Type Subsidiary Services Advertising Headquarters New York City Number of locations 8 | Industry TV broadcasting Divisions Live Well Network Founded 1948 | |
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Predecessor CC/ABC Broadcasting Group Key people Rebecca Campbell, President Parent organization Disney–ABC Television Group | ||
ABC Owned Television Stations is a division of Disney–ABC Television Group that oversees the owned-and-operated stations of the American Broadcasting Company, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The division consists of eight stations plus ABC National Television Sales and the Live Well Network.
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ABC Network
The ABC Network's first TV station signed on August 10, 1948 as WJZ-TV, 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. KGO-TV in San Francisco and KECA in Los Angeles, signed on during the next 13 months after WJZ.
Capital Cities/ABC
Capital Cities' announced $3.5 billion purchase of ABC on March 18, 1985, stunned the media industry, as ABC was some four times bigger than Capital Cities was at the time.
Disney/ABC division
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. In June, ABC top marketing officer announced the O&O stations would adopt a "one-channel" marketing strategy where the stations would for promotional purposes drop call letter for ABC and channel number as the marketer had this adopted at NBC before.
ABC News Now was launched in 2004 in the US on digital subchannel of 70 ABC owned & operated and affiliates. The Live Well Network (LWN) was launched on 000000002009-04-27-0000April 27, 2009 in high definition by ABC's owned-and-operated stations on the stations' subchannels.
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. The sale was completed on April 1, 2011. On October 17, 2013, the New York Post reported that Disney considered sell the station group given the current wave of consolidation between station holding companies that has increased station values since 2010. On October 25, the Triangle Business Journal reported that multiple Disney spokespeople denied that information.
On 000000002014-06-09-0000June 9, 2014, LWN vice president Peggy Allen and ABC Owned Television Stations 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". Many of the shows from ABC's stations are expected to end production with a possibility to be picked up by fyi cable network, a DATG partial owned A&E Networks cable channel. On 000000002015-01-15-0000January 15, 2015, ABCOTS announced a pickup of Katz Broadcasting's new subchannel Laff, including the DT3 subchannels of the ABC O&O stations, as of April 15, 2015; within that announcement, ABCOTS stated that Live Well Network would continue on their eight stations on their DT2 subchannels in HD, but no longer be distributed outside of ABC O&O stations. ABCOTS also indicated that its stations' 3rd subchannel would affiliated with Laff network upon launch 000000002015-04-15-0000April 15, 2015, but until then LWN would run on both subchannels.
Units
List of stations
Only 8 stations are affiliated with the ABC TV network and the Live Well Network.