Home > DuMont Television Network

1 Earliest station-to-station hookup

Prior to licensing as a network, DuMont's first "network" hookup, implemented by coaxial cable, was a simultaneous broadcast by the New York and Washington stations on August 9, 1945 of the announcement of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. DuMont was not the first to accomplish this, however; its hookup followed an earlier similar station-to-station hookup by NBC in 19431943 is the common year starting on Friday. Events January January 4 End of term for Culbert Olson, 29th Governor of California. He is succeeded by Earl Warren. January 11 The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China. January 1.

2 Programming

DuMont is perhaps most famous for introducing the skits that resulted in the show, The HoneymoonersIn the late 1940s, Jackie Gleason hosted a variety show, The Cavalcade of Stars on the DuMont Television Network. There he created skits of The Honeymooners with another DuMont performer, Art Carney. The skits became so popular that CBS offered Gleason an, starring Jackie GleasonAudrey Meadows in an episode of The Honeymooners Jackie Gleason ( February 26, 1916 June 24, 1987) was a Brooklyn-born comedian famous for brash humor and fast ad-libs who immortalized his Brooklyn neighborhood in The Honeymooners playing bus driver Ralph, and for filming the first season of The Honeymooners for CBS. It also pioneered several forms of television programming. Its programming included Mary Kay and JohnnyMary Kay and Johnny was probably the first situation comedy broadcast on television. It debuted on the DuMont Television Network in the USA on Tuesday, November 18, 1947. The fifteen minute long weekly sitcom starred Mary Kay Stearns and Johnny Stearns, w, the first television situation comedy, Faraway HillFaraway Hill was the first soap opera broadcast on an American television network, running on the DuMont Television Network from October until December of 1946. The show's plot revolved around a widowed New Yorker, Karen St. John (played by Flora Campbell, the first network-televised soap opera, The Cavalcade of Stars , a variety program hosted by Gleason, Life is Worth Living , Fulton J. SheenArchbishop Fulton John Sheen ( May 8, 1895 December 9, 1979) became television's first preacher of note on the airways in the late 1940s on the DuMont Television Network. DuMont was searching for programming ideas and put on a religious show with a Protes's devotional program, Ted MackTed Mack ( 1904 1976) was an American television host, best remembered for Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour. The program, a hit in the early days of television, set the stage for numerous programs seeking to find talent stars, from The Gong Show to's Original Amateur Hour, Broadway Open HouseBroadway Open House began in the late 1940s as television's first late-night variety and talk show, hosted by Morey Amsterdam, on the DuMont Television Network. The program is considered a forerunner of The Tonight Show and some sources actually consider, a variety and talk show hosted by Morey Amsterdam, The Arthur Murray Party, a dance program, With This Ring, a panel show on marriage, professional wrestling programs, and reruns of the melodrama Big Town.

Although the DuMont Network predated videotape, many of the DuMont programs were captured on kinescopes, which were films shot directly from live television screens. These kinescopes were reportedly stored in an ABC network warehouse until the 1970s. Actress Edie Adams , wife of comedian Ernie Kovacs who had done shows for DuMont, testified in 1996 before a panel of the Library of Congress on the preservation of television and video that as a clandestine aside to a business deal in the early 1970s to sell a successor network, it was arranged for all these kinescopes to be removed from the warehouse and dumped into the water of the Upper New York Bay in the dead of night.