ABC News headquarters on West 66th Street in New York City, New York (November 2008) |
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| Division of: | American Broadcasting Company (ABC) |
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| Key people: | Anne Sweeney President & Co-Chair Disney-ABC Television Group Ben Sherwood, President of ABC News Diane Sawyer and David Muir, Chief Anchor's |
| Founded: | June 15, 1945 |
| Headquarters: | New York City, New York, United States |
| Studios: | ABC News Headquarters, New York City, New York Times Square Studios, New York City, New York, United States Newseum, Washington, D.C., United States ABC-owned stations across the United States |
| Area served: | Worldwide |
| Broadcast programs: | 20/20 ABC News Brief America This Morning Good Morning America Good Morning America Weekend Edition Nightline Primetime This Week World News Now World News with David Muir World News with Diane Sawyer |
| Parent: | The Walt Disney Company |
| Website: | ABCnews.com |
| Web Portal: | go.com |
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Its flagship program is World News with Diane Sawyer; other programs include morning show Good Morning America, Nightline, television news magazine shows Primetime & 20/20, and Sunday morning political affairs program This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
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ABC began news broadcasts early in its independent existence as a radio network after the Federal Communications Commission ordered the former NBC Blue Network to be spun off as an independent company in 1943. This was done to keep single or a few companies such as NBC and CBS from dominating radio broadcasting in the U.S., and in particular, from dominating news and political broadcasting and projecting narrow points-of-view. Television broadcasting was suspended however, during World War II.
Regular ABC television news broadcasts began soon after ABC started transmitting from its initial New York City television station and production center in late summer 1948. ABC-TV news broadcasts have continued as the ABC television network spread across the country, a process that took many years, from that beginning in 1948 through today, but they have not always had the same level of success that they enjoy now. Throughout the 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s, ABC News consistently ranked third in viewership behind CBS News and NBC News. Until the 1970s, the ABC-TV network had fewer affiliate stations, and also weaker prime-time programming lineups to support the network's news departments than the two larger networks had, each of which had established their radio news operations during the 1930s.
Only after Roone Arledge, the head of ABC Sports at that time, became the president of ABC News in 1977, at a time when this network's prime-time entertainment programs were achieving good ratings and drawing in advertising revenues and profits to the ABC corporation overall, was ABC able to invest the resources to make it a major source of news telecasting. Arledge, known for experimenting with the broadcast "model", created many of ABC News's most popular and enduring programs, including 20/20, World News Tonight (now ABC World News), This Week, Nightline, and Primetime Live.
ABC News gained respect in the early 1980s by covering the Iran hostage crisis and, later, for covering the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area with live telecasts.
The ABC News slogan, "More Americans get their news from ABC News than from any other source", is a claim that refers to the number of people who watch, listen, and read ABC News programming on television, the radio, and the Internet, and not necessarily to the telecasts alone.[1]
ESPN, a sports-news organization with several cable and satellite television channels — and also owned by Disney — provides sports bulletins and video for some of ABC News's programs, especially the overnight programs.
In February 2010, ABC News announced it would lay off hundreds of staff members or up to 25% of its total work force and close all news bureaus outside of its headquarters in Washington and New York, including bureaus in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.[2]
In the wake of the job cuts, a significant controversy erupted online in May 2010 after it was announced the former VP of news coverage, Mimi Gurbst, was leaving the network to become a guidance counselor.[3] A story in the New York Observer reported that Gurbst was a "cherished" mentor inside the news division.[4] Reporters who closely follow TV news observed that a large number of current and former ABC News staffers went online to vigorously respond that Gurbst had helped perpetuate a negative culture with ABC News.[5][6]
ABC News programming is shown daily on the 24-hour news network Orbit News in Europe and the Middle East. This includes several shows from ABC News. 'Orbit News is network of three 24-hour satellite and cable channels offering exclusively American news programming from ABC, NBC, PBS, and MSNBC to U.S. expats and other viewers abroad, primarily geared towards an audience in the Arab countries. The network is available on digital satellite and cable in Europe, Middle East and North Africa, however, cable operators in Europe are currently unable to carry the channels due to unsolved rights issues.
It is also available online at ABC News Now.
In the United Kingdom, ABC World News appears regularly at 1:30 a.m. local time on the BBC News Channel, which itself may be simulcast on BBC One or BBC Two during the overnight period. No commercials are presented because the BBC's services in the U.K. are financed through license fees. ABC and the BBC also share video segments and reporters as needed in producing their newscasts.
In Australia, ABC World News is broadcast at 10:30 a.m. daily and Nightline is telecast at 1:30 a.m. daily on Sky News Australia. This can be confusing in Australia, where "ABC News" means the news broadcasts of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Also, Primetime is broadcast at 2:00 p.m. on Saturdays (extended edition) and at 1:30 p.m. on Thursdays. 20/20 is broadcast at 2:00 p.m. on Sundays (extended edition) and on Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m.
In New Zealand, ABC World News is broadcast daily at 5:10 p.m. and at again at 11:35 p.m. Just as with the BBC in the U.K., these are shown commercial-free on Television New Zealand's TVNZ 7 channel.
ABC News Radio, a service syndicated by Cumulus Media Networks, broadcasts newscasts on the hour, live feeds and specialty news, sports and entertainment programming to approximately 2,000 radio affiliates nationwide. As part of Disney's sale of the ABC Radio division to Citadel Broadcasting in 2007, ABC News entered into an exclusive agreement with Citadel to distribute its radio news service on terrestrial stations (Citadel has since merged with Cumulus Media).
ABC NewsOne is ABC News's affiliate news service. It gathers and feeds regional, national and international news material to ABC affiliates around the country and foreign networks.
ABC News Now is the ABC's 24-hour news channel available online and other sources such as mobile phones.
A thirty-second ABC News Brief is broadcast weekdays at 2:58 p.m. ET, between the credits of One Life to Live and the start of General Hospital (though these newsbriefs are not aired on all ABC stations). ABC News Briefs formerly appeared during many programs and had sponsorships (similar to NBC News Update).
A news brief containing information relevant to college students is shown every hour on mtvU, and ABC News segments are packaged or customized for broadcast over Wal-Mart's in-store television network.
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