ABC News

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page. It needs additional references or sources for verification. Tagged since December 2009. Its lead section requires expansion. Tagged since December 2009.

This article is about the American news organization. For the Australian news organization by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, see ABC News (Australia). For other uses see ABC News (disambiguation).

Division of:	American Broadcasting Company (ABC)
Key people:	Anne Sweeney President & Co-Chair Disney-ABC Television Group David Westin, President of ABC News Diane Sawyer, Chief Anchor
Founded:	June 15, 1945
Headquarters:	New York City, New York, United States
Studios:	Times Square Studios, New York City, New York, United States The Prospect Studios, Los Angeles, California, 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 with George Stephanopoulos World News Now World News Saturday World News Sunday World News with Diane Sawyer
Parent:	The Walt Disney Company
Website:	ABCnews.com
Web Portal:	go.com
This box: view • talk

ABC News is a news organizing and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.

Contents 1 History 2 International broadcasts 3 Other forms of broadcasting 4 Slogans 5 Former key personnel 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] History

This section reads like a news release and needs to be rewritten.

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 former head of ABC Sports, 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.

Arledge turned ABC News into a broadcasting titan,^{[citation needed]} regularly defeating his rivals NBC and CBS. ABC itself remained dominant for over two decades, while in the news department, Peter Jennings was the principal anchor of a news department that had become a lot more significant, though always in third place in the ratings. ABC News remains a strong competitor today, running close to and sometimes surpassing the audience levels of NBC News both in the crucial morning time slot and in the evening newscast race.^{[citation needed]}

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.

[edit] International broadcasts

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. 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. In Australia, this can be confusing, because there, "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 channel.

[edit] Other forms of broadcasting

Disney sold^[when?] the ABC News Radio division to Citadel Radio; it continues to distributes, through Citadel Media, newscasts on the hour, live feeds and specialty news programming to approximately 2,000 local affiliates.

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 after the end credits of One Life to Live and before start to 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.

[edit] Slogans

• More Americans get their news from ABC News then from any other sources.
  

It means that more Americans get their news from the combined sources of ABC News — television, radio and internet — then from any other news provider.

• From the global resources of ABC News this is:
  • Nightline (since 2005)
  • World News with Diane Sawyer (since 2009)

[edit] Former key personnel