Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round they all laughed when Edison recorded sound they all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly they told Marconi Wireless was a phony it's the same old cry.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Welcome back to 100 Years of Television.
This is episode 39, countdown number 68 spinning the hits for 100 weeks that started in October 2025. This podcast is going to recall the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television and video.
The countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027, the 100th anniversary of the day television as we know it first appeared on Earth.
Paul I'm Paul Schatzkin, author of the Boy who Invented Television, the definitive biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the world's first all electronic television system.
In the last episode, we met America's favorite family and watched Ozzie and Harriet's youngest son, Ricky Nelson, launch his career as a recording artist and teen idol. Today we're going to further explore the role of pop in the cultural shifts caused by television.
When 16 year old Ricky Nelson made his Teen idol debut on TV in April 1957, he sharpened a trend that actually started forming about the same time the Nelson family started appearing in America's living rooms in 1952.
It was certainly not lost on the networks or their customers. The the advertisers that among those families that were gathered around the cool glow of the electronic hearth were millions of impressionable children.
And some of those children born in the late 1930s and early 1940s were becoming a generation of teenagers unlike any before them.
As kids they had endured the same wartime austerity as their parents, but as they came of age, the booming post war economy put more spending money in their pockets than their parents ever had. At the same age, allowances were more common. Part time jobs were plentiful in shops, diners and gas stations, and their parents were eager to give them the things they themselves had gone without during the depression.
The 1950s generation of teens was the first raised entirely within the flux of television's magnetic field.
A generation whose style, language and identity would be shaped by their uniquely common experience.
Advertisers salivated at the prospect. A whole new market ripening on the vine and ready to harvest.
Those kids found an unlikely advocate and the advertisers found a savvy ally in Walter Annenberg, the heir to a publishing empire with a keen eye for underserved markets.
Walter Annenberg inherited The Philadelphia Inquirer after the death of his father, Moses Annenberg in 1942 and immediately set about expanding the business into other media.
In 1947, Annenberg acquired Philadelphia's flagship radio stations, WFIL AM and WFIL fm.
After rolling all the assets into a company called Triangle Publications, he added WFIL TV in 1948, which became affiliated with the fledgling ABC network.
Annenberg first anticipated the Youth Market in 1944 when he invited former mademoiselle editor Helen Valentine to to create Seventeen magazine, which she designed specifically to cater to the interests of teenage girls.
Then in 1952, WFIL program director Lou Klein, looking to fill a dead afternoon time slot, proposed a new show aimed at the heart of the post war teen market.
The concept behind Bandstand was simple.
Local radio personality Bob Horn spun the latest records while well dressed teenagers in the studio danced to them.
The format cost next to nothing to produce and was endlessly renewable with a fresh supply of chart toppers every month and a new cast of teenagers every year.
After its debut on October 7, 1952, the televised sock hop caught on slowly.
Local popularity didn't automatically translate into a green light from the network.
Despite the low budget formula, ABC executives were leery of teen oriented programming and advertisers needed convincing that rock and roll was anything other than a subversive fad.
It didn't help when Bob Horn had to be fired in 1956amid a drunk driving arrest and accusations involving underage girls.
That's when 26 year old WFIL staff announcer Dick Clark took over.
Clean cut and ambitious, Clark spent a year putting his mark on the concept.
Seeking to build Bandstand's After School appeal. He courted record companies, advertisers and ultimately ABC network executives.
He kept pitching Bandstand as a wholesome sponsor, friendly way to reach America's growing teen demographic.
In the mid-1950s, ABC was still the perennial third network behind NBC and CBS in both ratings and prestige. When pieces finally fell into place, the new host had polished the format, rock and roll had demonstrated its broadening appeal and ABC needed a cheap, youth oriented hit.
In the spring of 1957, when the network asked its affiliates for ideas to fill after school time slots, WFIL's bandstand fit the bill.
Clark would later credit ABC network president Thomas Moore for putting the live daily feed on the network from Philadelphia.
At 3:30pm on August 5, 1957, American Bandstand beamed out on 67 ABC affiliates, kicking off with Jerry Lee Lewis whole Lot of shaking going on.
Within weeks, the after school dance party had proven it could move both feet and numbers. Ratings climbed steadily as word spread among kids from coast to coast.
Sponsors like Beechnut Gum 7Up, RC Cola and Clearasil, once reluctant to embrace rock and roll, now saw a direct pipeline to a lucrative new market.
And the languishing network finally had a daily hit that didn't cost a fortune to produce.
The host himself proved an avid spokesman, often smiling straight into the camera between songs and reminding the audience, you know, Beechnut's got a flavor for everybody. Peppermint, spearmint and that smooth, cool wintergreen. Whichever you pick, you'll be the one with the freshest breath on the dance floor.
But behind the gum peddling host and the sweater clad couples, another story simmered.
The same production values that made American Bandstand safe for national advertisers also revealed the fault lines of a country redefining its post war political and cultural landscapes.
