A Brief History of the Ill-Fated DuMont Television Network (TV: Gone, But Never Forgotten Episode 1) 

I'm 85 years old. As a kid I remember "Captain Video". They had a ray gun that was made around a pop gun that shot ping-pong balls that my brother and sister had. They taped two coke bottles on each side. Every time they showed that "Ray Gun" we would laugh. At that young age we could still see how hokey and amateur the production was; but we watched a lot of episodes anyway. (It was TV) One of the highlights of my early TV watching was the day Howdy-Dowdy lost one of his arms and it just waved around in the air and everyone, including the camera man, went nuts trying to cover it up. Strange how some of the silly things stay with you over the years. The 50's were a good time to be a kid.

I remember Ed Norton splitting the cost of a TV with Ralph Kramden and coming into his apartment late at night to watch Captain Video lol. Now I get the connection. Thanks, and awesome work!

After the TV network died in 1956, DuMont continued to used the name on their electronics and appliances until the 1970’s when it was bought out by Emerson.

DuMont was the first network to broadcast NFL games.

Actually, Multimedia acquired many of the shattered pieces of DuMont. Multimedia was later acquired by Fox, making Fox the reincarnation of DuMont.

DuMont died shortly after I was born in 1954, and I have always been fascinated with this early network. Kudos to you for putting this together. I greatly enjoyed your presentation.

What was very important is that DuMont owned the patent for the long life CRT that would run hundreds of hours as opposed to other CRTs that would last a couple of dozen hours. DuMont TV sets were a masterpiece of engineering. Their TV tuners would receive from about 50MHz to about 230 MHz. The tuners had roller inductors that were ganged. You could get FM on a DuMont set. They also had a green tube tuning indicator with two bars. I remember DuMont well.

Thank you for your piece on the now-defunct DuMont TV network. If those old shows had not been thrown into New York Bay, today's generation would have been witness to what previous generations saw from DuMont in the late 40's and 50's. Also, it was interesting that DuMont produced their own line of TV sets in order to promote their network.

Thank you so much for this! I grew up in NYC watching the DuMont Network and remember many of their programs. I learned a lot here I did not know, thank you for your efforts!

You can thank Jackie Gleason for the fact The Honeymooners are still available. He owned the rights to it and kept the copies. That show is all I ever saw of Dumont. "To the moon Alice."

Very good! Nice presentation. I am a collector - and restorer - of post-war vintage b&w television sets "Televisors, in DuMont-speak) and four of them are DuMonts. The latest is the 1951 giant, the Royal Sovereign, with the 30" b&w CRT. The earliest is a 1947 DuMont "Chatham", a 12" tabletop model. They are amongst the very best performing sets of their era. Again, congratulations on a fine documentary. Lee

If you watch the end credits of The Honeymooners you will see the mention of Dumont.

I got my Ph.D. in TV history from Northwestern and MA in Communication from Annenberg School at Penn. VO is excellent! This history of DuMont Net was full of historical facts that need to be remembered. Role of FCC Phonevision first PPV. I am not surprised this took a year. Keep up the good work!

Our family owned a Dumont TV set. Purchased in 1949 it worked with few tube replacements into the early 60s. Relatives with other brands seemed to have frequent tube replacements or other problems. Back in the day most people would go to the local drug store where they had a tube tester and replacement tubes. You’d pull out the tubes you guessed were defective and put them on the tester. Good or Bad. Because TV sets were hand wired loose or bad solder connections could also be a problem.

This is one of the best documentaries on Dumont that I have seen, lots of new information to me that others have not covered

Just to add for history, and these are memories from when I was 7-9 or so years ago in the early 1950s. If I recall correctly, there was a show, I think on Dumont, with Charity Bailey, a terrific person and singer with children. Some of her songs, like, "yes indeedy" are on RU-vid. If I also recall correctly, there were a lot of public service announcements decrying racial discrimination (songs like, "You can get white mild from a brown skinned cow; the color of the cow don't matter nowhow") , and similar. Great video. Thank you

It also didn't help that the FCC relegated Dumont to the world of UHF at a time when the majority of televisions did not have UHF tuners.

