The Paramount Television Network, Inc. was a venture by American film corporation Paramount Pictures to organize a television network in the late 1940s. The company-built television stations KTLA in Los Angeles and WBKB in Chicago; it also invested $400,000 in the DuMont Television Network, which operated stations WABD in New York City, WTTG in Washington, D.C., and WDTV in Pittsburgh. Escalating disputes between Paramount and DuMont concerning breaches of contract, company control, and network competition erupted regularly between 1940 and 1956, culminating in the DuMont Network's dismantling. Television historian Timothy White called the clash between the two companies "one of the most unfortunate and dramatic episodes in the early history of the television industry."

The Paramount Television Network aired several programs, including the Emmy Award-winning children's series Time for Beany. Filmed in Hollywood, the programs were distributed to an ad-hoc network of stations across the United States. The network signed affiliation agreements with more than 50 television stations in 1950; despite this, most of Paramount's series were not widely viewed outside the West Coast. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which filed suit against Paramount for antitrust violations, prevented the studio from acquiring additional television stations. Paramount executives eventually gave up on the idea of a television network, and continued to produce series for other networks. In 1995, after four decades of television production for other companies, Paramount re-entered the broadcast network field when the company and Chris-Craft Industries launched the United Paramount Network (UPN), a television network that operated until 2006. CBS Studios now owns Paramount's longtime television division, and it has since founded a second version of Paramount Television under Viacom ownership. Both of these (along with the former WDTV, now KDKA-TV) are now part of Paramount Skydance Corporation.

William Wadsworth Hodkinson founded American film corporation Paramount Pictures in 1914. Famous Players–Lasky Corporation acquired the company in 1916 and by the 1920s Paramount became a key player in Hollywood. The company founded or acquired many film production and exhibition properties; among these were the 2,000-screen theater chain United Paramount Theatres (UPT), newsreel service Paramount News, the Famous Players theater chain in Canada and animation studio Famous Studios. The company became one of the "big five" Hollywood studios. By the 1940s, however, Paramount was the target of several antitrust lawsuits by the federal government, culminating with U.S. vs. Paramount Pictures, et al. (1948), which found that Paramount and other studios conducted monopolistic practices. Due to this Supreme Court decision, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forced Paramount to sell off its theater division in 1949.

As early as 1937, executives at Paramount Pictures were interested in the new medium of television. The following year, Paramount purchased a minority interest in DuMont Laboratories, a pioneer in early television technology founded by Dr. Allen B. DuMont. Relations between Paramount and DuMont staff were strained by 1940, when Paramount, without DuMont, opened Chicago television station WBKB and Los Angeles station KTLA. Dr. DuMont claimed that the original 1937 acquisition proposal required Paramount to expand its television interests "through DuMont". Paramount representative Paul Raibourn denied that any such restriction was ever discussed (a 1953 examination of the original draft document vindicated DuMont on this point). The stock in DuMont, coupled with the Chicago and Los Angeles stations, gave Paramount full or partial ownership of four of the first nine television stations in the United States.

DuMont Laboratories launched the DuMont Television Network in 1946. Despite Paramount's partial ownership of DuMont, Paramount's two stations never aired television programs from DuMont's television network (with the exception of KTLA, which ran DuMont programs for one year from 1947 to 1948), and competed against DuMont's affiliates in Los Angeles and Chicago. According to authors Auter and Boyd, Paramount's construction of KTLA and WBKB and its subsequent launch of the Paramount Television Network "undercut" DuMont, a company it had invested in.

KTLA began commercial broadcasts on January 22, 1947; its first evening broadcast was hosted by Bob Hope and featured Kirk Douglas, William Bendix, Dorothy Lamour, William Demarest, Ray Milland and Cecil B. DeMille. KTLA was the first commercial television station to sign on west of the Mississippi River. Although other Los Angeles television stations operated experimentally and eventually received commercial licenses, KTLA had a head start as the first commercially-licensed station in Los Angeles. The revenue stream from commercials helped to fund more professional programming, therefore generating a large viewership; a 1949 audience estimate from the C. E. Hooper company indicated that KTLA was broadcasting 28 of the top 30 television series in Los Angeles.

Paramount's television division, Television Productions, Inc., created the Paramount Television Network in 1948. A full-page advertisement announcing the newly created network, with KTLA as the flagship station, ran in Billboard on May 22 of that year. Filming of programs took place at KTLA; a coaxial cable link between KTLA and KFMB-TV in San Diego transmitted a live signal to San Diego viewers. Other television stations across the United States received Paramount programs via kinescope recording for airing; these filmed series allowed stations to "fill in" their schedules during hours when ABC, NBC, CBS and DuMont were not broadcasting shows, or when station managers preferred Paramount's filmed offerings to those of the four networks. Station managers at WBKB-TV in Chicago also had plans to distribute their own kinescoped programs.

Paramount management planned to acquire additional owned-and-operated stations ("O&Os"); the company applied to the FCC for additional stations in San Francisco, Detroit and Boston. Officials at the FCC, however, denied Paramount's applications. A few years earlier, the federal regulator had placed a five-station cap on all television networks: no network was allowed to own more than five VHF television stations. Paramount was hampered by its minority stake in the DuMont Television Network. Although both DuMont and Paramount executives stated that the companies were separate, the FCC ruled that Paramount's partial ownership of DuMont meant that DuMont and Paramount were in theory branches of the same company. Since DuMont owned three television stations and Paramount owned two, the federal agency ruled neither network could acquire additional television stations. The FCC requested that Paramount relinquish its stake in DuMont, but Paramount refused. According to television historian William Boddy, "Paramount's checkered antitrust history" helped convince the FCC that Paramount controlled DuMont. Both television networks suffered as a result, with neither company being able to acquire five O&Os. Meanwhile, CBS, ABC and NBC had each acquired the maximum of five stations by the mid-1950s.