On this date, the first true television network broadcast in the United States began on the Du Mont Television Network, with The DuMont Evening News. It broadcast the first news of the atomic weapon attack on Hiroshima from August 6.
More below the orange mushroom cloud.
The Du Mont Television Network received its highest ratings in 1953, but the combination of an antagonist investor (Paramount Pictures), and FCC regulations restricting television to no more than three VHF stations in a market, sealed the network’s fate.
It was unable to compete with NBC and CBS (which had extensive radio network experience and cash that they could draw on).
Du Mont had a number of firsts in television, even though it is now known as the "forgotten network."
The first true television series was its programme "Serving through Science," premiering in August of 1946.
The first US TV soap opera was "Faraway Hill," which started in 1946.
The first science fiction programme was "Captain Video and His Video Rangers," which aired from 1949-1955.
The first pregnant woman broadcast, first televised delivery of a baby, and the first sit-com was on "Mary Kay and Johnny" in 1948. Within a month, the baby was written into the series. The entire series was broadcast from their apartment. The show was a primetime show (back in the days when Americans were less squeamish about birth) — try broadcasting live a birth today on primetime television.
The first couple sharing a bed was also on Mary Kay and Johnny in 1947. NBC and CBS (and much of the public) considered such a depiction immoral. It was not seen again after that show went off the air until Bewitched on ABC twenty years later.
The first regularly-scheduled nightly news programme was Walter Compton News, in 1947.
The entirety of the McCarthy hearings in Congress were broadcast by Du Mont (and selected portions picked up by the other networks from them), being the first televised Congressional Hearings.
You also have Alan Du Mont to thank for inventing the television commercial. CBS and NBC (ABC did not exist at the time) required sponsors to purchase sponsorships of whole programmes for the entire network (hence such programmes as Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom). The Du Mont Network allowed sponsors to buy slices of time instead, and also for individual markets (allowing local advertisers to reach television audiences).
A number of famous stars began on the Du Mont Television Network: they include Jackie Gleason (Cavalcade of Stars and The Honeymooners), Monte Hall (Bingo at Home), Morry Amsterdam, and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. (The bishop's programme Life is Worth Living earned him an Emmy, competing against "Mr. Television," Milton Berle. His programme is still rebroadcast today on EWTN.)
It spun its television stations off into another corporation, the Du Mont Broadcasting Corporation (which was renamed Metromedia in 1957), and Du Mont Laboratories (which created the Cadillac of television sets at the time, Du Mont television sets, and was the original owner of the network). Du Mont Laboratories was seized in a stockholder proxy fight by Paramount in 1956.
Metromedia then expanded into radio, but when itself ran into financial trouble, it was sold to Rupert Murdoch, who turned it into FOX News Channel after spinning off the two Du Mont owned television stations the network still controlled.
FOX still has its headquarters at the Du Mont Telecenter Building in New York. Murdoch tried to change the name to FOX Telecenter, but the city’s historical board would not allow it. FOX still refers to its headquarters as the FOX Telecenter though on air.
It was later reported that the twenty thousand kinescope recordings and two-inch videotape of DuMont’s entire broadcast history were dumped into the East River, according to testimony from a Du Mont executive to the Library of Congress in 1997.
Only 350 complete Du Mont episodes survive today, including the entire Jackie Gleason Honeymooners series. Many episodes can be viewed on YouTube (search for Du Mont) or the UCLA Film Library.
(A Website devoted to the history of the Du Mont Network, including all its programmes and celebrities)
(Library of Congress testimony on preserving old television shows including the fate of DuMont’s kinescopes)
Alan B. Du Mont, scientist, electrical engineer, and founder of the Du Mont Television Network died in 1965. He is best known for his improvements on cathode-ray tube technology to make the tubes viable for television, and for creating the first commercially-viable all-electronic television set in 1938. Du Mont became the first millionaire in the television industry.
He developed his love for electronics at age ten, when quarantined with polio, specifically wireless communications; he built and improved crystal radio receivers, and then a transmitter while quarantined. He became the youngest American to hold a First Class Commercial Radio Operators License, issued in 1915 (the record still stands), at age fourteen.
By comparison, I obtained my license [with the additional radar endorsement] at age twenty-four, after six years of avionics in the Navy. Until the 1990’s, the First Class Commercial Radio Operator’s License required three separate examinations (and a fourth for the radar endorsement). It has now been combined into one (a General Class License, though I still hold my First Class permit).
I cannot imagine taking those tests at age fourteen.
Note: Edited for punctuation errors.