 | |
| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Industry | TV broadcasting |
| Founded | 1948 |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Number of locations | 8 |
Key people | Chad Matthews (president) |
| Parent | Disney Entertainment |
| Divisions | Localish |
| Website | abcotvpress |
ABC Owned Television Stations is a division of Disney Entertainment operated by Disney Networks Group that oversees the owned-and-operated stations of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), a division of The Walt Disney Company. The division also operates the Localish network.
The ABC Network's first TV station signed on August 10, 1948, as WJZ-TV [1] (not to be confused with current CBS-owned WJZ-TV Baltimore), the first of three television stations signed on by ABC during that same year, with WENR-TV in Chicago and WXYZ-TV in Detroit being the other two. [2] KGO-TV in San Francisco and KECA in Los Angeles, signed on during the next 13 months after WJZ.[ citation needed ]
In February 1953, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres (UPT), the former theater division of Paramount Pictures. UPT subsidiary Balaban and Katz owned WBKB (which shared a CBS affiliation with WGN-TV). The newly merged American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, as the company was known then, could not keep both stations because of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations then enforced that forbade the common ownership of two television stations licensed to the same market. As a result, WBKB's channel 4 license was sold to CBS, which subsequently changed that station's call letters to WBBM-TV; that outlet would move to VHF channel 2 several months later on July 5, 1953. The old WBKB's on-air and behind-the-scenes staff stayed at the new WBBM-TV, while the WBKB call letters and management moved to channel 7 (from 1965 to 1968, a "-TV" suffix was included in the station's calls, modifying it to WBKB-TV). [3]
On March 19, 1985, Capital Cities announced that it would purchase ABC for $3.5 billion, which shocked the media industry, as ABC was some four times bigger than Capital Cities was at the time. [4] [5]
The newly merged company, Capital Cities/ABC Inc., was forced to sell off some stations due to FCC ownership rules. Between them, ABC and Capital Cities owned more television stations than FCC rules allowed at the time. [6] Of the former Capital Cities television stations, the merged company opted to keep KTRK-TV in Houston, WTVD-TV in Durham, and KFSN-TV in Fresno. FCC rules could have also forced a sale of Capital Cities' WPVI-TV in Philadelphia as well due to a large signal overlap with WABC-TV, but the merged company successfully received a permanent waiver from the FCC after citing CBS' ownership of television stations in New York City (WCBS-TV) and Philadelphia (at the time WCAU-TV) under grandfathered status. Capital Cities' WFTS-TV in Tampa and ABC's WXYZ-TV in Detroit were divested as a pair to the E. W. Scripps Company's broadcasting division (then known as Scripps-Howard Broadcasting). Capital Cities' WTNH-TV in New Haven and WKBW-TV in Buffalo were sold separately to minority-owned companies [7] (Scripps would eventually buy WKBW in 2014). [8]
In 1994, New World Communications signed an affiliation deal with Fox Broadcasting Company, resulting in most of New World's stations switching affiliation to Fox. This set off the 1994–1996 United States broadcast TV realignment, a chain of affiliation changes across the country and other multi-station affiliation deals for the next couple of years. To avoid being consigned to the lower-signal-quality UHF after losing its affiliations to New World's WJBK in Detroit and WJW-TV in Cleveland, CBS heavily wooed both E. W. Scripps Company's WXYZ-TV and WEWS-TV. Scripps then told ABC that unless it agreed to affiliate with the other Scripps-owned stations, it would switch both Detroit and Cleveland stations to CBS. [9] A fourth Scripps station was included in a separate deal, that of the Cincinnati station in 1995. [10] [11] As a contingency, ABC bought WJRT-TV in Flint, Michigan and WTVG in Toledo, Ohio from SJL Broadcasting in 1995. [12] ABC also had a partner deal with Allbritton Communications to convert most of these affiliates to ABC, also in 1996. [13] [14] In response of the deal stemming from NBC's trade of KCNC and KUTV, in 1994, ABC also had a group deal with McGraw Hill to convert the Denver and Bakersfield stations from CBS to ABC, while renewing affiliation agreements in San Diego and Indianapolis. [15]
The ABC Owned TV Stations (ABCOTS) were paired with ABC Radio Network and eight TV stations in CC/ABC Broadcasting Group in Capital Cities/ABC (CC/ABC) when CC/ABC was purchased by The Walt Disney Company in 1996. [16] [17] In June, ABC's top marketing officer announced that the owned-and-operated (O&O) stations would adopt a "one-channel" marketing strategy; the stations would, for promotional purposes, de-emphasize referring to themselves by their call letters, and instead refer to themselves using "ABC" and the station's channel number ("ABC Seven," for example), as the marketer had adopted this practice at NBC before. [18]