The kid doing this voice over speaks really nicely and clearly. I loved listening to this whole video. Learning is enjoyable when there is a good host like this kid. I love how he doesn't drown out his voice with horrible music like lowfi or hip-hop. It's just him and the information, spoken directly and very professionally. Nice job kid. You made me interested in old TV stations. Thats how well you did your video.

I repaired a few Dumont black and white TV sets at Armstrong TV many years ago. Thank you for this informative and entertaining video.

Very well done. Thank you for the history lesson. Im old enough to remember watching Dumont.

Thank you for making this exceptional video! We had a DuMont TV when I was a kid and I do quite a bit of early television research myself. Therefore, I know great early television research when I see it and this is the best that I've seen!

The TV at 15:31 looks similar to our Tele-Tone. We were the first in our neighborhood with a TV. !7 inch screen in 1949 was "big screen" compared to the small round oscilloscope screens of the first TV's back then. I would get up early in the morning to watch the test pattern until the broadcasting started later in the morning. ❤

As a kid in the mid-1950s, I watched with fascination Captain VIdeo & His Video Ranger. I was already a fan of sci-fi books back then. I was born in 1940. My father was a radio engineer at WWL-AM in New Orleans. He had bought a TV set in 1948 when a rival radio station in New Orleans, WDSU, came on the air on Channel 6, where it still is today. I thoroughly enjoyed your video of DuMont and its story. The 3 major networks held such a sway over the FCC back then, it made it hard for TV stations to get licenses. In 1957 I got a job at the brand-new Education TV station in New Orleans, WYES-TV. I was a camera operator in the studio and the camera was a DuMont.

Very nice work! I've been a sort of "TV historian" since I first saw a TV when I was 4 years old. I lived in New York which had a whopping 7 channels to watch. I was 5 when DuMont died in '56 so I have no memory of its shows, but I've certainly read a lot about it and, once the internet became a thing, seen some of the few kinescopes that exist. There was SO MUCH information in your video that I've NEVER heard of before! Thank you for this. Normally I don't comment much, but I want more videos from you so this'll help the algorithm I hope (also like and subscribe). Thanks for your hard work!

In the early 1970's, when the Dumont network shows were dumped into the Upper New York Bay, true Americana was lost forever. Which makes for an interesting consideration: the only persons to ever see them were those involved in making the shows, and the realtime TV viewing audience. The network which acquired the Dumont assets really should be acknowledged for destroying priceless one-of-kind original TV broadcasts. Tragic.

As a member of the first TV generation, growing up in the 1950s, I was always curious about what was usually called 'the old Dumont network.' We had stations for NBC, and CBS, and later ABC, but Dumont was kind of a mystery. Thanks for posting this interesting video!

Thank you for your fine video. It was presented in a clear and informative way. I can see why it took you a year to put it together...lots of research time. By the way, I'd never heard of the DuMont Network,,, I enjoy learning something new every day.

Beautifully done ... I wrote old television articles for a few years for a now-extinct blog, and your research and presentation was excellent. You SOUND like a "young-un" :) but your presentation and research are impressive. I'm sorry for your loss -- my only word of advice is -- you could give everyone $1M and someone would STILL gripe about it... don't be discouraged... an occasional unsavory response means that you actually are making an impression.... Looking forward to your next installment - -You already have some fans

Your video is very informative, and it documents the unfortunate demise of an early TV network. Perhaps, however, the surviving networks have followed a parallel trajectory along the quality dimension -- scant cash-flow killed Dumont; eventually and inevitably thereafter, the stupendous cash flow of the profitable networks has nearly eliminated quality by making quality irrelevant to their mission. The TV industry is going dark without turning off its signals.

That DuMont logo sure looks like the DuPont chemical logo. Hmmmmmm...Very interesting video. Thanks for sharing.

Very interesting and informative breakdown of the history. Well done!

Anna May Wong is to appear on U.S. circulating commemorative quarter dollars later this year (2022).

