KABC-TV
KABC-TV is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the West Coast flagship station of the ABC television network, owned and operated through its ABC Owned Television Stations division. KABC-TV maintains studios in the Grand Central Business Centre of Glendale, and its transmitter is located on Mount Wilson.
History
KECA-TV (1949–1954)
Channel 7 first signed on the air under the call sign KECA-TV on September 16, 1949. It was the last television station in Los Angeles operating on the VHF band to debut and the last of ABC's five original owned-and-operated stations to make its debut, after San Francisco's KGO-TV, which signed on four months earlier. It was also the last of the Los Angeles "classic seven" TV stations which were originally on the VHF dial, prior to the 2009 digital conversions. No other stations debuted in Los Angeles until 1958, when educational station KTHE operated briefly on channel 28, followed by the launch of the first two commercial UHF Los Angeles stations launched in 1962.The station's call sign was named after Los Angeles broadcasting pioneer Earle C. Anthony, whose initials were also present on channel 7's then-sister radio station, KECA. On February 1, 1954, KECA-TV changed its call sign to KABC-TV.
KABC-TV (1954–present)
Originally, KABC-TV was located at the ABC Television Center, now called The Prospect Studios, on Prospect Avenue in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, east of Hollywood. In 2000, KABC-TV moved to nearby Glendale into a new state-of-the-art facility designed by César Pelli, as part of the Disney Grand Central Creative Campus, in the Grand Central Business Centre on the site of the former Grand Central Airport. The station is currently located east of ABC's West Coast headquarters on the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank.KABC-TV has used the Circle 7 logo since 1962 and augmented its bottom left quadrant with the ABC network logo in 1997. The station's news anchors and reporters wear Circle 7 lapel pins when they appear on camera, a practice that had once been standard at each of the original five ABC-owned stations.
On February 4, 2006, KABC-TV became the first television station in the state of California to broadcast its local newscasts in high definition using HD cameras in the studio and debuted an updated set.
KABC-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 7, at noon on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 53, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 7. After the transition occurred, some viewers had difficulty receiving KABC's signal, despite operating at a high effective radiated power of 25 kW. On March 31, 2009, KABC-TV filed an application with the FCC to upgrade its signal strength to 28.7 kW. It was granted a construction permit on March 3, 2011.
In July 2010, The Walt Disney Company became engaged in a carriage dispute with Time Warner Cable. This dispute involved KABC-TV and three other ABC owned-and-operated stations, Disney Channel and the ESPN family of networks. If a deal had not been made, all of the Disney-owned channels would have been removed from Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks systems across the United States. The companies reached a long-term agreement to keep the stations and their sister cable channels on Time Warner Cable and its co-managed systems on September 2, 2010. On August 31, 2023, Disney removed all of its channels, including KABC-TV, two other ABC-owned stations, and the ESPN networks, from Spectrum cable systems due to a carriage dispute, its first with the provider since 2010 when its predecessor, Time Warner Cable, was involved in a dispute with Disney. On September 11, 2023, the stations and their sister cable channels were restored by Charter Communications after the company and Disney reached an agreement. KABC-TV was then pulled from DirecTV on September 1, 2024, as a result of a dispute between the satellite provider and Disney. The removal came just hours before a USC Trojans college football victory over LSU airing on ABC.
Digital channel 7.3 previously carried programming from The Local AccuWeather Channel; it was replaced with a standard-definition feed of the Live Well Network in 2010. On April 15, 2015, the comedy network Laff replaced the standard-definition feed of LWN on 7.3. ABC Stations rebranded Live Well Network on.2 as Localish on February 17, 2020, to add an outlet for the Localish lifestyle content.
Programming
News programming
KABC-TV currently broadcasts 48 hours, 55 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week. KABC-TV formerly operated a news bureau in California's state capital of Sacramento, sharing resources with sister stations KGO-TV in San Francisco and KFSN-TV in Fresno; the bureau was closed in 2014. The station also has bureaus located within its viewing area, in Riverside and Orange. In the 1980s, the station also had a bureau located in Ventura.Lew Irwin Reports, the station's first locally produced newscast, debuted in 1957. Initially, the 15-minute program was broadcast Monday through Saturday at 11 p.m. and featured Irwin delivering a news summary prepared by KABC Radio news writers, followed by a seven-minute feature written by Irwin that included footage shot for the program by the MGM-owned newsreel company Telenews. Irwin interviewed a host of public figures for the program, including former President Harry S. Truman, former Senator John F. Kennedy, philosopher Bertrand Russell, actor Marlon Brando, H-bomb scientist Edward Teller, and poets Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg. Irwin's features often included news-breaking investigations into such controversial topics as migrant workers, police brutality, proprietary hospitals, disc jockey payola, the Hollywood blacklist, and the John Birch Society. In a letter to the chief of ABC News, James Hagerty, in 1961, Sandburg wrote: "He is one of the great reporters in America today. I could make a case that he is one of the most useful citizens." In 1962, a new KABC-TV program director for the station mounted a second newscast on the station presented by Ed Fleming, who had previously worked for rival KNXT. A few months later, he decided to feature Fleming and Irwin on both the early-evening and late-night newscasts, with Fleming delivering the news and Irwin a long-form feature. After numerous clashes between the program director and Irwin, Irwin resigned in 1962 citing creative differences. He was eventually succeeded by KCOP newscaster Baxter Ward, who was backed by the station's first staff film crew.