In June 1998, ABC parent The Walt Disney Company entered into negotiations to purchase the eight Allbritton stations and its local marketing agreements involving fellow ABC affiliates WJSU-TV (now WGWW) in Anniston, Alabama and WJXX in Jacksonville, Florida, for a reported offer totaling more than $1 billion; the latter two stations had been involved in an affiliation deal between Allbritton and ABC that was reached in response to the May 1994 affiliation deal between New World Communications and Fox that affected WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama. [19] [20] Negotiations between Disney and Allbritton broke down when the former dropped out of discussions to buy the stations the following month. [21]
ABC News Now was launched in 2004 in the US on digital subchannels of 70 ABC O&O stations and affiliates. [22] On January 31, 2005, ABC News removed ABC News Now from owned and operated and affiliated TV stations' subchannel as the channel ended its experimental phase originally. [23] The group changed its programming on secondary channels to ABC Plus, a local news and public affairs format. ABC teamed up with AccuWeather to launch a multicast service starting on ABC stations' third subchannel beginning with WPVI-TV in September 2005 followed by KFSN-TV with the next wave of four by December 31, 2005, then the final four by March 31, 2006. [24] The Live Well Network (LWN) was launched on April 27, 2009, in high definition by ABC's O&O stations on the stations'.2 subchannels. [25] [26]
On November 3, 2010, Broadcasting & Cable magazine announced that SJL Broadcasting, now owned by the principal owners of Lilly Broadcasting, made an agreement with Disney to buy back WJRT-TV and WTVG, the two smallest stations in ABC's O&O portfolio. [12] The sale was completed on April 1, 2011. [27] On October 17, 2013, the New York Post reported that Disney considered selling the station group given the current wave of consolidation between station holding companies that has increased station values since 2010. [28] On October 25, the Triangle Business Journal reported that multiple Disney spokespeople denied that information [29]
On June 9, 2014, ABC Owned Television Stations vice president Peggy Allen and president Rebecca Campbell jointly announced to Live Well Network's staff that they planned to shut down the network in January 2015. Campbell and Allen stated that despite the success of the network, the division wanted to prioritize "local content" and its "core local news brands". [30] [31] Many of the shows from ABC's stations ended production with a possibility to be picked up by fyi cable network, a DATG partially owned A&E Networks cable channel. [32] [33] On January 15, 2015, ABCOTS announced a pickup of Laff, a new subchannel owned by E. W. Scripps Company subsidiary Katz Broadcasting. Laff was added to the DT3 subchannels of the ABC O&O stations effective on April 15, 2015; within that announcement, ABCOTS stated that Live Well Network would continue on their eight stations on their .2 subchannels in HD, but no longer be distributed outside of ABC O&O stations. [34] ABCOTS also indicated that its stations' 3rd subchannel would affiliate with Laff network upon launch on April 15, 2015, but until then LWN would run on both subchannels. [35]
Campbell, president of ABC Daytime and ABC Owned Television Stations, was named President of Disney EMEA in September 2017. [36] Wendy McMahon, the stations' senior VP of digital, was named station group president effective January 1, 2018. [37]
ABC Owned Television Stations launched its Localish digital media venture the week of September 20, 2018, with four shows. Localish focuses on mobile millennials with national appeal local short stories produced by the stations and released on digital and social platforms. The first series, More in Common, had already appeared via Facebook Watch. [38] A More in Common compilation special was broadcast on all ABC station's primary channels on November 4, 2018, with WPVI-TV (Philadelphia) also on November 3 then on their LiveWell Network subchannel (.2) from November 4 through 11, 2018. [39] On January 21, 2020, ABC Stations announced that the network would be rebranded as the Localish on February 17, 2020. [40]
At the beginning of 2021, Laff was removed from the ABC Owned Television Stations (excluding WLS-TV, which had removed Laff in 2017) and moved to Ion Media stations which were acquired by Scripps around the same time. [41] Later in April, Allen Media Group announced that the ABC Owned Television Stations had picked up This TV as a replacement for Laff. [42] Then three years later, ABC Owned Television Stations announced that Charge!, a network owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, would replace This TV effective April 1, 2024. [43]
Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state and city of license.
