Happy 47th Anniversary Soul Train

Soul Train is an American music-dance television program which aired in syndication from October 2, 1971 to March 25, 2006. In its 35-year history, the show primarily featured performances by R&B, soul, dance/pop and hip hop artists, although funk, jazz, disco and gospel artists also appeared. The series was created by Don Cornelius, who also served as its first host and executive producer.
Production was suspended following the 2005–2006 season, with a rerun package (known as The Best of Soul Train) airing for two years subsequently. As a nod to Soul Train's longevity, the show's opening sequence during later seasons contained a claim that it was the "longest-running first-run, nationally syndicated program in American television history," with over 1,100 episodes produced from the show's debut through the 2005–2006 season. Despite the production hiatus, Soul Train held that superlative until 2016, when Entertainment Tonight surpassed it completing its 35th season. Among non-news programs, Wheel of Fortune will surpass it in 2018. Though Don Cornelius moved his operations west, Soul Train continued in Chicago as a local program. Cornelius hosted the local Chicago and Los Angeles–based national programs simultaneously, but soon focused his attention solely on the national edition. He continued to oversee production in Chicago, where Clinton Ghent hosted episodes on WCIU-TV until 1976, followed by three years of once-weekly reruns.[3] The syndicated version was picked up in Chicago by CBS-owned WBBM-TV at its launch; the program moved to WGN-TV in 1977 and remained there for the rest of its run.
In 1985, Chicago-based Tribune Entertainment (WGN's syndication wing) took over Soul Train's syndication contract; the series would continue distribution through Tribune for the rest of its original run.
Most of the stations that aired Soul Train during the final 13 years were either Fox affiliates or independent stations that would later become WB network affiliates, UPN affiliates or both dual WB/UPN affiliates. Don Cornelius ended his run as host at the end of the show's 22nd season in 1993, though he remained the show's main creative force from behind the scenes. The following fall, Soul Train began using various guest hosts weekly until comedian Mystro Clark began a two-year stint as permanent host in 1997. Clark was replaced by actor Shemar Moore in 2000. In 2003, Moore was succeeded by actor Dorian Gregory, who hosted through 2006.
Soul Train pulled into its last stop when production of first-run episodes was suspended at the conclusion of the 2005–06 season, the show's 35th. Instead, for two seasons starting in 2006–07, the program aired archived episodes (all from between 1973 and 1988) under the title The Best of Soul Train. This was because in later years, Nielsen ratings dropped to below 1.0; in the process, some of the stations which had been airing Soul Train on Saturday afternoons started rescheduling the program to overnight time slots. The future of Soul Train was uncertain with the announced closing of Tribune Entertainment in December 2007, which left Don Cornelius Productions to seek a new distributor for the program. Cornelius soon secured a deal with Trifecta Entertainment & Media.