George Fox Organization network George Fox, the president of the George Fox Organization, announced tentative plans for a television film network in May 1956. The plan was to sign 45 to 50 affiliate stations; each of these stations would have input in deciding what programs the network would air. Four initial programs –
Jack for Jill, ''I'm the Champ,
Answer Me This,
and It's a Living'' – were slated to be broadcast; the programs would be filmed in
Hollywood. However, only 17 stations had agreed to affiliate in May. The film network never made it off the ground, and none of the planned programs aired.
Mutual Television Network The
Mutual Broadcasting System (Mutual), established as a
cooperative radio network owned by the affiliates, showed varied interest in a television counterpart. During the network's annual
shareholder meeting on April 1950, network president Frank White announced the tentative formation of the "Mutual Television Network" comprising stations in New York (
WOR-TV), Los Angeles (
KHJ-TV), Chicago (
WGN-TV), Boston (
WNAC-TV) and Washington, D.C. (
WOIC), all television adjuncts of existing network affiliates. A sixth station in Pittsburgh was proposed, but its originating radio station failed to gain a TV license. The 5-station attempt would fail in short time. When
General Teleradio de facto became the network's owner in 1951 by acquiring all but one of the network's largest affiliates,
General Tire president
Thomas F. O'Neil started putting a potential Mutual all-movie network together. Mutual purchased a large group of English films and paid $1.5 million for the right of unlimited play for two years of
Roy Rogers and
Gene Autry westerns.
NTA Film Network On October 15, 1956,
National Telefilm Associates launched the NTA Film Network, a
syndication service that distributed both films and television programs to independent television stations and stations affiliated with NBC, CBS or ABC; the network had signed agreements with over 100 affiliate stations. The
ad hoc network's
flagship station was
WNTA-TV (channel 13) in
New York City. The NTA Network was launched as a "fourth TV network," and trade papers of the time referred to it as a new television network. Despite this effort, by 1961, NTA carried a significant debt load and WNTA-TV was losing money against stiff competition from independent stations
WNEW-TV and
WOR-TV. After being placed on the market, WNTA was sold to the Educational Broadcasting Corporation and relaunched the following year as
non-commercial station WNDT, aligned with
National Educational Television (NET). National Telefilm Associates continued syndication services for stations for several years after the closure of NTA Film Network, with
Divorce Court was seen as late as 1969.
Pat Weaver Pat Weaver, a former president of NBC, twice attempted to launch his own television network; daughter
Sigourney Weaver once said, "it was always his dream to transform television." According to one source, the network would have been called the Pat Weaver Prime Time Network. Although the new network was announced, no programs were ever produced.
Unisphere/Mizlou In mid-1965, radio businessman Vincent C. Piano proposed the Unisphere Broadcasting System. The service would have operated for 2½ hours each night. However, Piano had difficulty signing affiliates; a year later, no launch date had been set, and the network still lacked a "respectable number of affiliates in major markets." The network finally launched under the name
Mizlou Television Network in 1968, but the concept had changed. Like the Hughes Network, Mizlou only carried occasional sporting and special events. Despite developing a sophisticated microwave and landline broadcasting system, the company never developed into a major television network.
United Network On July 12, 1966, warehouse entrepreneur
Daniel H. Overmyer announced the launch of the Overmyer Network (ON), to be built around Overmyer's chain of five planned UHF stations and an existing station in
Toledo, Ohio. Headed by former ABC president
Oliver Treyz, ON planned to have up to eight hours of program nightly, along with news programming from
United Press International. Due to a cash crunch brought on by Overmyer's other businesses, majority control of ON was sold to a 14-investor
syndicate and renamed the
United Network weeks before it launched. Overmyer's unbuilt television stations were also sold off at the same time. United's lone program,
The Las Vegas Show, debuted on May 1, 1967, to 107 stations, many of which were already affiliated with a Big Three network. The poor timing of the launch limited available budgets for prospective advertisers; this, coupled with onerous charges to transmit over
AT&T Bell System phone lines, resulted in the network's failure and the cancellation of
Las Vegas after one month. Ownership filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy several weeks later, and despite multiple teases of relaunching as a supplier of news and public affairs programming, United never resumed operations. While United managed to transmit programming unlike prior attempts at a fourth network, the network was later regarded as a "fiasco", "a promotion stunt", "a fraud", and a "
tax write-off".
New York Times columnist
Jack Gould wrote that United's failure was "further evidence that expansion of commercial TV is little more than a pipe dream".
Kaiser Broadcasting Industrialist
Henry J. Kaiser assembled a chain of six UHF stations in the mid-1960s under the
Kaiser Broadcasting name. In September 1967, Kaiser announced their intentions to create a television network with programming supplied by their station group; this included
Lou Gordon from
WKBD-TV,
Hy Lit from
WKBS-TV, Alan Douglas from
WKBF-TV, and Joe Dolan from
KBHK-TV. This planned network never gathered traction, and Kaiser faced significant financial losses from constructing the stations, with only WKBD-TV turning a profit. Gordon's program, however, was syndicated until his 1977 death. Kaiser Broadcasting was sold to
Field Communications in 1977.
Industry speculation In a series of columns in 1969 about a theoretical fourth network,
Newspaper Enterprise Association writer Joan Crosby floated
Westinghouse Broadcasting,
Metromedia and
Hughes Television Network (HTN) as possible candidates; Westinghouse was in the middle of merger talks with
MCA Inc., while Metromedia was entertaining a purchase by the
Transamerica Corporation. HTN was founded in 1956 as sports syndicator Sports Network, and purchased and renamed by business magnate
Howard Hughes in 1968. Crosby speculated HTN could potentially add non-sports programs that "...can change viewer's dialing habits... it would be one way, less costly and with far less of a risk, to start the illusionary fourth network". While Metromedia "dabbled at creating a fourth network," including a failed 1976 joint venture with
Ogilvy and Mather called MetroNet, Westinghouse president
Donald McGannon denied his company had any network aspirations, estimating it would take $200 million per year to operate a full-time television network and a modest news department. HTN continued to operate as a sports syndicator and never offered non-sports programming. The following year, Pauley briefly pitched a television news service of his own, using the same concept, before being hired by Mutual Broadcasting. In 1973, Pauley became the founding
chief executive officer for
Television News Inc. (TVN), a newsfilm service for stations in the United States and Canada. TVN was majority-owned by the
Coors Brewing Company, with
Visnews as a minority owner, after
Joseph Coors was receptive to Pauley's idea of a syndicated news supplier. TVN also proposed using the
Westar satellite system to transmit programming to affiliates on a full-time basis. A
political conservative sympathetic to the views of the
John Birch Society, Coors viewed TVN as an "alternative" to the established news services of ABC, NBC and CBS, which
he deemed to be "liberal" in content. Former
Nixon administration official
Roger Ailes served as an executive for TVN briefly in 1975. TVN was shut down in October 1975 after Coors, who had been nominated to the board of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was scrutinized over his ownership of TVN and imposing of political beliefs into news content, along with his disdain for public broadcasting. Coors's CPB board nomination was rejected by the
U.S. Senate on the same day that TVN closed.
Paramount Television Service In 1977,
Paramount Pictures made tentative plans to launch the
Paramount Television Service, or Paramount Programming Service, a new fourth television network. Paramount also purchased HTN, including its satellite time. PTS/PMTS was delayed until the 1978–79 season due to advertisers that were cautious of purchasing commercial slots on the planned network. This plan was aborted when executives decided the venture would be too costly, with no guarantee of profitability. == Ad hoc and "occasional" networks ==