American Bandstand
by Jay Goldman, Director of Engineering for XPN
On Thursday August 2, a mural will be dedicated at 45th and Market in Philadelphia, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the national debut of American Bandstand. Below, Jay Goldman remembers his early days working in Philadelphia media.
This brings back a lot of memories for me.
I began working for WHYY in August 1970 as a radio engineer for what was then 90.9 WUHY-FM. During the next ten years, I worked at the WHYY studios at 4548 Market Street as a radio engineer, projectionist, video tape operator, TV Master Control Operator and TV Audio engineer. I was the control room engineer for Terry Gross’s first local Fresh Air show in Philadelphia, Bob Perkins’ radio show “Remember This One?”, audio engineer for the Sid Mark TV show “The Mark of Jazz” which featured notable musicians such as Maynard Furgeson, Reggie Bryant’s “Black Perspective on the News”, as well as part of the team that pioneered the 30-minute radio news program “91 Report”, hosted by Nick Peters, with such notable reporters as Mumia Abu Jamal, et al. I was part of the engineering team that moved WHYY to their present home at 6th & Race Streets in 1980 and continued to work there until 1995.
The building at 4548 Market Street was originally the home of Channel 6 TV and WFIL-AM and of course, was the home of American Bandstand. When Channel 6 moved to City Line Avenue in the 1960’s, they donated the building to WHYY, which had recently had a fire in their studios on Chestnut Street. At that time WHYY consisted of 90.9 WHYY-FM and Channel 35 WHYY-TV. In 1963, they acquired the license for Channel 12 in Wilmington, DE and changed the call letters of the stations to 90.9 WUHY-FM Philadelphia, Channel 35 WUHY-TV Philadelphia and Channel 12 WHYY-TV Wilmington. Channel 35 broadcast mainly Philadelphia School Board instructional programming until the early 1970’s, when WHYY turned it off and returned the license to the FCC. After that, they petitioned the FCC to change the radio station call letters back to WHYY-FM, to match the TV station call letters.
Thirty years ago, in 1977, WHYY produced a twentieth anniversary special of American Bandstand in the original Bandstand Studio at 4548 Market Street. I was the sound-on-film technician for the crew that produced the “behind the scenes” documentary on the show. Among the personalities I remember working with then were Connie Francis, Jackie Wilson and Dion.
Thanks to Bruce, Bob, Robert and the Geator along with everyone else at WXPN for helping commemorate this event and preserving the memory of a wonderful era in Philadelphia broadcasting history.