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 to be 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 1947, W3XWT became WTTG, named after Goldsmith. The two stations were joined in 1949 by WDTV (channel 3) in Pittsburgh.

DuMont Television Network



Owner: Allen B. DuMont Laboratories

Key people
Dr. Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. (vice president; director of research)
Mortimer Loewi (financial consultant)
Ted Bergmann (director of sales, 1951–1953; general manager, 1953–1955)
Lawrence Phillips (director of broadcasting)
Chris Witting (director of broadcasting)
Tom Gallery (director of sales)
Don McGannon (general manager of O&Os)
James Caddigan (director of programming and production)
Paul Raibourn (executive vice president, Paramount; Paramount liaison)

Launch date
June 28, 1942: 81 years ago
Dissolved: August 6, 1956; 67 years ago

The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont /duːmɒnt/) was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks, rivalling 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 set manufacturer, and began operation on June 28, 1942.

The network was hindered by the prohibitive cost of broadcasting, by regulations imposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which restricted the company's growth, and even by the company's partner, Paramount Pictures. Despite several innovations in broadcasting and the creation of one of television's biggest stars of the 1950s, Jackie Gleason, the network never found itself on solid financial ground. Forced to expand on UHF channels during an era when UHF tuning was not yet a standard feature of television sets, DuMont fought an uphill battle for program clearances outside its three owned-and-operated stations in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh. It ended network operations on August 6, 1956.

DuMont's latter-day 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 and Emmy Award winner Life Is Worth Living, appear in television retrospectives or are mentioned briefly in books about U.S. television history.

{snip}

History

{snip}

Origins



DUMONT TELEVISION 1951 matchbook cover art



DuMont programs aired in 32 cities by 1949. The live coaxial cable feed stretched from Boston to St. Louis. Other stations received programs via kinescope recordings.


{snip}

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 to be 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 1947, W3XWT became WTTG, named after Goldsmith. The two stations were joined in 1949 by WDTV (channel 3) in Pittsburgh.

Early troubles



The DuMont Building at 515 Madison Avenue in New York, with the original WABD broadcast tower still standing, 2008.

DuMont began with one basic disadvantage: unlike NBC, CBS and ABC, it did not have a radio network from which to draw big-name talent, affiliate loyalty or radio profits to underwrite television operations until the television medium itself became profitable. Most early television licenses were granted to established radio broadcasters, and many longtime relationships with radio networks carried over to the new medium. As CBS and NBC (and to a lesser extent, ABC) gained their footing, they began to offer programming that drew on their radio backgrounds, bringing over the most popular radio stars. Early television station owners, when deciding which network would receive their main affiliation, were more likely to choose CBS's roster of Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, and Ed Sullivan, or NBC's lineup of Milton Berle and Sid Caesar, over DuMont, which offered a then-unknown Jackie Gleason and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. In smaller markets, with a limited number of stations, DuMont and ABC were often relegated to secondary status, so their programs got clearance only if the primary network was off the air or delayed via kinescope recording ("teletranscriptions" in DuMont parlance).

Adding to DuMont's troubles was the FCC's 1948 "freeze" on television license applications. This was done to sort out the thousands of applications that had come streaming in, but also to rethink the allocation and technical standards laid down prior to World War II. It became clear soon after the war that 12 channels ("channel 1" had been removed from television broadcasting use because storms and other types of interference could severely affect the quality of its signals) were not nearly enough for national television service. What was to be a six-month freeze lasted until 1952, when the FCC opened the UHF spectrum. The FCC, however, did not require television manufacturers to include UHF capability. In order to see UHF stations, most people had to buy expensive converters. Even then, the picture quality was marginal at best. Tied to this was a decision to restrict VHF allocations in medium- and smaller-sized markets. Television sets were not required to have all-channel tuning until 1964.

Forced to rely on UHF to expand, DuMont saw one station after another go dark due to dismal ratings. It bought small, distressed UHF station KCTY (channel 25) in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1954, but ran it for just three months before shutting it down at a considerable loss after attempting to compete with three established VHF stations.

