Trivia / American Bandstand

• Channel Hop: Starting off as a local show on WFIL-TV in 1952, it went national on ABC in August 1957. After a three-decade run, it went to syndication in September 1987. Dick Clark left ABC because its affiliates kept pre-empting the show in favor of college football and other specials, and the network had cut down the show to 30 minutes for the 1986-87 season. The syndicated run, which went back to a full hour, ended in June 1988. After a hiatus of nearly a year, the show came back on USA Network in April 1989; it was cancelled for good that October.
• Dueling Shows: With Soul Train.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Don't hold your breath for a DVD set (or even reruns). In fact, most of the online video uploads of clips from the program come from the one time it aired in reruns, on VH1 during the mid 1990s (and even then it pretty much stuck to 1975-1986, with brief forays into older episodes; the earliest was 1964, with a handful from 1967-1969). It would obviously be a nightmare to straighten up the music rights, especially for a DVD release, where the two possible scenarios would be "chop up the episodes into mix-and-match musical performances and piss off the purists in the process" or "charge a ridiculous amount per episode".
• Missing Episode: Like many shows of the era, most of the 1950s and early 1960s episodes are gone due to the expense of video tape at the time.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Original host Bob Horn was fired in 1956 after being arrested on a DUI, at a time when WFIL was running a series on drunk-driving. Producer Tomy Mammarella filled in for a while before Dick Clark took over.
• What Could Have Been: Dick Clark attempted to bring back the show in 2004, but his stroke in December that year put an end to that idea. However, one of the segments of that planned revival — a national dance contest — became its own show: So You Think You Can Dance.