KABC-TV

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Coordinates: 34°09′27″N 118°17′17″W / 34.157544°N 118.288121°W / 34.157544; -118.288121

KABC-TV
KABC-TV Logo.png
Los Angeles, California
City of license Los Angeles
Branding ABC 7 (general)
ABC 7 Eyewitness News HD (newscasts)
Slogan First in HD
The Team that Defines Breaking News
Channels Digital: 7 (VHF)
Virtual: 7 (PSIP)
Subchannels (see article)
Translators (see article)
Affiliations ABC
Owner Disney/ABC
(ABC Holding Company, Inc.)
First air date September 16, 1949
Call letters' meaning K
American
Broadcasting
Company
Sister station(s) KSPN, KDIS
Former callsigns KECA-TV (1949–1954)
Former channel number(s) Analog:
7 (VHF, 1949–2009)
Digital: 53 (UHF)
Transmitter power 28.7 kW
Height 978 m
Facility ID 282
Transmitter coordinates 34°13′37″N 118°3′58″W / 34.22694°N 118.06611°W / 34.22694; -118.06611
Website www.abc7.com

KABC-TV is the ABC West Coast flagship television station in Los Angeles, California. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 7 from a transmitter atop Mount Wilson. Owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, KABC maintains offices on Circle Seven Drive (off of Interstate 5) in Glendale. In the few areas of the western United States where an ABC station is not receivable over-the-air, KABC-TV is available on satellite television through DirecTV.

Contents

Digital television [edit]

Digital channels [edit]

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming
7.1 720p 16:9 KABC-DT Main KABC programming / ABC
7.2 LivWell Live Well Network / ABC7+
7.3 480i 4:3 LWN-SD

In addition to Live Well Network, the channel also features rebroadcasts of KABC's local newscasts, public affairs programming and syndicated shows; it also handles the responsibility of carrying programs normally seen on main channel 7.1, due to preemptions caused by long-form breaking news coverage (of note, are occurrences in 2007 when ABC7+ aired ESPN on ABC sports programming due to continuous live news coverage of local wildfires on KABC: the Subway 500 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series race on October 21 and the first round of the Skins Game golf tournament on November 24). On September 12, 2009 ABC7+ aired live coverage of a memorial service at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles for two members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department who died while fighting the Station Fire in the Angeles National Forest (KABC's Saturday morning ABC Kids children's programming aired as scheduled without preemption).

Digital channel 7.3 previously carried programming from The Local AccuWeather Channel, but as of 2010 it has been replaced with a standard-definition feed of the Live Well Network. ABC7+ is broadcast by Time Warner Cable on digital channel 228, through the SD feed from digital subchannel 7.3.[1]

Analog-to-digital conversion [edit]

As part of the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, KABC-TV shut down its analog transmitter on June 12, 2009 at 12:00 p.m.[2][3] The station moved its digital signal from its pre-transition UHF channel 53 to VHF channel 7 for its post-transition operations.[4] KABC broadcasts high definition programming on primary channel 7.1 in the 720p format, the native HD resolution used by ABC and most of its stations. After the digital transition occurred, some viewers had difficulty receiving the station's signal, despite operating at a high effective radiated power of 25,000 watts. On March 31, 2009, KABC-TV filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to upgrade its signal strength to 28,700 watts.[5] It was granted a construction permit on March 3, 2011.[6]

History [edit]

An early KECA-TV logo slide from 1949 to 1954.

Channel 7 first signed on the air under the callsign KECA-TV on September 16, 1949. At the same time, it was the last television station licensed to Los Angeles operating on the VHF band to sign on, and the last of ABC's five original owned-and-operated stations to make their debut (after San Francisco's KGO-TV, which signed on four months earlier).

