American Broadcasting Company

The **American Broadcasting Company** (**ABC**) is an American commercial broadcast television network that is a flagship property of Walt Disney Television, a subsidiary of the Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, California on Riverside Drive, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Roy E. Disney Animation Building.

Since 2007, when ABC Radio (also known as Cumulus Media Networks) was sold to Citadel Broadcasting, ABC has reduced its broadcasting operations almost exclusively to television. The fifth-oldest major broadcasting network in the world and the youngest of the Big Three television networks, ABC is often nicknamed as "**The Alphabet Network**", as its initialism also represents the first three letters of the English alphabet, in order.

ABC launched as a radio network on October 12, 1943, serving as the successor to the NBC Blue Network, which had been purchased by Edward J. Noble. It extended its operations to television in 1948, following in the footsteps of established broadcast networks CBS and NBC. In the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres, a chain of movie theaters that formerly operated as a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Leonard Goldenson, who had been the head of UPT, made the new television network profitable by helping develop and greenlight many successful series. In the 1980s, after purchasing an 80% interest in cable sports channel ESPN, the network's corporate parent, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., merged with Capital Cities Communications, owner of several print publications, and television and radio stations. In 1996, most of Capital Cities/ABC's assets were purchased by The Walt Disney Company.

The television network has eight owned-and-operated and over 232 affiliated television stations throughout the United States and its territories. ABC News provides news and features content for select radio stations owned by Citadel Broadcasting, which purchased the ABC Radio properties in 2007 (however relaunched in 2014).

## Programming

*Main articles: List of programs broadcast by American Broadcasting Company, ABC News, and ESPN on ABC*
The ABC television network provides 89 hours of regularly scheduled network programming each week. The network provides 22 hours of prime time programming to affiliated stations from 8:00–11:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday (all times Eastern and Pacific Time) and 7:00–11:00 p.m. on Sundays.

Daytime programming is also provided from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. weekdays (with a one-hour break at 12:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific for stations to air newscasts, other locally produced programming such as talk shows, or syndicated programs) featuring the talk/lifestyle shows *The View* and *The Chew* and the soap opera *General Hospital*. ABC News programming includes *Good Morning America* from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. weekdays (along with one-hour weekend editions); nightly editions of *ABC World News Tonight* (whose weekend editions are occasionally subject to abbreviation or preemption due to sports telecasts overrunning into the program's timeslot), the Sunday political talk show *This Week*, early morning news programs *World News Now* and *America This Morning* and the late night newsmagazine *Nightline*. Late nights feature the weeknight talk show *Jimmy Kimmel Live!*.

The network's three-hour Saturday morning children's programming timeslot is programmed by syndication distributor Litton Entertainment, which produces *Litton's Weekend Adventure* under an arrangement in which the programming block is syndicated exclusively to ABC owned-and-operated and affiliated stations, rather than being leased out directly by the network to Litton.

Sports programming is also provided on some weekend afternoons at any time from 12:00 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time (9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Pacific) and, during college football season, during prime time on Saturday nights as part of the *Saturday Night Football* package. Due to the erratic and (outside of college football season) highly inconsistent scheduling of sports programming on weekend afternoons since ESPN took over responsibilities for ABC's sports division in 2006, ABC carries the *ESPN Sports Saturday* block on Saturday late afternoons (featuring various ESPN-produced documentaries), and on Sundays either encores of primetime reality series, cancelled series being burned off that had no room on the primetime schedule, occasional theatrical films which were acquired by the network in the early to mid-2000s that no longer have a primetime slot to air in or more recently, figure skating and gymnastics specials supplied by Disson Skating, when no sports telecasts are scheduled, usually airing between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time. During the summer, ABC airs ESPN-produced highlight compilation programs for The Open Championship golf and The Wimbledon tennis tournaments to provide some presence for both events on American broadcast television. ABC also carries various X Games weekend events not broadcast by ESPN. ABC airs NBA games on Sundays, normally starting in January as "NBA Sunday Showcase" during the regular season, and shows Christmas Day games, regularly between 2–7 PM ET, and NBA playoff games during the weekends, and exclusive rights to the NBA Finals.

