New releases announced today, April 18:The Color Honeymooners - Collection 4 will be coming out August 26 Visit TVShowsOnDVD.com for the complete stories on these and other news items.
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E!'s Keeping Up with the Kardashians returns for a second season on March 9 at 10 pm/ET.... The cast of Tyler Perry's House of Payne will answer fans' questions in a live Web chat to be held March 5, from 9 to 11 pm, at TBS.com.... Today, on the Great One's birthday, JackieGleason.com has been relaunched. In addition, The Color Honeymooners Set No. 2 is being released on DVD.... Veteran TV writer Richard Baer (Leave It to Beaver, Bewitched and many more) on Feb. 22 died of a heart attack. He was 79.
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Question: I was looking through the TV Guide Online feature on old TV listings and saw that in the early 1950s there was a fourth network, the DuMont network. I had never heard of it before, and I was wondering if you could give me a little background on it. What happened to it? And what happened to the shows that aired on it when the network went off the air? Thanks.
Answer: Well, Jane, it's actually a fairly convoluted story, but I'll see if I can give you the simple version. DuMont, the original fourth network, was the creation of electronics whiz Allen B. DuMont, who first made his name manufacturing cathode-ray tubes before moving into radio and then TV sets. His company experimented with TV broadcasting for years before getting its first commercial broadcast license in 1944 for what is now New York's WNYW. Two years later, as NBC started its three-station "East Coast Network," DuMont opened a Washington D.C. station and a rac
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As Peter Griffin would put it, life has been freakin' sweet for Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. The animated Griffins of Quahog, R.I., are hitting ratings highs Sunday nights on Fox, often beating ABC's Desperate Housewives among male viewers ages 18 to 34. Past episodes are still big draws on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. The box sets of the first three seasons all rank among the top DVD sellers. His second series, American Dad, has become a hit as well. So what's next? MacFarlane has signed on as executive producer of Becoming Glenn, a sitcom pilot that Fox will consider for its fall lineup. The show, which revolves around a 35-year-old slacker, was actually written and shot three years ago, and e
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We all know that CW is a terrible name for the new network that will combine programming from WB and UPN. There have even been reports that co-owners CBS and Time Warner could change it before next season.
That's why the Biz is here to help. Before they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to a branding consultant, they should try this: the DuMont Network.
As readers who've spent hours in the bathroom with The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows already know, DuMont was the original "fourth network" that was in business from 1948 to 1956. With no radio network from which to draw for talent or shows, DuMont was the first TV network to create its own stars (just like WB was doing in happier times). It was where Jackie Gleason did his first Honeymooners skit. It introduced America to the comic genius of Ernie Kovacs. Such a heritage would play great with the many nostalgia-loving TV critics out there.
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