AMOS 'N' ANDY
(Broadcast: March 19, 1928 - November25, 1960)

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At its peak in 1931, Amos 'n' Andy enjoyed the benefits of an American audience on the NBC Blue Network of which was estimated to be forty million listeners. Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden, co-creators of the show, became prominent public figures as a result of this success and rose from relative obscurity on local radio in Chicago, Illinois to commanding national attention through their appearance on the most prominent commercial radio broadcasting networks in the United States.

Amos 'n' Andy debuted on WMAQ during 1928 and was picked up by the NBC Blue Network. Upon its switch to the NBC Red Network in 1935, Amos 'n' Andy attracted corporate patronage through a sponsorship deal with Pepsodent, and became part of the first national network programming to exploit the burgeoning practice of commercial sponsorship, chain broadcasting and product licensing.

As the program's commercial presence grew so did the public criticism of its representations of African-American culture. During the 1930s the show was petitioned to be removed from the air by the Pittsburgh Courier and attracted 750,000 signatures. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People led protests against the radio show, and during the 1950s, played a crucial role in pressuring the CBS television network to remove the television franchise from national broadcast. In more recent years, Amos 'n' Andy has been approached by artists, social historians and media scholars as a rich and complex site in which the struggle over representations of race, class and gender within the confines of the American mass media landscape have offered numerous potential for further critical reflection.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive holds multiple titles of Amos 'n' Andy in both its radio and television forms available for use on-site at the Archive Research and Study Center.