This is great! Thanks! This is about the only documentary about Dumont that there is and 99% of the time it's just a foot note. Dumont was so important. So many of it's innovations are still with us.

Excellent well-crafted documentary. Thank you.

Thanks for your hard work on the DuMont story. I had heard of the network but never knew the whole story until now. I see that DuMont had 200 affiliates in 1954 across the country, that was a huge presence.

Excellent documentary, thank you!

🐙I still remember Inspector Luger saying his Dumont has finally crapped out..."They don't MAKE Dumonts anymore!" (Barney Miller) Some how it seems exactly the right brand for him!!

Thank you for this very informative history lesson about the Dumont Television Network. It helps preserve the fragmented bits and pieces that remain about them. I found it easy to listen to, right to the end.

I was born in September of 1952. I was among the first generation of children to grow up watching television. I know I watched things on Dumont but all I remember was turning on their channel one day and seeing a message that Dumont was no longer operating. I believe shortly thereafter the channel it was on became an ABC affiliate. It was in Wisconsin

Thanks so much from a retired television critic. Beautifully and thoughtfully done. I'm a baby boomer and watched many of these shows and they influenced me in many ways (including my career.) The accompanying comments amplify the impact this network had -- and that many, including you, refuse to let its memory and influence fade. It deserves to be remembered, and thanks to you, it will. Looking forward to your other posts.

I remember watching Captain Video! It was on 6 nights a week for years! There must have been zillions of episodes of it! I have some old documents dealing with their special effects budget, which was I believe, $50 per week! I remember some of the 'controls' on the rocket consoles were painted on, and they used sparklers stuck in the tails of little model rockets, and the smoke from the sparklers would just rise vertically even though the rocket was supposedly moving from left to right on the screen! Nice job on this documentary, Em, thanks for bringing back the memories and expanding my knowledge of the old Dumont network!

Very well researched and a fascinating history. Great Job!!

Fantastic first video. Great job. Thanks.

A great find to watch today. Well done on this.

Enjoyed this 17 min video VERY much ! Very informative & entertaining ! Kudos to all those involved !!

Sadly most of those programs were wiped or thrown away destroying a lot of crucial programs like Lunch With Soupy and Your Shows Of Shows.

What a great research story. Well done.

Very well done!!! You told the duMont story quite well.

Thanks! Very informative and well presented.

Many of the remaining Dumont stations would ban together to form what would become the Metromedia services...

Great video & great memories! I'm 76 & remember the Du Mont network very well from when my family got their first t.v. in 1950, when I was 4! In fact, in June 1950, I appeared on a television show, with three other boys, starring movie "Flash Gordon", Buster Crabbe! Not sure whether it was on" Du Mont" but it gave me a personal look at the workings of early t.v.!

Maybe Dumont lacked a radio presence, but it adopted RCA's business model of having its own factories producing televisions and studios producing content: except Dumont TV's were more reliable...unlike their studio management.

That was fabulous thanks 😊

Nice job on the presentation. Thanks for your efforts.

Great video! thank you. Perhaps the biggest downfall of Dumont was THE federal government?? As you mentioned the FCC did not want a 4th major network. Who are they to really decide that ever, let alone then. Over governing seems to me in favor of the powers that be status quo. Who knows. Thank you again for this very fine and well done video. P.S. Great job in sticking it out for nearly a year to make the video. Your time and effort does show through. kudos to you

Excellent presentation. My aunt Viv worked for Dumont.

nicely done!!

Excellent content and presentation!! Was quite obvious you did some major research when putting this together!

This made me think about how early television didn't really know how to produce their content at first. Most of it was just pointing their camera at a stage show. I wonder when they started to think more like movie makers? And began to use multiple cameras and close ups? Or tracking shots.

DuMont a network founded Allen DuMont to promote his Television..the Call letters was WABD Soon morphing into WNEW 5 Metromedia bought the former DuMont company in 1960.

Dumont predates ABC.

An excellent documentary of the founding days of television. Well researched. Thank you!

Excellent video. Thank you!

