturday afternoons as of September 7, 1963, it got back its full hour. Hobbled by preemptions for college football throughout the 1980s, it spent its last network season as only a half hour long; it last aired on ABC on September 5, 1987.

It then went into syndication as an hour long show for two years. In its last gasp, it ran on USA Network from April to October of 1989 with a new host, David Hirsch.