More than any prior conflict or period of American history, World War II brought unprecedented numbers of black soldiers, sailors and airmen into the service alongside their white contemporaries, many of whom remained reluctant to accept their comrades as peers.
When the war finally ended, that genie was not going back in the bottle. To the contrary, the trend toward racial integration continued, perhaps starting in earnest when army veteran Jackie Robinson took the field for Major League Baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers in the spring of 1990. 1947.
In the years between Jackie Robinson and Bandstand, blues and R B artists like Fats Domino and the Platters were already crossing over onto the pop charts and young audiences, Black and white found common ground on the dance floor before it was reflected on their TV screens.
When Bandstand went national in 1957, the landscape began to shift beneath the gyrating feet of the next generation, and it became clear that music, especially music on television, would play a role in reshaping the character of the nation.
Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the first nationally aired episodes of American Bandstand broke the color barrier with an appearance by black recording artist Billy Williams performing his 1957 hit I'm Gonna Sit Right down and Write Myself a Letter.
Williams was a suitable choice because his mostly non rock repertoire, already familiar to mainstream audiences, made him acceptable to the still mostly segregated audience.
Over the following years, countless black entertainers were featured on American Bandstand. Fats Domino performed his hits Blueberry Hill and I'm Walkin. The Coasters played Searchin and Yakety Yak. Chuck Berry played School Day. Sam Cooke played you Send me and the Platters, Only you and the Great Pretender.
Even the flamboyant Little Richard found favor with Clark and his dancing teens, though not without controversy in light of his unusual stage presence.
American Bandstands lineup may have frequently included popular black recording artists, but the studio audience in Philadelphia remained effectively segregated.
WFIL TV controlled the distribution of tickets through schools, youth clubs or individual requests. That very limited distribution and informal screening at the studio doors ensured that the faces seen dancing on camera were mostly white.
Local civil rights activists, black teens and their parents challenged those practices.
In response, American Bandstands producer Tony Mamarella and other WFIL TV executives petitioned the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, testifying, in effect, we're not discriminating. We just let in whoever gets tickets.
And while the commission stopped short of issuing a formal finding of statutory discrimination, their report explicitly noted the complete absence of Negroes from attendance and hinted that whatever the producers were doing to distribute tickets resulted in a de facto segregated crowd.
The pressure worked, however slowly. Without any actual acknowledgment from the producers, American Bandstand gradually integrated its studio audience over several years.
Like much of television in that era, the change was a quiet, subtle concession to a shifting culture.
American Bandstand ran for almost 40 years.
After running locally as bandstand from 1952 until 1957, the program continued from Philadelphia on the ABC Network until 1987, when it relocated to Los Angeles for two more years in syndication.
Dick Clark remained the emcee for all but one of those years, finally handing the microphone to David Hirsch for for the show's last season, ending in October 1989.
By the early 1970s, the contradictions baked into American Bandstand were impossible to ignore.
Black artists appeared on stage, but black teenagers remained mostly in the shadows.
That disparity led Chicago impresario Don Cornelius to respond with Soul Train, a national showcase created by and for black artists and audiences that started to syndicate nationally in October 1971.
Soul Train was more than a black alternative. Using the Bandstand template, it was in many ways the obvious successor in a world in which musical expression had broadened far beyond rock, R and B and soul.
Don Cornelius used his platform to celebrate black pride, culture and style in ways network TV rarely did in the early 1970s. He presented artists from James Brown and Aretha Franklin to Prince, Whitney Houston and even Beyonce, who appeared as part of the group Destiny's Child.
Soul Train introduced generations to funk, hip hop and house music.
But despite its emphasis on music with roots somewhere in black culture. The lineup was never exclusively black.
Over the years, countless white performers were also featured, including Elton John, David Bowie, hall and Oates, Geno, Vanelli and Beck.
If American Bandstand bore the burdens of its era, Soul Train reflected the broadened scope and appeal of American music and television well into the 21st century.
After a run of 35 years, when soul Train pulled into the station for its last Original Show In March 2006, it joined American Bandstand, which had ended its 37 year run in 1989 in the history books as one of television's most enduring music showcases.
Together, American Bandstand and Soul Train shaped how generations of Americans saw themselves reflected on screen for for more than seven decades.
The first was transmitted tentatively over the segregated airways of the early post war era.
Its successor was embraced by a far more integrated nation.
Both left legacies that long outlived their final broadcasts.
This brings us to the end of number 68 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television.
Stay tuned for the next episode when the same Walter Annenberg, whose Philadelphia station launched American Bandstand creates the bible of the whole business of television, TV Guide thanks for listening to 100 Years of Television, a two year countdown to the centennial of television on September 7, 2027.
For more, aim your gizmo to 100yearstv.com this podcast was written, recorded, edited, engineered and uploaded by me, Paul Shatzkin and is a production of Farnovision.com if television was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
[00:16:07] Speaker A: They all said we never would be happy they laughed at us and how but ho ho ho who got your lives right now.
