Bandstand Timeline
August 1950—Disc jockey Bob Horn, 34, moves from WIP radio in Philadelphia to WFIL radio.
1951—Horn adds television to his duties, at WFIL-TV.
March 1952--- American Bandstand premiered locally in late March 1952 as Bandstand on Philadelphia television station WFIL-TV Channel 6, now WPVI-TV. Hosted by Bob Horn as a television adjunct to his radio show of the same name on WFIL radio, Bandstand featured short musical films produced by Snader Telescriptions and Official Films, with occasional studio guests.
May 13, 1952—Dick Clark, 22, joins staff of WFIL radio.
October 7, 1952— Bandstand debuted from "Studio 'B'", located in their just-completed addition to the original 1947 building in West Philadelphia. It was hosted by Horn and co-host Lee Stewart from its launch in 1947 until 1955. Stewart owned a TV radio business in Philadelphia and had a significant advertising account with WFIL-TV. To maintain the account, he was included on the program. However, as WFIL grew financially and the importance of the account diminished, Stewart's presence on the program was no longer necessary and he was eventually dropped. Tony Mammarella was the original producer with Ed Yates as director. The short Snader and Official music films continued in the short term to fill gaps when dancers were changed during the show because the studio could not fit more than 200 teenagers.
March 29, 1953—Rex Polier of the Philadelphia Bulletin calls Bandstand “the city’s beehive of juvenile jive.”
1953—Producer Tony Mammarella substitutes for the vacationing Horn.
January 1954—Lee Stewart is dismissed as co-host leaving Horn as the show’s only host.
March 1954—Poll by TV Guide votes Bandstand as the best music show in the Philadelphia area,
Fall 1955—Dick Clark substitutes for Horn for first time
June 21, 1956—Horn arrested for drunk driving, beginning a downward spiral that would cost him his job. Morals charges, another drunk driving charge following a serious accident, and tax evasion charges would eventually drive him from Philadelphia.
July 9, 1956— Horn was fired following a drunk driving arrest.WFIL and its co-owner, Walter Annenberg's The Philadelphia Inquirer, were running a series on drunk driving at the time of Horn's arrest. He was also reportedly involved in a prostitution ring and faced morality charges. Horn was temporarily replaced by producer Tony Mammarella before the job went to Dick Clark permanently.
March 1957—Clark forms his first Bandstand-related business, Click Corp.
In late spring of 1957, ABC asked their O&O's and affiliates for programming suggestions to fill their 3:30 PM ET time slot. In Philadelphia, WFIL was already pre-empting ABC programming with Bandstand. Clark decided to pitch the show to ABC president Thomas W. Moore, and after some negotiations the show would picked up nationally, becoming American Bandstand .
August 5, 1957—American Bandstand makes its national debut on ABC-TV, three days after the network dropped Alan Freed’s Big Beat Show. Sixty-seven stations carried the first show and Clark received more than 29,000 letters in the five days following the premiere.
September 1957—Clark adds a weekly prime time network show and a daily local show on WFIL-TV, making him the most-exposed television personality in the United States with 8½ hours air time nationally per week and 13½ hours locally.
October 1957--- A half-hour evening version of American Bandstand aired on Monday nights from 7:30 PM to 8:00 PM ET, beginning on October 7, 1957, preceding The Guy Mitchell Show. Both proved ratings disasters. The Monday night version aired its last program in December 1957.
December 18, 1957--- The first national broadcast of American Bandstand was filmed in the Starlight Ballroom in Wildwood, New Jersey.
January 1958—Clark is on the cover of Teen magazine.
February 15, 1958—ABC gave Clark a Saturday night time slot for The Dick Clark Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show, which originated from the Little Theatre in Manhattan, beginning February 15, 1958. The Saturday show ran until 1960. The program was broadcast live, weekday afternoons and, by 1959, the show had a national audience of around 20 million viewers In the fall of 1961, ABC truncated American Bandstand's airtime from 90 to 60 minutes (4:00–5:00 pm ET), then even further as a daily half-hour (4:00–4:30 PM ET) program in September of 1962. Beginning in early 1963, all five shows for the upcoming week were videotaped the preceding Saturday. The use of videotape allowed Clark to produce and host a series of concert tours around the success of American Bandstand and pursue other broadcast interests
February 1958—Life magazine sends a reporter and photographer to Philadelphia to follow Clark for several days.
April 14, 1958—Time magazine reports that Clark will make $500,000 in 1958 and has sent out 300,000 photos of himself to fans since American Bandstand went national. He also makes an appearance on Edward R. Morrow’s Person to Person TV show in April 1958.
1958—Clark bars dancer Pat Molittieri, 16, from Bandstand after her picture appears on the cover of Teen magazine’s June issue.
May 24, 1958—Clark is on the cover of TV Guide.
November 1958—ABC cuts Bandstand from 90 minutes every weekday afternoon to an hour.
December 4, 1958—At Clark’s insistence, singer Lloyd price records a sanitized version if his hit song Stagger Lee so it can be played on Bandstand.
April 10, 1959—Clark is named man of the year by the Philadelphia Guild of Advertising Men.
June 1959—Clark is the surprise guest on the This Is Your Life TV program.
June 28, 1959—Clark dances with the McGuire Sisters in his first 60-minute live ABC special, The Record Years.
August 1959—Clark takes a month off from his Bandstand hosting duties to film his first Hollywood movie, Because They’re Young.
October 10, 1959—Article in Saturday Evening Post says Clark has been referred to as “The Czar of the Switchblade Set” and “the Kingpin of the Teen-age Mafia.”
November 1959—Clark publishes a book – Your Happiest Years.
November 18, 1959—Congressional investigators came to Philadelphia to interview Clark and Mammarella as part of a probe into payola. Clark would later testify before Congress in the spring of 1960. Neither man was ever charged with payola.
September 1960—The Dick Clark Show is canceled.
September 1961—Clark’s second Hollywood movie, The Young Doctors, premieres.
October 1962—Bandstand is cut to 30 minutes.
1963—Clark begins taping a week’s worth of Bandstands on Saturdays.
September 7, 1963—American Bandstand was moved from its weekday slot and began airing weekly every Saturday afternoon, restored to an hour.
September 9, 1963 ---The program was filmed in color starting on September 9, 1967. The typical production schedule consisted of videotaping three shows on a Saturday and three shows on a Sunday, every six weeks. The shows were usually produced in either Stage 54 or Stage 55 at ABC Television Center.
September 1964 --- Bandstand began using a new logo based on the ABC circle logo, reading "ab" in the same typeface followed by a number representing the year the show aired. This started with "'65", then "'66", "'67", "'68", and "'69" when each year arrived.
September 13, 1969--- the Bandstand set was given a complete overhaul and Les Elgart's big band version of "Bandstand Boogie" was replaced by the Mike Curb theme. The "ab" logo was replaced with the iconic stylized "AB" logo, shown at the top of this page and used for the remainder of the show's run. This set and theme music were used until August 31, 1974, with the arrival of a brand-new set and the second, updated version of "Bandstand Boogie".
1964—Bandstand leaves Philadelphia for Los Angeles.
Bandstand Timeline courtesy Larry Lehmer