DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being first overall in the United States. It was owned by Allen B. DuMont Laboratories, a television equipment and television set manufacturer and broadcasting company. DuMont was founded in 1940 and began operation on August 15, 1946.
The network was hindered by the cost of broadcasting, a freeze on new television stations in 1948 by the Federal Communications Commission, and even by the company's partner, Paramount Pictures. Despite its innovations in broadcasting, and launching one of television's biggest stars of the 1950s — Jackie Gleason — the network never reached solid finances. Forced to expand on UHF channels when UHF tuning was not yet standard on television sets, DuMont fought an uphill battle for program clearance outside its three owned-and-operated stations: WABD in New York City, WTTG in Washington, DC, and WDTV in Pittsburgh. It ultimately ended network operations on August 6, 1956, leaving three main networks other than public broadcasting until the founding of Fox in 1986.
DuMont's obscurity, caused mainly by the destruction of its extensive program archive by the 1970s, has prompted TV historian David Weinstein to refer to it as the "forgotten network." A few popular DuMont programs, such as Cavalcade of Stars, Captain Video, and Emmy Award winner Life Is Worth Living, appear in television retrospectives or are mentioned briefly in books about American television history. In addition, a collection of programs and promos is available on the Roku streaming television channel under the DuMont name.
History
Origins
was founded with $1,000 in 1931 by Allen B. DuMont in a laboratory in his basement. He and his staff were responsible for such early technical innovations as the first consumer electronic television receiver in 1938. Their most revolutionary contribution came when the team extended the life of a cathode ray tube from 24 to 1,000 hours, making television sets practical for consumers. The company's television receivers soon became the standard of the industry.During World War II, DuMont worked with the U.S. Army in developing radar, which brought in $5 million for the company in 1942.
Early sales of television receivers were hampered by the lack of regularly scheduled programming. A few months after selling his first set in 1938, DuMont opened his own New York-area television station in Passaic, New Jersey. In 1940, the station moved to Manhattan as W2XWV on channel 4 and commenced broadcasting on April 13, 1940. Unlike CBS and NBC, which reduced their television broadcasting during World War II, DuMont continued experimental and commercial broadcasts throughout the war. In 1944, W2XWV received its commercial license, the third in New York, under the call letters WABD. In 1945, it moved to channel 5. On May 19, 1945, DuMont opened experimental W3XWT in Washington, DC., which became commercial station WTTG.
Paramount Pictures became a minority shareholder in DuMont Laboratories when it advanced $400,000 in 1939 for a 40% share in the company. Paramount had television interests of its own, having launched stations in Los Angeles in 1939 and Chicago in 1940. DuMont's association with Paramount would later come back to haunt DuMont.
Soon after his experimental Washington station signed on, DuMont began experimental coaxial cable hookups between his laboratories in Passaic and his two stations. It is said that one of those broadcasts on the hookup announced that the U.S. had dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. This was later considered the official beginning of the DuMont Network by both Thomas T. Goldsmith, the network's chief engineer and DuMont's best friend, and DuMont himself. Regular network service began on August 15, 1946, on WABD and W3XWT. In November 1946, W3XWT was granted a commercial license, the capital's first, as WTTG, named after Goldsmith. These two DuMont owned-and-operated stations were joined by WDTV in Pittsburgh on January 11, 1949.
Although NBC in New York had station-to-station television links as early as 1940 with WPTZ in Philadelphia and WRGB in Schenectady, New York, DuMont received its station licenses before NBC resumed its previously sporadic network broadcasts after the war. ABC had just come into existence as a radio network in 1943 and did not enter network television until 1948 when its flagship station in New York City, WJZ-TV, began broadcasting. CBS also waited until 1948 to begin network operations, because it was waiting for the Federal Communications Commission to approve its color television system. Other companies, including Mutual, the Yankee Network, and Paramount, were interested in starting television networks, but were prevented from doing so by restrictive FCC regulations, although the Paramount Television Network had limited success in network operations in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Programming
Despite no history of radio programming, no stable of radio stars to draw on like competitors NBC, CBS, and ABC had, and perennial cash shortages, DuMont was an innovative and creative network, its programmers often using its connections with Broadway.The network largely ignored the standard business model of 1950s TV, in which one advertiser sponsored an entire show, enabling it to have complete control over its content. Instead, DuMont sold commercials to several different advertisers, freeing producers of its shows from the veto power held by sole sponsors. This eventually became the standard model for U.S. television. Some commercial time was sold regionally on a co-op basis, while other spots were sold network-wide.
