DuMont goes dark

DuMont Television NetworkThe first American TV network to go out of business transmits its final broadcast, a live boxing match from New York. The DuMont Television Network has simply run out of money, despite countless innovations that will be adopted by its competitors in years to come: the first made-for-TV movie, the first sitcom, the first soap opera, the first interstate coax cable link between stations (connecting the east coast to St. Louis), and the first to sell ad time within a single show to multiple advertisers, rather than letting a single advertiser sponsor an entire show (usually controlling the content as well). DuMont was also home to the first American science fiction TV series, Captain Video and his Video Rangers, which thrilled young viewers between 1949 and 1955. The DuMont Network goes off the air after operating for only ten years. The DuMont name continues to be used by its core of owned-and-operated stations in major cities, though that business unit will eventually rename itself Metropolitan Media, and later Metromedia. (Ironically, the Metromedia stations will eventually be purchased by the nascent Fox Broadcasting Company in the 1980s, becoming the core of another upstart TV network.)

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