Amanda (TV program)

Amanda
Starring	Amanda Randolph
Country of origin	United States
Production
Running time	15 minutes
Original release
Network	DuMont Television Network
Release	November 1, 1948 – 1949

Amanda was an American television series starring Amanda Randolph which debuted on the DuMont Television Network 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 9:45am ET on the DuMont Television Network's flagship station WABD (some sources say the show aired 12noon to 12;15pm ET). The show was a 15-minute daytime music series starring Amanda Randolph, who hosted the program and sang.

The program is significant as one of the first regularly scheduled series to feature an African-American woman as host. On her series she sang songs ranging from spirituals to boogie woogie. 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 series these were. The series and several other WABD daytime series seem to appear in Pittsburgh schedules (on station WDTV) during 1949, so it may have been shown on a network level.

According to the book What Women Watched: Daytime Television in the 1950s (University of Texas Press, 2005) by Marsha Cassidy, the DuMont daytime schedule beginning in January 1949 was:

• 10-10:30am Johnny Olson's Rumpus Room
• 10:30-11am Welcome, Neighbors
• 11am-12noon The Stan Shaw Show
• 12noon-12:15pm Amanda
• 12:15-12:30pm Man in the Street
• 12:30-12:45pm Camera Headlines
• 12:45-1pm Fashions in Song
• 1-1:30pm Okay, Mother
• 2:30-3pm Inside Photoplay (The Wendy Barrie Show)
• 3-3:15pm The Needle Shop
• 3:15-3:30pm Vincent Lopez Speaking (The Vincent Lopez Show)

Reception

The series aired as part of the DuMont experiment in daytime television. 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 series 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".

Preservation status

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

Bibliography

• David Weinstein, The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004) ISBN 1-59213-245-6
• Alex McNeil, Total Television, Fourth edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1980) ISBN 0-14-024916-8
• Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, Third edition (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964) ISBN 0-345-31864-1

See also

• List of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network
• List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts
• 1948-1949 United States network television schedule (weekday)
• Stairway to Stardom
• The Laytons
• The Hazel Scott Show hosted by Hazel Scott
• Elder Michaux religious program
• The Needle Shop - Also part of WABD's daytime line-up

External links

• Amanda on IMDb