Cyndi Lauper and host Dick Clark in 1984
YEARS ON AIR: 1952-1989
HOST: Dick Clark (1956-1989)
A local music show, with a DJ that spun records in a TV studio filled with dancing teens, Bandstand was the place to hear what was hot in Philadelphia. When the original DJ was arrested for drunk driving, his radio counterpart stepped in and began sending tapes of his shows to the ABC network brass. The suits saw something in the (perpetually) young Dick Clark and gave his show a reworked name, a national audience, and, eventually, a new home in sunny California. Running for an astonishing 31 seasons, AB’s most pernicious legacy may be its showing advertisers that teenagers, long ignored as a demographic, were, in fact, a huge and untapped market.
NOTABLE GUESTS: Bobby Darin, Def Leppard, Hall & Oates, Kurtis Blow, David Bowie, Madonna, and the Jackson Five (below, singing, for the very first time to a national audience, “ABC”)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4sF2NhMix4]