Soul Train Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images Network: Don Cornelius Productions Get this tv series HOST: Don Cornelius (1971-1993) Like American Bandstand, Soul Train was a locally-produced show that went national. A TV reporter and part-time concert promoter based in Chicago, Don Cornelius convinced his station to air a live-music series - with black entertainers - he would produce. The show, featuring local talent like the Chi-Lites, was an immediate hit; the next year, Cornelius found a sponsor in the Johnson Products Company and began selling syndication rights to select cities across America. For almost a quarter century, Cornelius booked almost every significant black act in America - unable to connect with rap culture and lamenting what he saw as a growing coarseness in entertainment, he gave up his hosting duties in 1993. NOTABLE GUESTS: Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Patti LaBelle, Curtis Mayfield, Earth, Wind & Fire, Christina Aguilera, Sting, Tina Turner, and Stevie Wonder (below, performing "Superstition") Next: American Bandstand American Bandstand Cyndi Lauper and host Dick Clark in 1984 HOST: Dick Clark (1956-1989) A local music show, with a DJ that spun records in a TV studio filled with dancing teens, Bandstand was the place to hear what was hot in Philadelphia. When the original DJ was arrested for drunk driving, his radio counterpart stepped in and began sending tapes of his shows to the ABC network brass. The suits saw something in the (perpetually) young Dick Clark and gave his show a reworked name, a national audience, and, eventually, a new home in sunny California. Running for an astonishing 31 seasons, AB's most pernicious legacy may be its showing advertisers that teenagers, long ignored as a demographic, were, in fact, a huge and untapped market. NOTABLE GUESTS: Bobby Darin, Def Leppard, Hall & Oates, Kurtis Blow, David Bowie, Madonna, and the Jackson Five (below, singing, for the very first time to a national audience, "ABC") Next: Saturday Night Live