Paramount Television Network - Launch

Launch

Paramount's television division, Television Productions, Inc., created the Paramount Television Network in 1948. A full-page advertisement announcing the newly created network, with KTLA as the flagship station, ran in Billboard on May 22nd of that year. Filming of programs took place at KTLA; a coaxial cable link between KTLA and KFMB-TV in San Diego transmitted a live signal to San Diego viewers. Other television stations across the United States received Paramount programs via kinescope recording for airing; these filmed series allowed stations to "fill in" their schedules during hours when ABC, NBC, CBS, and DuMont were not broadcasting shows, or when station managers preferred Paramount's filmed offerings to those of the four networks. Station managers at WBKB-TV in Chicago also had plans to distribute their own kinescoped programs.

Paramount management planned to acquire additional owned-and-operated stations ("O&Os"); the company applied to the FCC for additional stations in San Francisco, Detroit, and Boston. Officials at the FCC, however, denied Paramount's applications. A few years earlier, the federal regulator had placed a five-station cap on all television networks: no network was allowed to own more than five VHF television stations. Paramount was hampered by its minority stake in the DuMont Television Network. Although both DuMont and Paramount executives stated that the companies were separate, the FCC ruled that Paramount's partial ownership of DuMont meant that DuMont and Paramount were in theory branches of the same company. Since DuMont owned three television stations and Paramount owned two, the federal agency ruled neither network could acquire additional television stations. The FCC requested that Paramount relinquish its stake in DuMont, but Paramount refused. According to television historian William Boddy, "Paramount's checkered anti-trust history" helped convince the FCC that Paramount controlled DuMont. Both television networks suffered as a result, with neither company able to acquire five O&Os. Meanwhile, CBS, ABC, and NBC had each acquired the maximum of five stations by the mid-1950s.

Author Timothy White has called Paramount's efforts to launch its own television service, which directly competed with the DuMont Television Network, an unwise decision—Paramount in effect was competing with itself. The resulting ill feelings between Paramount's and DuMont's executives continued to escalate throughout the early 1950s, and the lack of cooperation hindered both entities' network plans. According to White, by 1953, even the public pretense of cooperation between Paramount and DuMont was gone.