''Amanda'' is an American music television program starring

Amanda Randolph Amanda E. Randolph (September 2, 1896 – August 24, 1967) was an American actress, singer and musician. She was the first African-American performer to star in a regularly scheduled network television show, appearing in DuMont's ''The Laytons' ...

that debuted on the

DuMont Television Network The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being ...

on November 1, 1948. The ending date for the show is unclear, but it still appears in a TV schedule from October 1949.

Broadcast history

Aired in New York City at 9:45 am ET on the

's flagship station

WABD WABD (97.5 FM) is an American radio station licensed to serve the community of Mobile, Alabama. The station, established in 1973 as WABB-FM, is owned and operated by Cumulus Media. Its studios are on Dauphin Street in Midtown Mobile, and its ...

(some sources say the show aired noon to 12;15 pm ET). The show was a 15-minute daytime music program starring

, who hosted the program and sang. The program is significant as one of the first regularly scheduled television show to feature an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

woman as host. On the program, Randolph sang songs ranging from spirituals to

boogie woogie Boogie-woogie is a genre of blues music that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in African-American communities since 1870s.Paul, Elliot, ''That Crazy American Music'' (1957), Chapter 10, p. 229. It was eventually extended from pia ...

. According to the book ''The Forgotten Network'' (2004), DuMont began offering 4.5 hours of morning and afternoon programming to affiliates in January 1949, but it is not clear which program these included. The program and several other WABD daytime shows seem to appear in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

television schedules (on station WDTV) during 1949, so the program may have been shown on a network level. According to the April 30, 1949, edition of newspaper ''

Pittsburgh Courier The ''Pittsburgh Courier'' was an African-American weekly newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1907 until October 22, 1966. By the 1930s, the ''Courier'' was one of the leading black newspapers in the United States. It was acqu ...

'', the program also featured guest appearances, the first of which was

Etta Moten Etta Moten Barnett (November 5, 1901 – January 2, 2004) was an American actress and contralto vocalist, who was identified with her signature role of "Bess" in ''Porgy and Bess''. She created new roles for African-American women on stage ...

Reception

The program aired as part of the DuMont experiment in

daytime television Daytime is a block of television programming taking place during the late-morning and afternoon on weekdays. Daytime programming is typically scheduled to air between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., following the early morning d ...

. While not the first with daytime programming, DuMont's WABD was the first station to offer a schedule that started in the morning and ended after the evening programs; prior to this, daytime programming was occasional with schedules heavy on test patterns. ''Billboard'' magazine gave a very mixed review of the line-up, but ''Amanda'' was one of several program on the schedule they liked, with the magazine saying that the songs were "well-sung" and that "the gal is by far the most entertaining part of the early stretch".''Billboard'' (November 13, 1948)
/ref>

Preservation status

As with most DuMont programs, no episodes are known to exist. Kinescopes of daytime television of the 1940s are exceptionally rare, as are

kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940 ...

s of local programming (since kinescopes were intended for time-delay purposes, all U.S. stations saw little need to record local programming, and this would remain the case for years). Although DuMont's main stations very occasionally made kinescopes of their local programming (there are more surviving WABD local kinescopes from the late-1940s/1950s than there are for many other stations of the period), most of the local programming is lost. DuMont's archives are alleged to have been dumped into the New York City waterway system and have never been recovered.

References

Bibliography

*David Weinstein, ''The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television'' (Philadelphia:

Temple University Press Temple University Press is a university press founded in 1969 that is part of Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). It is one of thirteen publishers to participate in the Knowledge Unlatched pilot, a global library consortium approach t ...

, 2004) *Alex McNeil, ''Total Television'', Fourth edition (New York:

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Ballantine Books Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998 and remains ...

, 1964) {{ISBN, 0-345-31864-1

External links