The station's callsign was named after Los Angeles broadcasting pioneer Earle C. Anthony, whose initials were also present on channel 7's then-sister radio station, KECA (790 AM), which had served as the Los Angeles affiliate of the NBC Blue Network. Anthony's other Los Angeles radio station, KFI, was aligned with the Red Network. The Red Network survived the split of the two NBC radio networks ordered by the Federal Communications Commission in 1943. Edward J. Noble, who bought the Blue Network (beginning its transformation into ABC), purchased KECA radio a year later when the FCC forced Anthony to divest one of his Los Angeles radio stations. On February 1, 1954, KECA-TV changed its callsign to the present-day KABC-TV.[7]

From the time of its initial sign-on in 1949, channel 7 was located at the ABC Television Center (now called the Prospect Studios), located in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, east of Hollywood. In December 1999, KABC-TV moved from its longtime studios to a new state-of-the-art facility designed by César Pelli in nearby Glendale.[8] The station is currently a short distance from both the ABC West Coast headquarters and the headquarters of corporate parent The Walt Disney Company in Burbank.

KABC-TV has used the Circle 7 logo since 1962 (the same year ABC created and implemented its current logo), and augmented its bottom left quadrant with the ABC network logo in 1997. The station's news anchors and reporters wear Circle 7 lapel pins when they appear on camera, a practice that had once been standard at each of the original five ABC-owned stations.

On February 4, 2006, KABC-TV became the first television station in the state of California to broadcast its local newscasts in high definition. Along with the in-house upgrades, the station debuted an upgraded news set and an update to its theme music (Gari Media Group's Eyewitness News).

In July 2010, The Walt Disney Company became engaged in a carriage dispute with Time Warner Cable (the first such incident since a 2000 dispute that pulled ABC's owned-and-operated stations from the cable provider using the stations as leverage for carriage of Toon Disney and Soapnet, and basic cable carriage of the Disney Channel, which had been carried as a premium channel at the time).[9] This dispute involved KABC-TV and three other ABC owned-and-operated stations, Disney Channel and the ESPN family of networks. If a deal was not in place, all of the Disney-owned channels would have been removed from Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks systems across the United States. The Walt Disney Company and Time Warner Cable reached a long-term agreement to keep the stations and their sister cable channels on Time Warner Cable and its co-managed systems on September 2, 2010.

Local programming [edit]

News programming [edit]

KABC newscast title card.

KABC-TV presently broadcasts a total of 44½ hours of locally-produced newscasts each week (with 6½ hours on weekdays and six hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). Atypical of ABC stations and major network affiliates in general, KABC-TV produces an hour-long newscast at 4 p.m. on weekend afternoons. KABC-TV is one of two Los Angeles television stations with a full-time presence in California's state capital of Sacramento. Since 2003, the station has shared resources with sister stations KGO-TV in San Francisco and KFSN-TV in Fresno to staff a news bureau in Sacramento following Arnold Schwarzenegger's election to the office of Governor of California, during the 2003 California recall.

KABC-TV first adopted the Eyewitness News format in February 1969, not long after it became popular on New York City sister station WABC-TV. Like the other ABC-owned stations, Channel 7 used the "Tar Sequence" cue from the soundtrack of the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke as its theme music, and continued to do so even after the others adopted the Frank Gari-composed "News Series 2000", an updated version of the theme. Later on, the original Cool Hand Luke theme was used by the station only during the main newscast open. The station's newscasts used a synthesized version of the old theme (composed by Frank Becker) during the mid-1980s, before KABC-TV picked up the News Series 2000 package in 1990. In 1995, KABC began using Gari Media Group's Eyewitness News music package, which remains as the station's news theme to this day.

Notable on-air staff who have worked for the station's news department include Jerry Dunphy, Christine Lund, Bill Bonds, Lisa McRee, Harold Greene, Tawny Little, Laura Diaz, Paul Moyer, Chuck Henry, Dr. George Fischbeck, Regis Philbin, Judd Rose and Bill Weir. Former channel 7 sports reporters and anchors include former NFL players Lynn Swann, Gene Washington, Jim Hill and Bob Chandler, and former Major League Baseball player (and current Los Angeles Dodgers radio analyst and play-by-play announcer) Rick Monday.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the station's newscasts often included spirited miniature debates and commentaries reflecting various political viewpoints. Several notable politicians and political pundits appeared on these segments including Proposition 13 backer Howard Jarvis, former U.S. Representative and Senator John Tunney, Bruce Herschensohn, Bill Press and Baxter Ward. In addition, like many other stations at the time, KABC-TV aired brief editorials from the station's general manager, most notably John Severino, who served throughout the 1980s; this practice was discontinued in 1990.

