DuMont Television Network

The DuMont Television Network was an American television network of the 1940s and ’50s, established in 1946 by DuMont Laboratories and its founder, Allen B. DuMont. The parent company was a pioneer in early television technology, but, largely because it lacked the support of a radio network, the DuMont Television Network struggled to compete with the fledgling television networks established by radio powerhouses—the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS; now CBS Corporation) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

The DuMont Television Network originally consisted of the New York City station WABD and the Washington, D.C., station WTTG. DuMont added the Pittsburgh station WDTV to its roster in 1949. Hundreds other stations were added as affiliates, and by 1954 DuMont television programs aired in more than 200 cities in the United States.

Between 1946 and 1956, DuMont broadcast some 200 television series. Most notable among these were Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949–55), an early children’s science-fiction series; Life Is Worth Living (1952–55), a religious program hosted by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, which later moved to the American Broadcasting Company (ABC); The Plainclothesman (1949–54), a detective show in which the main character’s face was never seen; The Johns Hopkins Science Review (1948–55), a Peabody Award-winning educational program; and Cavalcade of Stars (1949–52), on which comedian Jackie Gleason introduced the sketches that evolved into The Honeymooners series on CBS.

The DuMont network lacked the financial resources of NBC and CBS and after the 1940s lagged behind the bigger networks in star power and production quality. The 1953 merger of ABC with United Paramount Theaters pushed DuMont into fourth place in the Nielsen ratings. DuMont executives hoped to expand the network but were prevented from doing so by the Federal Communications Commission, which set a limit on how many television stations any entity could own. In 1955 partial owner Paramount Pictures Corporationseized control of the DuMont network. DuMont aired its last program, Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena, in 1956.

After the network closed in 1956, DuMont Laboratories retained its New York and Washington stations, which were spun off as DuMont Broadcasting and later renamed Metromedia. In 1985 Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation acquired Metromedia’s stations. Those outlets became the foundation of the Fox television network, launched in 1986.