### Daytime

*Main article: ABC Daytime*
ABC's daytime schedule currently features the talk show *The View* and the soap opera *General Hospital*, the latter of which is the longest-running entertainment program in the history of the ABC television network, having aired since 1963. ABC also broadcasts the morning news program *Good Morning America* and has done so since 1975, though that program is not considered to be part of the ABC Daytime block. In addition to the long-running *All My Children* (1970–2011) and *One Life to Live* (1968–2012), notable past soap operas seen on the daytime lineup include *Ryan's Hope*, *Dark Shadows*, *Loving*, *The City* and *Port Charles*. ABC also aired the last nine years of the Procter & Gamble-produced soap *The Edge of Night*, following its cancellation by CBS in 1975. ABC Daytime has also aired a number of game shows, including *The Dating Game*, *The Newlywed Game*, *Let's Make a Deal*, *Password*, *Split Second*, *The $10,000/$20,000 Pyramid*, *Family Feud*, *The Better Sex*, *Trivia Trap*, *All-Star Blitz* and *Hot Streak*.

### Specials

ABC currently holds the broadcast rights to the Academy Awards, Emmy Awards (which are rotated across all four major networks on a year-to-year basis), American Music Awards, Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade, Tournament of Roses Parade, Country Music Association Awards and the CMA Music Festival. Since 2000, ABC has also owned the television rights to most of the *Peanuts* television specials, having acquired the broadcast rights from CBS, which originated the specials in 1965 with the debut of *A Charlie Brown Christmas* (other *Peanuts* specials broadcast annually by ABC, including *A Charlie Brown Christmas*, include *It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown* and *A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving*).

Since 1974, ABC has generally aired *Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve* on New Year's Eve (hosted first by its creator Dick Clark, and later by his successor Ryan Seacrest); the only exception was in 1999, when ABC put it on a one-year hiatus to provide coverage of the international millennium festivities, though Clark's traditional countdown from Times Square was still featured within the coverage. ABC has also aired the Miss America pageant from 1954 to 1956, 1997 to 2005 (with the television rights being assumed by cable channel TLC in 2006, when the pageant moved from its longtime homebase in Atlantic City to Las Vegas, before returning to Atlantic City in 2013) and since 2011. Under its current contract with the Miss America Organization, ABC will continue to broadcast the pageant through 2016.

In 2015, ABC began airing the ESPY Awards show, which normally aired on ESPN before 2015. In the ABC debut of the ESPY's, Caitlyn Jenner was awarded the Arthur Ash Award for courage, after she announced in a 20/20 interview, that she was becoming transgender.

### Programming library

ABC owns nearly all its in-house television and theatrical productions made from the 1970s onward, with the exception of certain co-productions with producers (for example, *The Commish* is now owned by the estate of its producer, Stephen Cannell). Worldwide video rights are currently owned by various companies, for example, MGM Home Entertainment via 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment owns U.S. video rights to many of ABC's feature films.

When the FCC imposed its fin-syn rules in 1970, ABC proactively created two companies: Worldvision Enterprises as a syndication distributor, and ABC Circle Films as a production company. However, between the publication and implementation of these regulations, the separation of the network's catalog was made in 1973. The broadcast rights to pre-1973 productions were transferred to Worldvision, which became independent in the same year. The company has been sold several times since Paramount Television acquired it in 1999, and has most recently been absorbed into CBS Television Distribution, a unit of CBS Corporation. Nonetheless, Worldvision sold portions of its catalog, including the Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera libraries, to Turner Broadcasting System in 1991. With Disney's 1996 purchase of ABC, ABC Circle Films was absorbed into Touchstone Television, a Disney subsidiary which in turn was renamed ABC Studios in 2007.

Also part of the library are most films in the David O. Selznick library, the Cinerama Productions/Palomar theatrical library (with the exception of those films produced in Cinerama which are now under the control of Pacific Theatres and Flicker Alley), the Selmur Productions catalog that the network acquired some years back, and the in-house productions it continues to produce (such as *America's Funniest Home Videos*, *Grey's Anatomy*, *General Hospital*, and ABC News productions), although Disney–ABC Domestic Television (formerly known as Buena Vista Television) handles domestic television distribution, while Disney–ABC International Television (formerly known as Buena Vista International Television) handles international television distribution.