Well done. An interesting part of the history of television.

Thanks for this very interesting video!

That was great. Thanks.

Thank you for your short but informative documentary. I well remember Captain Video when I was a kid.

I was recently watching an older episode of "The Family Guy", where the late, great Norm MacDonald voiced the "angel of death". When Lois offers to turn on the TV, he snidely retorts something about: "what are we gonna see, the Dumont Network?!" I literally almost peed myself laughing!!! 😅🤣😂😆 Thanks for your wonderful video... 👍 💋

Got to hand it to you. Your doing a pretty good job 👏.

Wow, learn something new everyday ah. Nice vid, thanks.

Thank you for a very interesting video! I was born in the late 40s and our family got its first TV shortly after...I'm sure I was treated to some Dumont programming, just wish I could remember it.

Very interesting video! Just imagine if DUMONT had been allowed to succeed. TV might have been quite different today. I find it interesting that Paramount tried and failed to form a partnership with CBS back then. Well, it took decades, but that partnership is now set in stone! The biggest travesty has to be their film library being unceremoniously dumped into the river. It's amazing how the industry had no foresight of the historical value of this footage. Sadly, this was a practice done well into the 1970's. Much of the BBC archives were discarded to make room for new programs, forever erasing their own history.

Great work.

You have a pretty good presentation style so kudos for that.

I just watched your channel for the very first time, I subscribed you have such excellent content.

Hi Emily, please, do not give up! Emily, I am using this video to answer your "update" video. Emily, I am a Baby Boomer (b. 1950), I lived that era - I experienced "American Graffiti" (in the Northeast which was 6 months a year - the rest under snow!), I watched what I would call the "Golden Age" of American Television. Under the Hays Code, my generation enjoyed wholesome shows that reflected and promoted traditional American family values and life principles - it was not perfect, but it gave us hope. I remember "Father knows best", Donna Reed Show, Mickey Mouse Club, the original Star Trek, the Twilight Zone, Leave it to Beaver, Bewitched, Kraft Theater Movie, Wonderful World of Disney, ... to name a few. These well-created/made shows reinforced ethics and morals that we learned at home, at school, at church, through social groups (4H, Boys/Girls Scouts/...), along with the community... We were young and we had some "flaws" but society did set boundaries that most of us ... observed and/or survived to become productive citizens. Selective service (military) was part of the "growing up" of most young men - our parents did it, our families served - all these experiences bonded us as we were becoming part of America, ..."one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all". Emily, these memories that you are bringing up and the time you spend researching OUR history is remarkable as it is what (used to) binds us. Do not give up, let go of YT viewers that just love to criticize or destroy; your presentations bring many Veterans like me to a time of innocence, peace, and hope (before the wars). May Peace be with you, Emily and thank you with all my heart, Ciao, L (Veteran, three wars).

Somehow, watching Twin Peaks, The Return, episode 8 (gotta light?) brought me here. Thank you for this excellent bit of historical context. I think it adds tremendous texture to that episode.

Great work! Great story!

My grandpa had a DuMont TV. It only got channels 2 to 13 and FM radio. It was as big as a washing machine.

Just LUV this topic. I almost wanted to propose to you because of the sheer timing of discovering your post. LoL You sounding like that proverbial Jersey Girly that might be a thought worth considering.🤔. Dispensing with the melodrama, to be brief, I did research on the Dumont saga at least 5-7 years ago, and was intrigued to the point ad nauseam, when it sickened me about the destruction by disposal of Dumont's videographs into a body of water in the NYC area. In closing, hopefully only Fr now, the romantic, idyllic stories of genius ideas burgeoning from a basement or a garage as in the cases of HP, or Microsoft, etc. over the years just bowls me over every time Moving onward, back to the case of Dumont's demise, in the interim, they did attempt cable hookups across the country, and even coast to coast for a brief period as far back as the 40s. Can you believe COAX existed as an effective infrastructure medium that far back . In fact ELECTRONO-VISION which later on was employed to broadcast some Major sports and arts and entertainment was around then. I think I might have the map legend of the connection and coverage areas. More later. PLEASE stay in touch!