The FCC's Dr. Hyman Goldin said in 1960, "If there had been four VHF outlets in the top markets, there's no question DuMont would have lived and would have eventually turned the corner in terms of profitability."

The end

During the early years of television, there was some measure of cooperation among the four major U.S. television networks. However, as television grew into a profitable business, an intense rivalry developed between the networks, just as it had in radio. NBC and CBS competed fiercely for viewers and advertising dollars, a contest neither underfunded DuMont nor ABC could hope to win. According to author Dennis Mazzocco, "NBC tried to make an arrangement with ABC and CBS to destroy the DuMont network." The plan was for NBC and CBS to exclusively offer ABC their most popular series after they had aired on the bigger networks. ABC would become a network of re-runs, but DuMont would be shut out. ABC president Leonard Goldenson rejected NBC executive David Sarnoff's proposal, but did not report it to the Justice Department.

DuMont survived the early 1950s only because of WDTV in Pittsburgh, the lone commercial VHF station in what was then the sixth-largest market in the US. WDTV's only competition came from UHF stations and distant stations from Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Youngstown, Ohio; and Wheeling, West Virginia. No other commercial VHF station signed on in Pittsburgh until 1957, giving WDTV a de facto monopoly on television in the area. Since WDTV carried secondary affiliations with the other three networks, DuMont used this as a bargaining chip to get its programs cleared in other large markets.

{snip}

On April 1, 1955, most of DuMont's entertainment programs were dropped. Bishop Sheen aired his last program on DuMont on April 26 and later moved to ABC. By May, just eight programs were left on the network, with only inexpensive shows and sporting events keeping what was left of the network going through the summer. The network also largely abandoned the use of the intercity network coaxial cable, on which it had spent $3 million in 1954 to transmit shows that mostly lacked station clearance. The company only retained network links for live sports programming and utilizing the company's Electronicam process to produce studio-based programming. Ironically, Electronicam is best remembered for being used by Jackie Gleason's producers for the 39-half-hour episodes of The Honeymooners that aired on CBS during the 1955–56 television season.

In August 1955, Paramount, with the help of other stockholders, seized full control of DuMont Laboratories. The last non-sports program on DuMont, the game show What's the Story, aired on September 23, 1955. After that, DuMont's network feed was used only for occasional sporting events. DuMont's last broadcast, a boxing match, aired on August 6, 1956. (The date has also been reported as September 1955, November 1957 or August 4, 1958.) According to one source, the final program aired on only five stations nationwide. It appears that the boxing show was syndicated to a few other east coast stations until 1958, but likely not as a production of DuMont or its successor company. Likewise, the remains of DuMont were used to syndicate a high school football Thanksgiving game in 1957; that telecast, the only DuMont broadcast to have been sent in color, was a personal project of Allen DuMont himself, whose hometown team in Montclair, New Jersey, was contending in the game for a state championship.

DuMont spun off WABD and WTTG as the "DuMont Broadcasting Corporation". The name was later changed to "Metropolitan Broadcasting Company" to distance the company from what was seen as a complete failure. In 1958, John Kluge bought Paramount's shares for $4 million, and in 1960 renamed the company Metromedia. WABD became WNEW-TV and later WNYW. WTTG still broadcasts under its original call letters as a Fox affiliate.

{snip}

Fate of the DuMont stations

All three DuMont-owned stations are still operating and coincidentally, all three are owned-and-operated stations of their respective networks, just as when they were part of DuMont. Of the three, only Washington's WTTG still has its original call letters.

WTTG and New York's WABD (later WNEW-TV, and now WNYW) survived as Metromedia-owned independents until 1986, when they were purchased by the News Corporation to form the nucleus of the new Fox television network. Clarke Ingram, who maintained a DuMont memorial site, has suggested that Fox can be considered a revival, or at least a linear descendant, of DuMont.

Westinghouse changed WDTV's call letters to KDKA-TV after the pioneering radio station of the same name, and switched its primary affiliation to CBS immediately after the sale. Westinghouse's acquisition of CBS in 1995 made KDKA-TV a CBS owned-and-operated station.

{snip}