A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z.The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) (stylized in its logo as abc since 1962; corporate name American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.[3][4][5]) is an American commercial broadcast television network that is owned by the Disney–ABC Television Group, a subsidiary of Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered on Columbus Avenue and West 66th Street in Manhattan, with additional major offices and production facilities in New York City, Los Angeles, Burbank, California.
Throughout its history, ABC has supported its financial operations by diversifying into the press, the publishing industry, theater operations and filmmaking. Many of the company's assets in these fields have since been sold to other entities, and 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, ABC is often nicknamed as "the Alphabet Network," as its acronym also represent the first three letters of the English alphabet.
ABC originally launched on October 12, 1943 as a radio network, separated from and 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. By the 1970s, ABC sold its theater division to Henry Plitt, who renamed it Plitt Theatres. In the 1980s, after purchasing an 80% interest in cable sports channel ESPN, the network merged with Capital Cities...