## Stations

*Main articles: List of ABC television affiliates (by U.S. state), List of ABC television affiliates (table), and ABC Owned Television Stations*
Since its inception, ABC has had many affiliated stations, which include WABC-TV and WPVI-TV, the first two stations to carry the network's programming. As of November 2017, ABC has eight owned-and-operated stations, and current and pending affiliation agreements with 236 additional television stations encompassing 49 states, the District of Columbia, four U.S. possessions, Bermuda and Saba; this makes ABC the largest U.S. broadcast television network by total number of affiliates. The network has an estimated national reach of 97.76% of all households in the United States (or 305,477,424 Americans with at least one television set).

Currently, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware are the only U.S. states where ABC does not have a locally licensed affiliate (New Jersey is served by New York City O&O WABC-TV and Philadelphia O&O WPVI-TV; Rhode Island is served by New Bedford, Massachusetts-licensed WLNE, though outside of the transmitter, all other operations for the station are based in Providence; and Delaware is served by WPVI and Salisbury, Maryland affiliate WMDT). ABC maintains affiliations with low-power stations (broadcasting either in analog or digital) in a few markets, such as Birmingham, Alabama (WBMA-LD), Lima, Ohio (WLQP-LP) and South Bend, Indiana (WBND-LD). In some markets, including the former two mentioned, these stations also maintain digital simulcasts on a subchannel of a co-owned/co-managed full-power television station.

The network has the unusual distinction of having separately owned and operated affiliates which serve the same market in Tampa, Florida (WFTS-TV and WWSB), Lincoln, Nebraska (KLKN-TV and KHGI-TV), and Grand Rapids, Michigan (WZZM and WOTV), with an analogous situation arising in Kansas City, Missouri (KMBC-TV and KQTV). KQTV is licensed to St. Joseph, Missouri, which is designated by Nielsen as a separate market from Kansas City despite being located within 55 miles (89 km) of one another (though in the 2010s through digital subchannels, KQTV's competitor in the market, News-Press & Gazette Company, has established locally based affiliates of the other four major networks and Telemundo on three low-power stations to end St. Joseph's dependence on Kansas City), while WWSB, KHGI and WOTV serve areas that do not receive an adequate signal from their market's primary ABC affiliate (in the case of WWSB, this dates back to when WTSP was Tampa's primary ABC affiliate prior to 1994, with the former being necessitated to serve the southern part of the Tampa market including the station's city of license, Sarasota, due to WTSP's transmitter being short-spaced to avoid interfering with the analog signal of Miami affiliate WPLG – which like WTSP, broadcast on VHF channel 10).

The Sinclair Broadcast Group is the largest operator of ABC stations by numerical total, owning or providing services to 28 ABC affiliates and two additional subchannel-only affiliates; Sinclair owns the largest ABC subchannel affiliate by market size, WABM-DT2/WDBB-DT2 in the Birmingham market, which serve as repeaters of WBMA-LD (which itself is also simulcast on a subchannel of former WBMA satellite WGWW, owned by Sinclair partner company Howard Stirk Holdings). The E. W. Scripps Company is the largest operator of ABC stations in terms of overall market reach, owning 15 ABC-affiliated stations (including affiliates in larger markets such as Cleveland, Phoenix, Detroit and Denver), and through its ownership of Phoenix affiliate KNXV, Las Vegas affiliate KTNV-TV and Tucson affiliate KGUN-TV, it is the only provider of ABC programming for the majority of Arizona (outside the Yuma-El Centro market) and Southern Nevada. Scripps also owns and operates several ABC stations in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, including in Denver, San Diego, Bakersfield, California, and Boise, Idaho, and when combined with the ABC-owned stations in Los Angeles, Fresno, and San Francisco, and the affiliations from the News-Press & Gazette Company in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, Yuma-El Centro, and Colorado Springs-Pueblo, and Sinclair's affiliations in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, these four entities control the access of ABC network programming in most of the Western United States, particularly in terms of audience reach.

## See also

* Walt Disney Television
* Children's programming on the American Broadcasting Company
* ABC Kids (United States)
* Litton's Weekend Adventure
* ABC Productions
* ABC Studios
* List of United States over-the-air television networks
* Lists of ABC television affiliates

## External links

* abc.go.com

Template:ABC Network Shows (current and upcoming)