For these same reasons, this format also became highly lucrative for local television stations to produce. While the three networks provided the majority of prime-time programming and some early afternoon soap operas, local television stations had to fill marginal broadcast periods themselves. Since the primary audience for television viewing in the late afternoons included teenagers just out of school for the day, the teen record party apparently made sense to station managers as a way to generate advertising revenue during that broadcast period. As a result, a number of teen dance party programs found their way into television schedules during the early 1950s.

Bandstand, one of these, appeared on WFIL-TV in Philadelphia during September 1952. Hosted by Bob Horn, a popular local disk jockey, the show was presented “live” and included teenagers dancing to the records that were played. As the success of the televised Bandstand grew, Dick Clark took over the disk jockey duties of the radio program while Bob Horn was broadcasting in front of the cameras. In 1956 Horn was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, in the middle of an anti-drunk-driving campaign by WFIL. Soon thereafter, Dick Clark replaced him as the host of the televised program. Clark’s clean-cut, boy-next-door image seemed to offset any unsavory fallout from Horn’s arrest, and the show’s popularity increased. By the fall of 1957, Clark, who had been shepherding kinescopes of the show to New York, convinced the programmers at ABC to include the show in its network lineup.

Adapting the name of the program to its new stature (and the network identity), American Bandstand first aired on the ABC network on Monday, August 5, 1957, becoming one of a handful of locally originating programs to broadcast nationally. Initially, the program ran Monday through Friday from 3:00 to 4:30 P.M., eastern standard time. Almost immediately, the show became a hit for the struggling network. In retrospect, American Bandstand fit in nicely with the programming strategy that evolved at ABC during the 1950s. As the third television network, ABC could not afford the high-priced radio-celebrity talent or live dramatic programming that generated the predominantly adult viewership of NBC and CBS. Therefore, ABC counterprogrammed its schedule with shows that appealed to a younger audience. Along with programs such as The Mickey Mouse Club, ABC used American Bandstand in the 1950s to build a loyal audience base that would catapult the network to the top of the prime-time ratings in the mid-1970s.

From a cultural and social standpoint, the impact of American Bandstand should not be underrated. Even if the show diffused some of the more raucous elements of rock ’n’ roll music, it helped to solidify the growing youth culture that centered around this phenomenon. The show was important in another way as well. Once Clark took over the helm of Bandstand in 1956, he insisted on racially integrating the show, since much of the music was performed by Black recording artists. When the show moved to the network schedule, it maintained its racially mixed image, thus providing American television broadcasting with its most visible ongoing image of ethnic diversity until the 1970s.

In 1964 Clark moved the production of American Bandstand to California, cutting broadcasts to once a week. In part, the move was made to facilitate Clark’s expansion into other program production. Additionally, it became easier to tap into the American recording industry, the center of which had shifted to Los Angeles by that time. The show’s popularity with teenagers continued until the late 1960s.

At that point, white, middle-class American youth culture moved away from the rock ’n’ roll dance music that had become the staple of American Bandstand, opting instead for the drug-influenced psychedelia of the Vietnam War era. As a response to the specialized tastes of perceived diverse target audiences, radio formats began to fragment at this time, segregating popular music into distinct categories. While American Bandstand attempted to integrate many of these styles into its format throughout the 1970s, the show relied heavily on disco, the emerging alternative to psychedelic art rock. Though often denigrated at the time because of disco’s emergence in working-class and ethnic communities, the musical style was the logical focus for the show, given its historic reliance on presenting teenagers dancing. Consequently, American Bandstand became even more ethnically mixed at a time when the predominant face of the aging “youth” culture in the United States acquired a social pallor.

The foundation of American Bandstand’s success rested with its ability to adapt to shifting musical trends while maintaining the basic format developed in the 1950s. As a result, Dick Clark helmed the longest-running broadcast program aimed at mainstream youth to air on American network broadcast television. After 30 years of broadcasting, ABC finally dropped the show from its network schedule in 1987. In its later years, American Bandstand was often preempted by various sporting events. Given the commercial profits generated from sports presentations, apparently it was only a matter of time before the network replaced the dance party entirely. Additionally, the rise of MTV and other music video channels in the 1980s also helped to seal American Bandstand’s fate. The show began to look like an anachronism when compared to the slick production values of expensively produced music videos. Nevertheless, the music video channels owe a debt of gratitude to American Bandstand, the network prototype that shaped the format they have exploited so well. As a testament to American Bandstand’s enduring cultural influence, Dick Clark Productions and ABC aired a celebration of the program’s 50th anniversary in 2002.