Have you noticed that the Dumont and DuPont logos are almost identical? It was no accident I’m sure.

congratulations on a well-put together & fascinating piece of mass media history. However, watching it made me wonder about a couple of things you mentioned in passing where a little more detail on them would've been enlgihtening: - You mentioned "mechanical television" but didn't explain exactly what that was. I believe it involved a spinning disc in the TV set itself synchronized to the broadcast cameras that were similarly constructed. (I might have that totally wrong, but something along those lines.) - Why didn't the FCC want a 4th network in 1948? - Exactly how did Rocky King take advantage of its limited budget? Overall though, really enjoyed your video; thanks for sharing it.

I was a small fan of Dumont's "Small Fry Club", which was seen in the Philadelphia, PA area on WFIL-TV, Channel six. When my family got it's first TV set, there were only two channels we could watch--the aforementioned channel six, which carried Dumont's programs, and WPTZ, the NBC affiliate. Not too much later, WCAU-TV, Channel 10, came on the air as the CBS affiliate (with a weaker signal, by the way). So from my vantage point, it was ABC not Dumont which was "the fourth network" (chronologically). Your presentation was well done. Thank you.

CAPTAIN VIDEO !! Thank you for helping me remember my early childhood.

My sister, Bea, invited The Stranger actor, Robert Carroll to take her to her to the senior prom, in Perryopolis, PA. He accepted and took her to the prom. It was the talk of the town. Women and girls flocked to the dance to get a glimpse of Mr. Carroll. The high school princapal kept cominnng over to their table. Frustrated with his interuptions, she said: "Mr. Hibbs, would you like to dance with Robert?". He got the message. LOL

This is great!

Great presentation and interesting topic.

Well done. I great first post! My parents are in their 80s and remember the Dumont Network well. They remember shows like Bishop Sheen (I come from a Catholic family and am one myself) and Captain Video. They were before my time. I only remember reruns of "The Honeymooners" on late night; definitely not PC stuff! I enjoyed the bits you were able to grab from the late, great network. It is the ultimate shame that ABC just dumped all of Dumont's content in the drink after buying out the last of the defunct network's assets. Just a pity. Again, well researched and well done!

Wow. I used to watch "Rocky King - Detective" as a kid on Sunday nights, brought to you by Clorets Mints and Chewing gum. It was good to see a clip of it here. Thank you!

Excellent job! I didn't know it was an inaugural video until the very end. You are to be commended for using an actual voice-over and not a computerized "voice". Fun Fact: The call sign WDTV mentioned at 13:50 is today in Bridgeport-Clarksburg, West Virginia - and has been since the 1960s. It is on Channel 5. About the only time one sees or hears anything about Dumont is seeing old news reels of President Truman behind a bank of labeled microphones, one of them with a Dumont placard.

Well done!

They built some of the best picture tubes and televisions in the industry. They should have stayed out of network broadcasting and built televisions only. Perhaps they would still be around.

Great job

The name and logo shape look suspiciously like DuPont chemicals. They couldn't get away with that today.

Great video

WE had a DuMont tv, as did my grandparents. I was born in 55...I have picture of me next to it ...I was like 3 yrs old.

Fulton Sheen is now blessed a step away to sainthood.

Nice work.

Very entertaining and informative video. I also wanted to point out another special performer on Dumont in the early 50s. Paul Dixon had a daily show at about 3 or 4 PM. The guy was so zany, unscripted and hilarious and I looked forward to his show every day after I came home from Junior high school in NYC. He was so unconventional and would frequently have conversations with the camera operators and other people who normally don’t get to be on the air. I heard somewhere that he was an influence on David Letterman. So I make this comment just as appreciation for all the laughter that he provided to me.

What a great documentary. Lots of work and research. AND, the narrator (except for a few flubs) is great. I can understand nearly every word. My only criticism is that, like most young people today, she fades at the end of phrases. This is a GREAT HISTORICAL DOCUMENT. THANKS ........