Re: TNT wants to be the seventh (sixth? fifth?) network

On Mar 3, 10:54 am, Audie Murphy's Ghost <takebackamer...@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article
<59ef8c19-dff3-4649-8d48-6f6ab406c...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, WQ





<WQi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 3, 5:36 am, Audie Murphy's Ghost <takebackamer...@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:
The DuMont Network went dark in 1956.  Two of its three
owned-and-operated stations, the ones in NYC and Washington, were spun
off into another company, Metropolitan Broadcasting.  (The third o&o,
in Pittsburgh, had been sold to Westinghouse two years before.)  In
1960, MBC became Metromedia, which was bought by NewsCorp in 1986.  It
became the core of Fox Broadcasting.  DuMont and Fox really have
nothing to do with each other.

DuMont was the first TV network to operate in the U.S., but to say it
was the first to be licensed is not correct.  Networks in the U.S. have
never been licensed.

--- Well, it depends on how you define first TV network to operate in
the U.S.  NBC and, shortly after, CBS were experimenting with
broadcasting for a decade before DuMont, originally a TV set
manufacturer, appeared.  NBC's official inauguration as a "network"
coincided with the opening of the N.Y. World's Fair on April 30,
1939.  Broadcasting licenses were issued by the FCC to networks once
they came out of their experimental phase and DuMont received its in
1940.  What followed broadcasting licenses were commercial licenses,
which NBC and CBS both received on July 1, 1941, and DuMont would
receive its own on May 21, 1944, when it switched its call letters to
WABD.  There seems to be a general consensus of opinion that NBC
kickstarted network broadcasting with Gillette Cavalcade of Sports on
Friday nights in the fall of 1944, which remained on the air till
1960, but it really wasn't until the spring of 1946 when all 3
networks [ABC having been cleaved from NBC in 1943 was still only a
production company and not a network at this point] made their first
concerted efforts to expand their primetime program lineups,
especially after DuMont returned following a half-year hiatus during
the fall and winter of '45-'46 when it was putting its money into
building new studios.  After first becoming an ad-hoc network in the
spring of 1948, ABC finally evolved into a bonafide network several
months later in August once its own broadcasting facilities were
completed.  And the rest is history.

I'm not disputing that there were TV stations in existence before
DuMont's, or that intercity broadcasts were done as experiments before
and during World War II.  In fact, DuMont's Channel 5 in New York was
only the third station to begin operating in that market.  However,
regular DuMont Network service began in August 1946, and I think that's
the milestone we're talking about.  NBC's first non-experimental TV
broadcasts came in 1947.  ABC and CBS didn't begin regular TV network
operations until 1948.

--- DuMont's first official network series were in June 1946, Serving
Through Science and Cash and Carry, but NBC preceded those with
several shows of its own, the aforementioned Cavalcade of Sports in
1944, along with Voice of Firestone Televues and The World in Your
Home the same year, NBC-TV Newsreel in 1945, and its first splashy
[for the time] entertainment series, Hour Glass, in May, 1946. CBS's
first real network entry was Tonight on Broadway in April 1948, the
same time ABC came out with its first series, On the Corner, but when
it first formed as an ad-hoc network. ABC's first series as a full-
fledged network in August 1948 was Candid Microphone, later to be
known as Candid Camera.

You can find intercity hookups by experimenters as early as 1939,
though, and some of these have been claimed as initial network
broadcasts.  The World's Fair and early sports broadcasts don't seem to
have been sent outside of New York, though.

The commercial licenses you're talking about weren't for networks, but
for individual stations operated by the broadcasters.  Again, networks
aren't licensed.

--- Well, it's kind of a circular argument, isn't it? If stations are
licensed, then you have networks; if they're not, then you have no
networks. But when it comes to defining when networks actually
started, I think I would have side with the authors of The Complete
Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows. Basically,
everything was experimental until the first regular weekly show on a
network turned up that aired simultaneously on 2 separate stations in
2 different cities. Seems like a sensible definition considering all
the "firsts" that are claimed, and so the first shows I mentioned
above on each of the networks would qualify as when each network first
began as a true network. It had to start somewhere.
.

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