| City of license / Market | Station | Year of affiliation | Owned since | Digital subchannels [44] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fresno, CA | KFSN-TV | 30 (30) | 1985 | 1986 [lower-alpha 1] | |
| Los Angeles, CA | KABC-TV** | 7 (7) | 1949 |
| |
| San Francisco–Oakland–San Jose, CA | KGO-TV** | 7 (12) |
| ||
| Chicago, IL | WLS-TV** | 7 (22) | 1948 |
| |
| New York City, NY | WABC-TV** | 7 (7) |
| ||
| Durham–Raleigh–Fayetteville, NC | WTVD | 11 (9) | 1985 [upper-roman 1] | 1986 [lower-alpha 1] |
|
| Philadelphia, PA | WPVI-TV | 6 (6) | 1948 [lower-alpha 2] |
| |
| Houston, TX | KTRK-TV | 13 (13) | 1954 |
| |
| City of license / Market | Station | Channel | Years owned | Current status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detroit, MI | WXYZ-TV** | 7 | 1948–1986 | ABC affiliate owned by the E. W. Scripps Company |
| Flint, MI | WJRT-TV [45] | 12 | 1995–2011 | ABC affiliate owned by Allen Media Broadcasting |
| Toledo, OH | WTVG [45] | 13 | 1995–2011 | ABC affiliate owned by Gray Television |
ABC's owned and operated stations' syndicated offerings (as of April 2023) include The Tamron Hall Show , Live with Kelly and Mark , The New Wheel of Fortune , Jeopardy! , and Small Town Big Deal . Live is produced in-house at WABC-TV. Wheel and Jeopardy! have been syndicated to ABC-owned stations since 1992, as part of a longstanding relationship with what is now CBS Media Ventures dating to when the syndicator was still known as King World Productions. [46] During the graveyard slot, ABC's owned and operated stations air rebroadcasts of Tamron Hall, ABC World News Tonight , and Live with Kelly and Mark. Every ABC owned station, except for WPVI and KABC, airs Daytime Jeopardy!, a repeat broadcast given to most of its affiliates during the daytime. For the California stations, World News Now airs in place of ABC World News Tonight due to the rebroadcasts in the afternoon.
WGWG is a television station in Charleston, South Carolina, United States, affiliated with the multicast network MeTV. The station is owned by Howard Stirk Holdings. WGWG's transmitter is located near Awendaw, South Carolina.
KATC is a television station in Lafayette, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station has studios on Eraste Landry Road in Lafayette, and its transmitter is located near Branch, Louisiana.
WBMA-LD is a low-power television station in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate WABM and Homewood-licensed CW affiliate WTTO ; Sinclair also operates Bessemer-licensed WDBB, which serves as a full satellite station of WTTO, under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Sinclair partner company Cunningham Broadcasting. However, Sinclair effectively owns WDBB as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith.
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The Allbritton Communications Company was an American media company. Based in Arlington, Virginia, Allbritton was the leading subsidiary of Perpetual Corporation, a private holding company owned by the family of company founder and former Riggs Bank president Joe L. Allbritton. Joe’s son, Robert L. Allbritton, was the Chairman and CEO of Allbritton Communications from 2001 to 2014. He is currently the owner of Capitol News Company, the parent company of political newspaper and website Politico.
WBKB-TV is a television station in Alpena, Michigan, United States, affiliated with CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and MyNetworkTV. Owned by Morgan Murphy Media, the station maintains studios on North Bagley Street in Alpena, and its transmitter is located in unincorporated Alcona County south of Hubbard Lake.
KJTL is a television station licensed to Wichita Falls, Texas, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the western Texoma area. It is owned by locally based Mission Broadcasting as its flagship station; Mission maintains joint sales and shared services agreements (JSA/SSA) with Nexstar Media Group, owner of NBC affiliate KFDX-TV and low-power MyNetworkTV affiliate KJBO-LD, for the provision of certain services. The three stations share studios near Seymour Highway and Turtle Creek Road in Wichita Falls; KJTL's transmitter is located near East 1940 and North 2380 Roads in rural southwestern Tillman County, Oklahoma.
WNPX-TV is a television station licensed to Franklin, Tennessee, United States, broadcasting the Ion Television network to the Nashville area. It is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company alongside CBS affiliate WTVF. WNPX-TV's transmitter is located near Cross Plains, Tennessee.
In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compression techniques to reduce the size of each individual program stream, and multiplexing to combine them into a single signal. The practice is sometimes called "multicasting".
KZSD-LD is a low-power television station in San Diego, California, United States. It is a translator of ABC affiliate KGTV which is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company. KZSD-LD's transmitter is located on San Miguel Mountain southeast of Spring Valley; its parent station maintains studios on Air Way in the Riverview-Webster section of San Diego.
Localish is a digital multicast television network owned by ABC Owned Television Stations, a division of Disney.
Bounce TV is an American digital broadcast television network owned by Scripps Networks, a subsidiary of E. W. Scripps Company. It launched on September 26, 2011, and was promoted as "the first 24/7 digital multicast broadcast network created to target African Americans". Bounce features a mix of original and acquired programming geared toward African Americans between 25 and 54 years of age.
Grit is an American free-to-air television network owned by the Scripps Networks subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network features classic westerns, both TV series and films.
Catchy Comedy, formerly known as Decades, is an American digital broadcast television network owned by Weigel Broadcasting. The network, which is mainly carried on the digital subchannels of television stations, primarily airs classic television sitcoms from the 1950s through the early 1990s. Established in 2015, the network was previously called Decades.
Laff is an American digital multicast television network headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and is owned by the Scripps Networks subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network specializes in comedy programming, featuring mainly sitcoms from the 1990s through the 2020s.
Scripps Networks, LLC, formerly known as Katz Broadcasting, is an American specialized digital multicasting network media company and a division of the E. W. Scripps Company. The company owns eight broadcast television networks, nine FAST streaming networks and a streaming service that each carry programming with specified formats targeted at individual demographics.
