Rinker on Collectibles

RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1756

Reminiscences of An Old Codger: The DuMont Television Network

Although I shared this story in the past, I trust my longtime readers will forgive me for repeating it and my new readers will understand and appreciate why I am retelling it. Several years ago (I am not certain of the exact date but within the last 10 years), I was doing a public appearance at the Randolph Street Market in Chicago. A trip to Chicago is not complete without a visit to the Broadway Antiques Mall (BAM).

My wife Linda and I went a day early. I called Duane Cerny, one of BAM’s owners and author of “Selling Dead People’s Things,” to alert him that I would be in Chicago and planned on visiting BAM. Duane asked if I had any objections to him contacting a local newspaper reporter to interview me during my visit. I told him I would be delighted to generate some publicity for his mall.

BAM and its dealers specialize in mid-20th century material. The young reporter showed up shortly after I arrived. We went upstairs to a quiet corner for the interview. After about 15 minutes, the reporter commented: “You really know a lot about this stuff, don’t you!” I replied a bit arrogantly: “Of course, I do. I grew up and lived with most it.”

Recently, I offered to assist Sydney Brown of Photo Assist, a consultant to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee of which I am a member, in doing background research on a 1948 Leaf Candy card featuring Kenny Washington, a UCLA Bruin football player and the first African-American to sign a National Football League contract in the modern era.

I turned seven in the fall of 1948. I lived at 50 West Depot Street, Hellertown, Pennsylvania, just down from Prosser’s Drug Store located on the southwest corner of Main and Depot Streets and owned by my mother’s older brother Earl. Prosser’s sold candy. More importantly, it sold penny and nickel packs of bubble gum that contained non-sport and sport trading cards. At seven, I was a buyer.

[Author’s Aside: I also was a chewer. The end result was a mouth filled with multiple silver fillings.]

I remember buying packs of bubble gun with football cards, albeit I was not a dedicated buyer. A few cards satisfied my curiosity. I suspect I bought some Leaf packs. When checking my personal bubble gum card holdings, I only found Bowman football cards from the same time period survived. I did not save all my early bubble gum cards. In fact, I pasted many of them in albums, much to my later regret and shame.

In the 1950s, I was a regular viewer of Walter Cronkite’s “You Are There” television show. The show’s premise was the return to a past historic event with a team of modern reporters. The older I get, the more I think about the fact that I was there during many of the key events of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and the decades that followed. All of Linda’s and my grandchildren were born after 2000. They were not there. Further, they appear to have learned only about a select few of the events in school.

In July and August, 2020, I wrote a series of introductions for use on WorthPoint.com that dealt with radio manufacturers and their products. I grew up with brands such as Admiral, Bendix, Crosley, Emerson, General Electric, Majestic, Montgomery Ward (Airline), Philco, RCA, Sears (Silvertone), Western Auto (Truetone), Westinghouse, and Zenith. How many of these appliance brands do you remember? Many have not been in stores for decades.

I found it impossible not to reminisce as I wrote the WorthPoint.com introductions. Our first family television set was a Philco. It had 12 channels but only three produced a picture. It was replaced by an RCA color set in the early 1960s. I coveted my cousin Charles Peterson’s Zenith Transoceanic radio. My first portable computer was a Zenith. I remember seeing Admiral, Crosley, Emerson, and other brand radios at the homes of my aunts and uncles and parents’ friends.

I never realized how many lost brands are part of my history. In the year ahead, I am going to write about some of them. First, I want to preserve their memory and importance. Second, I want to savor the recollections one more time.

One of my favorite “how old are you really” questions is: name the top three television networks in 1948. Most individuals answer ABC, CBS, and NBC. Wrong! The answer is CBS, DuMont, and NBC.

I often think about Lou Gehrig’s retirement statement: “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” I feel extremely fortunate to have grown up (perhaps a bit of a misnomer since I never really have) in the late 1940s and 1950s. I was lucky to do so in the New York-Philadelphia-Washington, DC corridor, home to the some of the earliest television stations and the first television network.

I was an early television junkie and am not ashamed to admit it. I saw the first episodes of more than 100 television shows. I even took a physics course on NBC’s Continental Classroom. My first experience with color television was a colored/tinted plastic screen that was placed over our black and white screen.

In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, the DuMont Television Network, known as the “Forgotten Network,” was a major rival of NBC and CBS. Its lack of a radio network was a competitive disadvantage. NBC and CBS, and later ABC, could move their radio stars to television and cross advertise the shows.

Dr. Allen B. DuMont founded DuMont Laboratories in 1932. He and his staff built the first all-electronic television in 1938. DuMont’s most revolutionary contribution was extending the life of a cathode ray tube from 24 to 1,000 hours, thus making television a viable consumer product.

DuMont operated its own television station in Passaic, New Jersey. It served the New York market. DuMont was the only network to continually broadcast through World War II. Paramount Pictures held a minority interest in DuMont but also operated its own station system in Los Angeles and San Francisco. After opening a station in Washington, DC, DuMont experimented with sending signals between stations on coaxial cable. By 1949, DuMont programs aired in 32 cites. Its live coaxial cable feed stretched from Boston to St. Louis. Other stations aired programs via kinescope recordings.

DuMont’s television programs, many of which eventually moved to ABC, CBS, or NBC, include Bishop Fulton Sheen’s Life Is Worth Living, Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Cash and Carry (the first network television game show), Cavalcade of Stars starring Jackie Gleason (the first Honeymooners broadcasts), Ted Mack’s The Original Amateur Hour, The Arthur Murray Party, The Ernie Kovacs Show, and professional boxing and wrestling (I loved Gorgeous George). I watched all of them. Because there were no remotes at the time, a person had to get off the chair or couch and walk to the television set to change channels. As a result, once a show was on, my family and I tended to watch it in its entirety.

The DuMont Television Network produced over 20,000 television episodes between 1946 and 1956. Produced before the development of Ampex’s electronic videotape recorder in late 1956, DuMont shows were recorded on film kinescope for reruns and West Coast rebroadcasts. In the 1970s, DuMont’s 16mm and 35mm kinescopes wound up in the hands of a “successor” network who disposed of them in New York City’s East River. To date no attempts have been made to recover them. The Honeymooner segments survived because Jackie Gleason and Dennis James saved duplicate copies.

DuMont was destined to fail, especially when ABC, CBS, and NBC combined forces to defeat it. DuMont was constantly facing cash shortages. Its relationship with Paramount soured. Although DuMont did well in the Hooper ratings in the late 1940s, it slipped dramatically when A.C. Nelson bought out the Hooper ratings in February 1950. DuMont had trouble acquiring and adding stations.

DuMont survived the early 1950s because of WDTV in Pittsburgh. It was the only VHS television station in what was then the sixth largest market. A possible ABC-DuMont merger failed. The last DuMont programs aired in September 1955.

The DuMont Television Network is just one of many forgotten entities that those who grew up in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s remember. As these generations die, the level of forgetfulness will increase. In time, the memories will exist only in books. The real question is: will anyone ever take the time to read them?

Do you have DuMont Television Network memories? Share them with me at harrylrinker@aol.com.

Harry L. Rinker welcomes questions from readers about collectibles, those mass-produced items from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Selected letters will be answered in this column. Harry cannot provide personal answers. Photos and other material submitted cannot be returned. Send your questions to: Rinker on Collectibles, 5955 Mill Point Court SE, Kentwood, MI 49512. You also can e-mail your questions to harrylrinker@aol.com. Only e-mails containing a full name and mailing address will be considered.

back to columns page