During the 1980s, KABC-TV was one of a few stations in the country to run a three-hour block of local newscasts during weekday afternoons and early evenings from 4 to 7 p.m. The station was the first in the region, if not the state, to introduce an hour-long newscast at 4 p.m., first anchored by Jerry Dunphy and Tawny Little in September 1980.[10] Before this, the station ran two hours of news from 5–7 p.m. The station reduced this block by one half hour in 1990, when it moved ABC World News Tonight from 7 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. For a time in the late 1980s, its 6:30 p.m. newscast was branded "Eyewitness Update" and served as a final recap of the day's news, similar in nature to an 11 p.m. newscast. KABC-TV is one of two ABC stations on the West Coast to air World News at 6:30 p.m. (the only other ABC station to do this being KGTV/San Diego). Most other ABC stations in the western United States run the program at either 5:30 or 6 p.m. When the network soap opera Port Charles ended its run in 2003, channel 7 expanded its midday newscast to a full hour.

Ratings [edit]

The introduction of the Eyewitness News format, followed by the addition of syndicated staples such as The Oprah Winfrey Show (in 1986), Live! with Kelly (in 1991), Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune (both in 1992) has generally allowed KABC to maintain a substantial ratings advantage over its competition. Leveraging the strength of its sizeable lead-in at 3 p.m. by the now-defunct Oprah, KABC has long held first or second in the ratings for its 4 to 6:30 p.m. news block. However, ratings leads for the morning and late news have typically been spirited (and expensive) battles with local stations KTLA and KTTV in the morning, and KNBC (and recently KCBS-TV) at 11 p.m.

With its across-the-board ratings success in hand, the station has been known to run quick five-second promos throughout the day that feature the slogan, "ABC7 – #1 in news, #1 in Southern California." This is a throwback to its openers during the 1980s, when the station proudly proclaimed itself "Number One in Southern California."

News staff [edit]

Current on-air staff[11] [edit]
Anchors
  • Marc Brown - weeknights at 5 and 11 p.m.
  • John Gregory - weekend mornings
  • John Hartung - weekend evenings
  • Jovana Lara - weekend evenings
  • Ellen Leyva - weekdays at 4 p.m. and weeknights at 6 p.m.
  • David Ono - weekdays at 4 p.m. and weeknights at 6 p.m.
  • Phillip Palmer - weekday mornings (4:30-7 a.m.) and weekdays at 11 a.m.
  • Leslie Sykes - weekday mornings (4:30-7 a.m.) and weekdays at 11 a.m.
  • Christina Salvo - weekend mornings
  • Michelle Tuzee - weeknights at 5 and 11 p.m.
Weather team
  • Dallas Raines (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 4, 5, 6 and 11 p.m.
  • Garth Kemp - weather anchor; weekday mornings (4:30-7 a.m.) and weekdays at 11 a.m.
  • Danny Romero - weather anchor; weekend evenings, also feature reporter
  • Bri Winkler - meteorologist; weekend mornings, also general assignment reporter
Sports team
  • Rob Fukuzaki - sports director; weeknights at 5, 6 and 11 p.m.
  • Curt Sandoval - sports anchor; weekends at 5, 6 and 11 p.m., also weekday sports reporter
  • John Hartung - sports reporter and fill-in sports anchor
Traffic
  • Scott Reiff - weekday mornings (4:30-7 a.m.) in "Air 7 HD"
  • Alysha Del Valle - weekday mornings (4:30-7 a.m.)
  • Kalyna Astrinos - weekdays at 4
  • Kelly Sanchez - fill-in; weekdays at 4
Reporters
  • Adrienne Alpert - general assignment reporter; also host of Newsmakers
  • Lori Corbin - food, nutrition and exercise contributor ("Food Coach")
  • Denise Dador - health specialist
  • Eileen Frere - Orange County bureau chief
  • Sid Garcia - general assignment reporter
  • Carlos Granda - general assignment reporter
  • Rob Hayes - general assignment reporter
  • Miriam Hernandez - general assignment reporter
  • Robert Holguin - general assignment reporter
  • Leticia Juarez - Inland Empire reporter
  • Dave Kunz - automotive specialist
  • Melissa McBride - general assignment reporter
  • Rob McMillan - Inland Empire bureau chief
  • Leslie Miller - general assignment reporter
  • Nannette Miranda - Sacramento bureau chief
  • John North - political reporter
  • George Pennacchio - entertainment correspondent
  • Darsha Philips - general assignment reporter
  • Amy Powell - general assignment reporter
  • Subha Ravindhran - general assignment reporter
  • Ric Romero - consumer specialist
  • Rudabeh Shahbazi - general assignment reporter
  • Leo Stallworth - general assignment reporter
  • Leanne Suter - general assignment reporter
Air 7 HD
  • Scott Reiff - pilot/reporter; weekday mornings (4:30-7 a.m.); also breaking news reporter
  • Bill Thomas - pilot/reporter; weekdays at 4, weeknights at 5 and 6 p.m.; also breaking news reporter
  • J.T. Alpaugh - alternate breaking news reporter; fill-in pilot/reporter
Notable former on-air staff [edit]

