What Became of the Dumont Network

When I was a kid, grown-ups spoke of a fabled time long before I was born when there were as many as FOUR American tv networks operating simultaneously, keeping me spellbound in much the same way as they were able to when they spoke of old time radio. It was called “Dumont”, or the Dumont Television Network. No not the Margaret Dumont network, although who wouldn’t desire access to fine programming starring that statuesque dame, morning, noon, and night?

Dumont is often described as “the fourth tv network”, but it was actually the third one, for it went on the air around the same time as the TV divisions of NBC and CBS (1939). Unlike those two entities, Dumont didn’t evolve out of an existing radio network, but went in the other direction. Founded by scientist/inventor Allen B. Dumont (1901-1965), the company manufactured TV sets. Much like some of the early movie studios, Dumont’s TV network arose out of a corporate decision to create and distribute original programming in order to create demand for the machines they made. They had scores of affiliate stations throughout the U.S. Their notable shows included Cavalcade of Stars (with Jack Carter, then Jerry Lester, then Jackie Gleason), The Morey Amsterdam Show,Captain Video and His Video Rangers (favorite TV program of Ed Norton on The Honeymooners), The Hazel Scott Show (the first U.S. TV show hosted by a black female), The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong starring Anna May Wong (first U.S. show hosted by an Asian American), The Dotty Mack Show (a showcase for a lip sync artist), and Life is Worth Living, a religious program featuring Bishop Fulton Sheen. Some of their early shows, like Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour,The Arthur Murray Party,and The Ernie Kovacs Show later moved to other networks. Others, like The Goldbergs came to Dumont from a competitor.

The failure of Dumont is not surprising in light of all the challenges it had to face. Unlike CBS and NBC, it couldn’t just adapt existing radio hits for TV, and bring their huge rosters of talent along. They had to program the entire schedule from scratch. Competition among the networks grew fierce. The number of channels were limited by the FCC. Coming in late, Dumont sometimes had to resort to the UHF band, which few sets were equipped to pick up. It lost the ratings wars. In 1948 ABC also entered the fray, although they didn’t really become a threat until 1953 when they got the backing of Paramount Theatres. Dumont was outspent by the other three. It ceased programming and sold off stations in the mid ’50s. This is when the Dumont Network, as a brand, passed from the scene.

But one thing I’ve learned from researching show business history is that these corporate entities rarely ever die entirely. Most of the old vaudeville circuits, movie studios, and in this case a TV network, tend to survive in altered form. They merge, they get swallowed up, they rebrand, but if you dig, you find a kind of reassuring continuity. In the case of Dumont, the parent corporation, which still owned a couple of stations, changed its name to the Metropolitan Broadcasting Company, for the Dumont brand, like that of the Edsel, now had the whiff of a famous failure about it. John Kluge bought this company in 1958 and renamed it once again, dubbing in Metromedia. Then he bought lots of other TV stations around the country. Metromedia was never an actual network, but they did create original programming and syndicated it. Some of their programs were major parts of the TV landscape, including The Merv Griffin Show, Truth or Consequences, Jeopardy!, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, Star Search, Soul Train,Thicke of the Night, and scores of others.

In 1985, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought up Metromedia and several other entities, including a controlling interest in TCF Holdings, the TV production arm of 20th-Century Fox. This became the basis of the Fox Broadcasting Company — basically an amalgam of Fox’s production studios and Metromedia’s stations. I was thrilled at the time by the emergence of this new “fourth TV network”, after a lifetime of only three (although universal cable would soon mean dozens). I’m quite sure most people didn’t know (I certainly didn’t) that on some level Fox WAS the old Dumont Network. And it succeeded where Dumont had failed by immediately carving out a niche for itself on the TV landscape with lots of edgy, daring, and outre programming including such shows asThe Simpsons, Married…With Children, In Living Color, America’s Most Wanted, 21 Jump Street, Cops, The X-Files, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, The Chevy Chase Show, MADtv, The Ben Stiller Show, Beverly Hills 90210, Herman’s Head,Get a Life,Roc, Martin, etc. There was a sensationalist, tabloid tone to almost everything they did, and it was admittedly dark but I confess that I loved the novelty of it. And you could see its influence on the rest of pop culture. For example, the SNL cast of the early ’90s (Chris Farley, David Spade, Adam Sandler,Rob Schneider, Mike Myers, etc) excited me more than any cast since the original one. It seemed to me that the show had tacked in a gonzo, unrestrained direction that emulated the comedy/variety aesthetic at Fox. Howard Stern’s syndicated TV variety show of the early 90s was so Fox-like, I long misremembered that it had aired on the network, but it hadn’t. Likewise Vince McMahon’s first iteration of the XFL, a football league with something of the attitude and theatrical hilarity of professional wrestling, SEEMED like a Fox show, but was actually a co-production of NBC.

Anyway, Fox is still with us (and since the advent of the Fox News Channel in 1996 it has been TOO MUCH with us), a fact of life that allows us to say that, after a fashion the Dumont Network is still with us as well. It’s just done a bit of shape-shifting.

I’ve necessarily simplified the corporate and technological aspects of this post. Greater amounts of detail than this, such as long lists of television station call letters, make my eyes glaze over. If you require more detail, check out this terrific dedicated Dumont Network website.

For more on show biz history,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.