American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network that serves as the flagship property of the Disney Entertainment division of the Walt Disney Company. The youngest of the "Big Three" American television networks, the network is sometimes referred to 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 in 1943, 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, as well as the lesser-known DuMont. 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 then-new television network profitable by helping to develop and green-light many successful television series. In the 1980s, after purchasing an 80 percent interest in cable sports channel ESPN, the network's corporate parent, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., merged with Capital Cities Communications, owner of several television and radio stations and print publications, to form Capital Cities/ABC Inc., which in turn merged into Disney in 1996.
ABC has eight owned-and-operated and more than 230 affiliated television stations throughout the United States and its territories. Some ABC-affiliated stations can also be seen in Canada via pay-television providers, and certain other affiliates can also be received over-the-air in areas near the Canada–United States border, although most of its prime time programming is subject to simultaneous substitution regulations for pay television providers imposed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to protect rights held by domestically based networks. ABC News provides news and feature content for select radio stations owned by Cumulus Media, as these stations were former ABC Radio properties.
ABC is headquartered on Riverside Drive in Burbank, California, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Team Disney – Roy E. Disney Animation Building.
The network maintains secondary offices at 7 Hudson Square in New York City's Lower Manhattan neighborhood, which houses its broadcast center and the headquarters of its news division, ABC News. Until early 2025, the network's East Coast operations were based at 77 West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Since 2007, when ABC Radio was sold to Citadel Broadcasting, ABC has reduced its broadcasting operations almost exclusively to television.
History
In 1927, NBC operated a radio network called the NBC Blue Network. It became an independent radio network known as the American Broadcasting Company in 1943. ABC later joined United Paramount Theatres forming American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres. After its venture into radio and television throughout the 1960s and 1970s and the purchase of ESPN in 1982, the company was acquired and merged with Capital Cities, forming Capital Cities/ABC in 1986. The company was sold to the Walt Disney Company in 1996.Programming
The ABC television network provides an average of 89 hours of network programming each week. It also offers 22 hours of prime-time programming to affiliated stations from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Sundays.Daytime programming is also provided from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific weekdays featuring the talk-lifestyle shows The View and GMA: The Third Hour, and the soap opera General Hospital. In addition, ABC News programming includes Good Morning America from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. weekdays and Saturdays, nightly editions of ABC World News Tonight, the Sunday political talk show This Week, early morning news programs World News Now and Good Morning America First Look and the late-night newsmagazine Nightline. Late nights featured the weeknight talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
The network's three-hour Weekend 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.
Daytime
ABC's daytime schedule features the talk show The View, news show GMA: The Third Hour, and the soap opera General Hospital. Originally premiering in 1963, General Hospital is ABC's longest-running entertainment program. In addition to the long-running All My Children and One Life to Live, 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 several 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.Sports
Sports programming is provided on occasion, primarily on weekend afternoons and Saturday evenings. In 2006, the ABC Sports division was shut down, with all sports telecasts on ABC since then being produced in association with sister cable network ESPN under the branding ESPN on ABC. General industry trends and changes in rights have prompted reductions in sports on broadcast television, with Disney preferring to schedule the majority of its sports rights on the networks of ESPN. Since 2020 ESPN has prioritized ABC with airings of its sports telecasts with occasional simulcasts and exclusive games of ESPN Monday Night Football broadcasts on ABC.Since 2006, ABC has at least aired ten weeks of primetime sports programming, and since 2020 has aired sports programming almost every week from September to May each year. ABC is the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Basketball Association, with its package traditionally beginning with its Christmas Day games, followed by a series of Saturday night and Sunday afternoon games through the remainder of the season, weekend playoff games, and all games of the NBA Finals. ABC is also the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Hockey League, with its package. In this deal, ABC broadcasts at least 10 regular season games, the NHL All-Star Game, the NHL Stadium Series, and four Stanley Cup Finals. During college football season, ABC typically carries an afternoon doubleheader on Saturdays, along with the primetime Saturday Night Football. ABC also airs coverage of selected bowl games, ABC is also the secondary broadcast partner of Major League Baseball with the network at least airing wild card series games since 2020 and select Sunday Night Baseball games by sister network ESPN. Beginning in the 2015 NFL season, ESPN agreed to begin simulcasting/exclusively airing NFL games on ABC. Thus, ABC is the only major broadcast network that carries games from all of the traditional "big four" sports leagues all at the same time.
During the late winter months, ABC airs both men's and women's college basketball games on weekend afternoons. In the spring and summer months, ABC also airs games from the Women's National Basketball Association, and is the broadcast home of the X Games and Little League World Series. In 2015, ESPN's annual ESPY Awards presentation moved to ABC from ESPN. Bolstered by Caitlyn Jenner accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage Award during the ceremony, the 2015 ESPY Awards' viewership was roughly tripled over the 2014 ceremony on ESPN. After the NFL signed a new contract with the Walt Disney Company, ABC will air Super Bowl LXI in 2027 and Super Bowl LXV in 2031. ABC has not aired a Super Bowl since Super Bowl XL in 2006.
Specials
ABC holds the broadcast rights to the Academy Awards, Primetime Emmy Awards, and the Country Music Association Awards. ABC has also aired the Miss America competition from 1954 to 1956, 1997 to 2004, and 2011 to 2018.From February 2001 to February 14, 2020, ABC held 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. ABC also broadcasts the annual Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade special on Christmas morning.
Since 1974, ABC has generally aired Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve – a New Year's Eve special featuring music performances and coverage of festivities in New York's Times Square. ABC is also among the broadcasters of the Tournament of Roses Parade.
Programming library
ABC owns nearly all of its in-house television and theatrical productions made since the 1970s, except certain co-productions. Worldwide video rights are owned by various companies, for example, Kino Lorber owns the North American home video rights to the ABC feature film library.When the FCC imposed its Financial Interest and Syndication 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 Media Ventures, a unit of Paramount Skydance, which owns the competitor CBS. 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, productions from their previous motion picture divisions ABC Pictures International, Selmur Productions, and Palomar Pictures International released by Cinerama Productions, their later theatrical division ABC Motion Pictures, and the in-house productions it continues to produce. Disney–ABC Domestic Television handles domestic television distribution, while Disney–ABC International Television handles international television distribution.