With a career spanning more than 50 years, Dick Clark is one of television's most successful entrepreneurs of program production. Since the 1950s, Clark has built an impressive production record with teen dance shows, prime-time programming, television specials, daytime game shows, made-for-television movies and feature films.
In 1957, Clark founded dick clark productions, and since, has been instrumental in spearheading the production of more than 8,500 hours of television programming, including television series and specials, theatrical and television movies and top award shows. Many of his productions, such as Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve, the Golden Globes and the American Music Awards have evolved into perennial celebrations of American culture. With an extensive library of thousands of classic and contemporary rock 'n' roll performance clips, Clark and his production company have helped to preserve the rich history of American entertainment. The library continues to build every year and serves as an important source of content for new show and series development. An example of such programming is American Dreams, a drama set in 1960s Philadelphia that mixes archived footage from original American Bandstand episodes with new material.
Clark began his entertainment career in Utica, N.Y., where, as a teenager, he announced news, weather, and station breaks for WRUN radio. After graduating from Syracuse University, he became a news anchor for television station WKTV. In 1952, he moved to Philadelphia where, four years later, he became the host of WFIL-TV's Bandstand program. One year after he began hosting the show, he convinced ABC to take it nationwide, renaming it American Bandstand, which still holds the record for the longest-running music variety show in television history.