The Plainclothesman

I was looking through the TV ...

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