Roy Gardnerra's video: Australian Bandstand - Choreographer Kevin Johnston

For most of its tenure BANDSTAND was overseen by its creator, Nine Network executive Bruce Gyngell, who was the first person to appear on Australian television on the first day of broadcast in 1956. Prior to his move to the nascent broadcast medium in 1954, Gyngell was the first A&R manager for Festival Records. After helping to establish Frank Packer's TCN-9 in Sydney, Gyngell travelled to America to study TV trends there. He returned to set up a new music show meticulously modelled on Dick Clark's hugely sucessful AMERICAN BANDSTAND. For almost all of its run, Bandstand's urbane and immaculately dressed host was New Zealand-born Brian Henderson, Nine's perennial senior newsreader; in 1964 he became the anchor of Nine's main evening bulletin, a post he holds to this day. Bandstand (and Nine) made "Hendo" a celebrity in his own right, and made stars of its most popular acts. Bandstand began in 1958, taking over from an earlier shortlived teen-pop series. It hit the screens at the height of the rock'nroll era, and was at its peak in the six years before before the emergence of The Beatles. Although consistently popular for its entire run, Bandstand's reputation as Australia's No.1 pop show (still vigorously curated by Nine's publicity machine) rests chiefly on the Australian acts it launched in this period -- the so-called "Bandstand Family" that included Col Joye, Little Pattie, Johnny Devlin, Bryan Davies, Judy Stone, Digby Richards, The Bee Gees, The Allen Brothers (the duo that included Peter Allen), Olivia Newton-John and others. Bandstand's influence was greatly augmented by its intimate relationship with Festival Records -- not surprising, given that Gyngell was a former senior employee. Indeed, most of the "Bandstand Family" were Festival acts, and the series was a promotional goldmine for the label. Bandstand came to epitomise Australian popular music during the "quiet years" from 1960-64, and its leading stars like Col Joye largely defined the look and sound of the period. It was still Australia's leading music show at the start of the beat boom of 1964-65, but unlike its American namesake, which featured a wide range of newer groups, the changes in the music scene largely passed Bandstand by. Although The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan were reshaping popular music, there was little evidence of this on Bandstand, where it was business as usual with the clean-cut, short-haired, neatly dressed members of The Bandstand Family.