KABC-TV first adopted the Eyewitness News format for its newscasts in February 1969, not long after it became popular on New York City sister station WABC-TV. Like the other ABC-owned stations, KABC-TV used the "Tar Sequence" cue from the soundtrack of the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke as its theme music, and continued to use it even after other channels adopted an updated version of the theme, the Frank Gari-composed "News Series 2000". Later, the station used the original Cool Hand Luke theme only during the main newscast. The station's newscasts used a synthesized version of the old theme during the mid-1980s. KABC-TV picked up the "News Series 2000" package first in 1989 for Eyewitness News promos, then in 1990 for additional use in bumpers and as the closing theme before being fully adopted as the Eyewitness News theme in 1992. The original Cool Hand Luke theme was retained for some Eyewitness News promos as late as 1993. In 1995, KABC began using Gari Media Group's "Eyewitness News" music package, which remains as the station's news theme.
Bill Bonds and Stu Nahan were KABC-TV's first anchor team under the Eyewitness News banner. Within two years, unable to upend the dominance of KNXT 's The Big News and Eleven O'Clock Report with Jerry Dunphy and KNBC's Newservice format, Bonds returned to his previous ABC assignment at WXYZ-TV in Detroit and Nahan became the station's lead sportscaster. A succession of anchors—Joseph Benti, Barney Morris, John Schubeck and Judd Hambrick—followed, but the newscast gained its greatest growth in August 1975 when KABC-TV hired Dunphy as its lead anchor, following his firing from KNXT. Though initially paired with newcomer John Hambrick, Dunphy later partnered with reporter Christine Lund, and that duo led KABC-TV to local news supremacy well into the 1980s. Others who have reported or anchored for KABC-TV include Lisa McRee, Harold Greene, Tawny Little, Laura Diaz, Paul Moyer, Chuck Henry, Johnny Mountain, George Fischbeck, Judd Rose, and Bill Weir. Former KABC-TV sports reporters and anchors include former NFL players Lynn Swann, Gene Washington, Jim Hill, and Bob Chandler; and former Major League Baseball player Rick Monday.
In the highly competitive Los Angeles media market, Eyewitness News has long engaged in several initiatives to connect with local viewers and is quite beloved in Southern California for its "neighborhood news" approach. One such early effort was to originate a local newscast from a typical Southern California suburban family home. In the spring of 1972, a contest was held, asking the public to write letters telling KABC why an edition of the newscast should be produced at their home. The winner was Joseph Jensen from Sepulveda, and on June 13, the 11 p.m. edition of Eyewitness News originated live from the Jensen family dining room, with anchormen John Schubeck and Joseph Benti seated at the Jensen dinner table, reading the latest headlines. The Jensen family surrounded the journalists, dressed in their "Sunday best". Camera equipment, lights, microphones and a remote broadcast truck, to connect the house to the ABC Television Center, were employed to help with the broadcast.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the station's newscasts often included spirited miniature debates and commentaries reflecting various political viewpoints. Several notable politicians and political pundits appeared on these segments, including Proposition 13 backer Howard Jarvis, former U.S. Representative and Senator John Tunney, Bruce Herschensohn, Bill Press and Baxter Ward. In addition, KABC-TV aired brief editorials from the station's general manager, most notably John Severino, who served throughout the 1980s. This practice was discontinued in 1990.
During the 1980s, KABC-TV was one of a few stations in the country to run a three-hour block of local newscasts on weekdays from 4 to 7 pm. The station was the first in the region to introduce an hour-long newscast at 4 pm, first anchored by Jerry Dunphy and Tawny Little in September 1980. Before this, the station ran two hours of news from 5 to 7 pm. The station reduced this block by one half-hour in 1990, when it moved World News Tonight from 7 p.m. to 6:30 pm. For a time in the late 1980s, its 6:30 p.m. newscast was titled Eyewitness Update and served as a final recap of the day's news, similar in nature to an 11 p.m. newscast. KABC-TV is one of three ABC stations on the West Coast to air World News at 6:30 p.m. ; most other ABC stations in the western United States run the program at either 5:30 or 6 pm. When the network soap opera Port Charles ended its run in 2003, KABC-TV expanded its midday newscast to a full hour. Occasionally, KABC-TV has aired the live East Coast edition of World News Tonight at 3:30 pm.
From January 13, 2014, to July 28, 2022, KABC-TV produced an hour-long evening newscast on then-independent Anaheim-based KDOC-TV ; the newscast originally aired at 8 p.m. before moving to 7 p.m. and aired seven nights a week; KDOC also added a midnight rebroadcast of KABC's 11 p.m. newscast. KABC was the fifth ABC owned-and-operated station to enter into a news share agreement. KABC aired its final news broadcast on KDOC on July 28, 2022, due to KDOC being sold to Tri-State Christian Television and switching to religious programming the next day.
On May 31, 2016, KABC added a 3 p.m. newscast on weekdays, competing with KTLA's newscast at that time slot. On September 10, 2018, KABC became the third television station in the market to expand its weekday morning newscast to three hours, with an additional half-hour at 4 a.m.
On September 30, 2015, the KABC-TV studios in Glendale were evacuated due to a bomb threat. The station's employees were evacuated and forced the station off-the-air; the suspect who was responsible for the threat was a 22-year-old Glendale man, who was arrested on October 14, 2015. As a result, the 4 p.m. newscast was temporarily moved outside the studio, while the police swept the studio with bomb-sniffing dogs inside. At 4:42 pm, the station's employees were allowed to re-enter the studio and the newscast continued from the studio after the threat.
In February 2017, the station's news helicopter, AIR7HD, received an upgrade and debuted with two new features: XTREME Vision and SkyMap7. XTREME Vision uses an advanced zoom lens and can track vehicle speeds in real time. SkyMap7 uses augmented reality technology which overlays the names of streets and highways onto the picture. Both features are powered by the SHOTOVER F1 Live.