Fourth television network

In American television terminology, a fourth network is a reference to a fourth commercial broadcast (over-the-air) television network, as opposed to the Big Three television networks that dominated U.S. television from the 1950s to the 1980s: ABC, CBS and NBC.

When the U.S. television industry was in its infancy in the 1940s, there were four major full-time television networks that operated across the country: ABC, CBS, NBC and the DuMont Television Network. Never able to find solid financial ground, DuMont ceased broadcasting in August 1956. Many companies later began to operate television networks which aspired to compete against the Big Three. However, between the 1950s and the 1980s, none of these start-ups endured and some never even launched. After decades of these failed "fourth networks", many television industry insiders believed that creating a viable fourth network was impossible. Television critics also grew jaded, with one critic placing this comparison in the struggles of creating a sustaining competitor to the Big Three, "Industry talk about a possible full-time, full-service, commercial network structured like the existing big three, ABC, CBS and NBC, pops up much more often than the fictitious town of Brigadoon."^[1]

The first lasting attempt at a fourth network as DuMont went into decline was the non-commercial Educational Television and Radio Center (ETRC). Founded in 1953, it slowly grew into the National Educational Television (NET) network, and was superseded by PBS in 1970. The October 1986 launch of the Fox Broadcasting Company was met with ridicule; despite the industry skepticism and initial network instability, the Fox network eventually proved profitable by the early 1990s, becoming the first successful fourth network and eventually surpassing the Big Three networks in the demographics and overall viewership ratings by the early 2000s.