The American Broadcasting Company, owned by the
Walt Disney Company since 1996, was spawned from
NBC in 1943, where it originated as the "NBC Blue" radio network as the result of an antitrust ruling. It changed its name to ABC the following year, and launched its television network in 1948.
In
the '50s, ABC was the traditional third-runner in the American
ratings, usually finishing a distant last to the other, "older" networks. Starting in
the '60s, however, ABC began to make up for this by targeting younger audiences with shows like
American Bandstand,
The Mod Squad,
Batman and
Room 222, as well as traditional
Dom Com fare like
Bewitched and
The Brady Bunch. Then, in
the '70s, it hired Fred Silverman away from
CBS. With Silverman's invention of the
Jiggle Show (with
Charlie's Angels and
Three's Company), loading the schedule with
sitcoms (
Happy Days and others), and the broadcast of several significant
Mini Series (
Roots, Rich Man Poor Man) and sports events (
Monday Night Football,
Wide World of Sports, the
Olympic Games), ABC saw both its ratings position and its revenue skyrocket. By the end of the decade, it had become a dependable frontrunner and completely lost its "also-ran" cachet. Among the things that helped this was the signing of several of NBC's affiliates in mid-sized markets, as their existing affiliates in those markets were, like their network, not strong performers (and several were on the less-desirable UHF band).
ABC's run at the top stretched into
the '80s, but began to slip midway through the decade. The once-moribund
NBC was experiencing its resurgence under Brandon Tartikoff, and hit shows like
Three's Company and
Laverne and Shirley were coming to an end. While ABC was still producing hit shows like
Dynasty,
Moonlighting,
The Wonder Years,
Growing Pains and
MacGyver, it was also producing bombs like
Dolly and the
Lucille Ball sitcom Life With Lucy. The network wound up being bought out by a media company only a tenth its size, Capital Cities Communications, in 1985. After this, the network became more financially conservative (as its new owner had been known for prior to the purchase), tightening its purse strings and slowing investment in new series.
In
the '90s and
early 2000s, the network's only success story was its spectacular subversion of the
Friday Night Death Slot, the
TGIF comedy block on Fridays, which featured such shows as
Full House,
Family Matters and
Boy Meets World. Hits on other nights, such as
The Practice and
Alias, were few and far between, and attempts to launch a hit
reality show (like
CBS'
Survivor and
Fox's
American Idol) proved to be embarrassments. It briefly enjoyed massive success with the hit
game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, until they started marketing the show to death by airing it
four nights a week, turning it from a megahit into
a punchline almost overnight. Also during the '90s, Capital Cities was bought by The
Walt Disney Company, the network's current owner, who during the first few years of their ownership played this up significantly, but this has since cooled down.
Midway through the decade, however, ABC finally regained its footing. It finally found its
reality TV hit in 2003 with
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and followed that up the following year with three scripted series that quickly turned into megahits:
LOST,
Desperate Housewives, and
Grey's Anatomy. Other shows, like
Ugly Betty and
Dancing with the Stars, also helped to boost ABC's cachet in the new decade. While still behind
CBS and
Fox, it sits comfortably in third place ahead of a seemingly dead-in-the-water
NBC. The network also carries a second network on their
owned and operated stations as a digital subchannel called "Live Well (HD) Network", a lifestyle network which airs programming pertaining to health, home improvement and food. A deal was recently signed to expand it to some stations owned by Belo, such as WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth and
KMOV in St. Louis, which won't all carry it in HD, causing "HD" to be dropped from the name, and the website to be redesigned to not look like the ABC O&Os' sites.
Not to be confused with the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation or with the Japanese network Asahi Broadcasting Corporation (
TV Asahi's Osaka affiliate), which both have the same abbreviations.
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