Television History the DuMont Television Network

When making the statement the forgotten fourth network, that is not meant to be a joke about the current fourth television network the Fox Broadcasting Company, but is a reference to the DuMont Television Network.

The DuMont Television Network

A functional on the air television network from 1946 to 1956, the DuMont Television Network was created by scientist and inventor Allen B. DuMont.

DuMont Laboratories, Inc. was the primary manufacturer of cathode-ray tubes in the United States in the 1930s and was fairly successful in the manufacturing of TV receivers.

The television broadcasting division of DuMont separated from the manufacturing division in 1955. The DuMont Television Network ceased operations in 1956. The DuMont consumer products manufacturing division would be purchased by Emerson Electric Company in 1958.

Although DuMont pre-dated videotape many programs were saved on kinescope films. The television show archives were stored in a warehouse until the 1970s when the stored kinescopes were loaded into three trucks and dumped into Upper New York Bay. A 1996 Hearing Before the Panel of the Library of Congress describes the details of the dumped archives that were destroyed during a legal dispute over who would store and control the recordings.

Television Programming

The DuMont Television Network had a difficult time competing for big name stars and talent of the day. The big three networks were all spin offs from radio networks which provided financial support for their television divisions. Some folks attribute the failure of the DuMont Television Network on the lack of backing from a radio network.

Cavalcade of Stars would become one of the most popular shows on The DuMont Television Network. The show would produce the most famous star of the DuMont Television Network with Jackie Gleason as host and performer.

The Cavalcade of Stars would also be responsible for birth of a well known classic TV show, as a sketch called "The Honeymooners" was first performed on the show. It would later be picked up by the CBS Network as part of the Jackie Gleason Show and become a television classic.

One other notable show was Captain Video and His Video Rangers as it was the first science fiction show on television. While by today's standards the series looks pretty primitive, it was quite groundbreaking for the time.

Check out the links at the end of this article to clips of the show.

Other Fourth Television Networks

Not long after the DuMont Television Network dissolved a part-time television network, NTA Film Network, was created. While the network had over 100 affiliate stations, it did not last long, and dissolved in 1961.

Interesting that the NTA Film Network had the financial support of Twentieth Century-Fox, the sibling of current fourth television network the Fox Broadcasting Company. The NTA Film Network broadcast television shows as well as movies, showing many Twentieth Century-Fox films of the late 1950s. The company name Twentieth Century-Fox comes from motion picture executive William Fox who founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915.

There were many other failed fourth television networks over the decades that followed. It wound not be until the launch of the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986 that a fourth television network in the United States would challenge the the big three television networks as an equal in terms of power and market share.

Watch DuMont Television at the Internet Archive

Since the DuMont Television Network was out of business before I was born I have no first hand knowledge of it. As a history lover, and someone always digging to learn more about the history of technology, I discovered the DuMont Television Network while doing some research on the Internet Archive.

The Internet Archive is a great online library of video files. Thousands of files are available to be downloaded and viewed offline. Much like your favorite museum or traditional paper library, The Internet Archive is non-profit organization on a mission to build a digital library providing free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

If you do a search on the DuMont Television Network at the Internet Archive you will find quite a bit of old videos of station IDs, commercials, and shows from this long lost network. It is worth the watching and downloading just to see a treasure of television history videos.

Internet Archive Videos:

The video of Jackie Gleason on "Cavalcade of Stars" (1951)

Episode of the TV series "Captain Video" (1949)

Additional Sources:

Bio of Allen B. DuMont

Hearing Before the Panel of the Library of Congress