DuMont also holds another important place in American TV history. WDTV's sign-on made it possible for stations in the Midwest to receive live network programming from stations on the East Coast, and vice versa. Before then, the networks relied on separate regional networks in the two time zones for live programming, and the West Coast received network programming from kinescopes originating from the East Coast. On January 11, 1949, the coaxial cable linking East and Midwest was activated. The ceremony, hosted by DuMont and WDTV, was carried on all four networks. WGN-TV in Chicago and WABD in New York were able to share programs through a live coaxial cable feed when WDTV signed on in Pittsburgh, because the station completed the East Coast-to-Midwest chain, allowing stations in both regions to air the same program simultaneously, which is still the standard for American TV. It was another two years before the West Coast got live programming from the East, but this was the beginning of the modern era of network television.
File:DuMont television network WDTV broadcast 1952.JPG|thumb|WDTV broadcast of We, the People on April 18, 1952. The tall guest is New York Yankees player Bill Bevens.
The first broadcasts came from DuMont's 515 Madison Avenue headquarters. The company soon found additional space, including a fully functioning theater, in the New York branch of Wanamaker's department store at Ninth Street and Broadway. Later, a lease on the Adelphi Theatre on 54th Street and the Ambassador Theatre on West 49th Street gave the network a site for variety shows. In 1954, the lavish DuMont Tele-Centre opened in the former Jacob Ruppert's Central Opera House at 205 East 67th Street, today the site of the Fox Television Center and home of WABD successor station WNYW.
DuMont was the first network to broadcast a film production for TV: Talk Fast, Mister, produced by RKO in 1944. DuMont also aired the first TV situation comedy, Mary Kay and Johnny, as well as the first network-televised soap opera, Faraway Hill.
Cavalcade of Stars, a variety show hosted by Jackie Gleason, was the birthplace of The Honeymooners skits. Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's devotional program Life Is Worth Living went up against Milton Berle's variety show in many cities, becoming the first show to compete successfully in the ratings against the comedian known as "Mr. Television." In 1952, Sheen won an Emmy Award for "Most Outstanding Personality". The network's other notable programs include:
- Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, which began on radio in the 1930s under original host Major Edward Bowes
- The Morey Amsterdam Show, a comedy/variety show hosted by Morey Amsterdam, which started on CBS before moving to DuMont in 1949
- Captain Video and His Video Rangers, a hugely popular children's science fiction series
- The Arthur Murray Party, a dance program
- Down You Go, a popular panel show
- Rocky King, Inside Detective, a private eye series starring Roscoe Karns
- The Plainclothesman, a camera's-eye-view detective series
- Live coverage of boxing and professional wrestling, the latter featuring matches staged by National Wrestling Alliance member Fred Kohler Enterprises in Chicago under the name Wrestling from Marigold Arena
- The Johns Hopkins Science Review, a Peabody Award-winning education program
- Cash and Carry, the first network-televised game show
- The Ernie Kovacs Show, a comedy variety show hosted by Ernie Kovacs
- The Magic Cottage, a children's show starring artist Patricia Meikle
- The Goldbergs, a warm look at an immigrant Jewish family in New York City, starring its creator and writer Gertrude Berg.
Although DuMont's programming pre-dated videotape, many DuMont offerings were recorded on the . These kinescopes were said to be stored in a warehouse until the 1970s. Actress Edie Adams, the wife of comedian Ernie Kovacs testified in 1996 before a panel of the Library of Congress on the preservation of television and video. Adams claimed that so little value was given to these films that the stored kinescopes were loaded into three trucks and dumped into Upper New York Bay. Nevertheless, a number of DuMont programs survive at The Paley Center for Media in New York, the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles, in the Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, and in the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, and several surviving DuMont shows have been released on DVD.
Much of what survived was either never properly copyrighted or lapsed into the public domain in the late 1970s when DuMont's successor-company Metromedia declined to renew the copyrights.
A large number of episodes of Life Is Worth Living have been saved, and they are aired weekly on Catholic-oriented cable network, the Eternal Word Television Network, which also makes a collection of them available on DVD. Several companies that distribute DVDs over the internet have released a small number of episodes of Cavalcade of Stars and The Morey Amsterdam Show. Two more DuMont programs, Captain Video and His Video Rangers and Rocky King, Inside Detective, have had a small number of surviving episodes released commercially by at least one major distributor of public domain programming. Because so few episodes remain of most DuMont series, they are seldom rerun, even though there is no licensing cost to do so.