[3][4] The network was hindered by the cost of broadcasting, a freeze on new television stations in 1948 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC),[5] and even the company's partner, Paramount Pictures.

Forced to expand on UHF channels when UHF tuning was not yet standard on television sets, DuMont fought an uphill battle for program clearance outside its three owned-and-operated stations: WABD New York City, WTTG Washington, D.C., and WDTV Pittsburgh, ultimately ending network operations on August 6, 1956, leaving three main networks other than public broadcasting, until the founding of Fox in 1986.

DuMont's obscurity, caused mainly by the destruction of its extensive program archive by the 1970s, has prompted TV historian David Weinstein to refer to it as the "forgotten network".

[18][peacock prose] The network largely ignored the standard business model of 1950s TV, in which one advertiser sponsored an entire show, enabling it to have complete control over its content.

Instead, DuMont sold commercials to several different advertisers, freeing producers of its shows from the veto power held by sole sponsors.

It soon found additional space, including a fully functioning theater, in the New York branch of Wanamaker's department store at Ninth Street and Broadway.

In 1954, the lavish DuMont Tele-Centre opened in the former Jacob Ruppert's Central Opera House at 205 East 67th Street, today the site of the Fox Television Center and home of WABD successor station WNYW.

DuMont also aired the first TV situation comedy, Mary Kay and Johnny, as well as the first network-televised soap opera, Faraway Hill.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's devotional program Life Is Worth Living went up against Milton Berle in many cities, becoming the first show to compete successfully in the ratings against "Mr. Television".

[32] Nevertheless, a number of DuMont programs survive at The Paley Center for Media in New York, the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles, in the Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, and in the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago.

A large number of episodes of Life Is Worth Living have been saved, and they are now aired weekly on Catholic-oriented cable network, the Eternal Word Television Network, which also makes a collection of them available on DVD (in the biographical information about Fulton J. Sheen added to the end of many episodes, a still image of Bishop Sheen looking into a DuMont Television camera can be seen).

Several companies that distribute DVDs over the Internet have released a small number of episodes of Cavalcade of Stars and The Morey Amsterdam Show.

[34] DuMont received an Emmy nomination for Down You Go, a popular game show during the 1952–53 television season (in the category Best Audience Participation, Quiz, or Panel Program).

Bishop Sheen's one-man program – in which he discussed philosophy, psychology, and other fields of thought from a Christian perspective – was the most widely viewed religious series in the history of television.

169 local television stations aired Life, and for three years the program competed successfully against NBC's popular The Milton Berle Show.

Relations between the two companies were strained as early as 1939 when Paramount opened experimental television stations in Los Angeles and Chicago without DuMont's involvement.

Early television station owners, when deciding which network would receive their main affiliation, were more likely to choose CBS's roster of Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, and Ed Sullivan, or NBC's lineup of Milton Berle and Sid Caesar, over DuMont, which offered a then-unknown Jackie Gleason and Bishop Fulton J.

[37] This was done to sort out the thousands of applications that had come streaming in, but also to rethink the allocation and technical standards laid down prior to World War II.

[53] The FCC's Hyman H. Goldin said in 1960, "If there had been four VHF outlets in the top markets, there's no question DuMont would have lived and would have eventually turned the corner in terms of profitability.

NBC and CBS competed fiercely for viewers and advertising dollars, a contest neither underfunded DuMont nor ABC could hope to win.

ABC president Leonard Goldenson rejected NBC executive David Sarnoff's proposal, but did not report it to the Justice Department.

[55] DuMont survived the early 1950s only because of WDTV in Pittsburgh, the lone commercial VHF station in what then was the sixth-largest market in the country after New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington.

As a result, no other commercial VHF station signed on in Pittsburgh until WIIC-TV in 1957, giving WDTV a de facto monopoly on television in the area.

[56] A merged ABC-DuMont would have been an entity rivaling CBS and NBC, as it would have owned stations in five of the six largest U.S. television markets (excluding only Philadelphia) as well as ABC's radio network.

It also would have inherited DuMont's de facto monopoly in Pittsburgh and would have been one of two networks, along with NBC, to have full ownership of a station in the nation's capital.

On February 22, 2018, Lightning One, Inc., owned by Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan, filed a U.S. trademark application for "The Dumont Network.

[82] WTTG and New York's WABD (later WNEW-TV, and now WNYW) survived as Metromedia-owned independents until 1986, when they were purchased by the News Corporation to form the nucleus of the new Fox television network.

[83] Westinghouse changed WDTV's call letters to KDKA-TV after the pioneering radio station of the same name, and switched its primary affiliation to CBS immediately after the sale.

By the early 1970s, their vast library of 35mm and 16mm kinescopes wound up in the hands of "a successor network" (most likely Metromedia) that reportedly disposed of them in New York City's East River to make warehouse space for videotapes.

[84] It is estimated that only about 350 complete DuMont television shows survive, including seven early Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners comedy sketches from 1951–1952.