1940 Dumont TV questionnaire
 

I was cleaning out some files this morning and ran across this questionnaire from W2XVW Dumont's NY flagship station in 1940.

W2XVW is now WNEW tv

per Wikipedia

The DuMont era
The station traces its history to 1938, when television set and equipment manufacturer Allen B. DuMont founded W2XVT (re-named as W2XWV in 1944), an experimental station. On May 2, 1944, the station received its commercial license — the third in New York City — on channel 4 as WABD after DuMont's initials. It was one of the few stations that continued broadcasting during World War II, making it the fourth-oldest continuously broadcasting commercial station in the United States. The station broadcast from 515 Madison Avenue and on December 15, 1945 WABD was reassigned from channel 4 to channel 5.

Soon after channel 5 received its commercial license, DuMont Laboratories began a series of experimental coaxial cable hookups between WABD and W3XWT, a DuMont-owned experimental station in Washington, D.C. (now WTTG). These hookups were the beginning of the DuMont Television Network, the world's first licensed commercial television network. DuMont began regular network service in 1946 with WABD as the flagship station. In 1954, WABD and DuMont moved into the $5 million DuMont Tele-Centre at 205 East 67th Street in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, inside the shell of the space formerly occupied by Jacob Ruppert's Central Opera House. A half-century later, channel 5 is still headquartered in the same building, which was later renamed the Metromedia Telecenter, and is known today as the Fox Television Center.

Very cool.

I notice baseball is not even on the list of sports in the survey.

Tis cool. It is odd though that baseball was left out. I would have thought it the most popular sport of the time.

John

Maybe baseball had some kind of exclusive contract with radio networks
at the time. Just an idea!

Or another TV station in that market...

I had some DuMont materials from a former dealer (still out there, guess the guy I lent them to still has them) and they were very consumer conscience. Reading through early tech bulletins shows that they went extra lengths to satisfy their customers.

Follow this link to a really great DuMont history site: http://www.dumonthistory.tv/

Thanks! I'd always wondered about the DuMont network.

Baseball was a biggie back then, but we need to remember that camersa were not mobile like now, it would have been a logistical nightmare to try and telecast a game, one camera ultrawide shot for everything. if I remember right, WGN in chicago was the first to telecast ball games Cubs and Sox back in the early 50s with the fameous and now industry standard three camera shot, And yes trhey were a key station in the mid-west and a major DuMont network.

Actually, NBC televised many baseball games in 1939 and 1940:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/nbc_r...ogramming.html