Hughes Television Network (HTN) was an American television network created by businessman Howard Hughes.
It never lived up to its dream of being the nation's fourth television network, following the demise of the DuMont Television Network. HTN limited itself to broadcasting sports events, including the Stanley Cup Finals, PBA Bowling and special programming, including the Muppets special The Frog Prince, and provided facilities links to a loose network of stations, who were usually independents or affiliates of ABC, CBS, or NBC.
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The Hughes Television network had its origins as Sports Network Incorporated in 1956. Dick Bailey[1] created Sports Network Incorporated to fill the voids in sports coverage by the Big Three networks. Originally working traffic at ABC, Bailey conceived a cost effective means of broadcasting away Major League Baseball games to their home cities. After executives at ABC rejected this idea, Bailey formed Sports Network, proved his idea a success and pioneered many innovations now commonplace in televised sports. Sports Network Incorporated produced programs for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Big Eight Conference, the PGA Tour, St. Louis University, among others.[2] From 1963-1968, Sports Network Incorporated did a syndicated broadcast of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. They also held broadcast rights to the Cleveland Browns from 1955 to 1961; the Browns were the last NFL team to hold out and not sign with the NFL on CBS, but SNI was forced to give up Browns rights when the entire league signed a collective television contract with CBS in 1962. After 12 years, the network was sold to Howard Hughes[3][4] and became the Hughes Television Network, with Dick Bailey as president.[5]
According to various reports, the National Football League was poised to give HTN prime time broadcast rights for Monday Night Football because negotiations with ABC were failing. However, ABC eventually struck a deal with the NFL.