Other locally-produced programming [edit]

KABC-TV produces several local shows including Vista L.A. (which profiles Latino life in Southern California), and Eye on L.A. (which has been on the air in some form since the early 1980s). On weekends, the station airs Eyewitness Newsmakers, hosted by reporter Adrienne Alpert. The station produces a sports/variety type show branded ABC 7 Sports Zone, which formerly originated from the ESPN Zone in Anaheim. This show airs occasionally following network telecasts of NCAA football and NBA games. Most ABC 7 Sports Zone shows now originate from local sports venues including the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and Staples Center in Los Angeles, and occasionally at the station's studios in Glendale. It is hosted by Rob Fukuzaki, and is joined during the basketball season by former Los Angeles Laker great Michael Cooper. This program is a spin-off of Monday Night Live, which aired on KABC-TV from 1989 until Monday Night Football left the network after the 2005 NFL season. That show was hosted by Todd Donoho until 1997, and later Bill Weir and Rob Fukuzaki and featured an extensive trivia contest.

The station also produces a weekly entertainment program OnTheRedCarpet, hosted by Rachel Smith. This program is also aired on other ABC-owned stations. Prior to ABC's annual telecasts of the Academy Awards, KABC-TV produces a live pre-awards show and post-awards show, On The Red Carpet at the Oscars, featuring red carpet interviews and fashion commentary. This show also airs on the network's other owned stations and is syndicated to several ABC affiliates and other broadcasters outside the country.

In the past, KABC-TV featured various locally produced shows such as AM Los Angeles; a morning talk show which at various times featured personalities Regis Philbin, Sarah Purcell, Ralph Story, Tawny Little, Cristina Ferrare, Cyndy Garvey, and Steve Edwards as hosts. Edwards also hosted a short lived afternoon show in the mid-1980s branded 330, which aired after the network airing of the soap opera The Edge of Night (Live! with Kelly and Michael, formerly co-hosted by Philbin until 2011 and produced at New York sister station WABC-TV, now occupies the former time slot of AM Los Angeles).

On April 30, 1954, KABC-TV aired a preview, Dig Me Later, Vampira, hosted by Maila Nurmi at 11 p.m. The Vampira Show premiered on the following night, May 1, 1954. For the first four weeks, the show aired at midnight, and it moved to 11 p.m. on May 29. Ten months later, the series aired at 10:30 p.m., beginning March 5, 1955. As Vampira, Nurmi introduced films while wandering through a hallway of mist and cobwebs. Her horror-related comedy antics included talking to her pet spider Rollo and encouraging viewers to write for epitaphs instead of autographs. When the series was cancelled in 1955, she retained rights to the character of Vampira.

In 1964, Pinky Lee attempted a return to kids TV by hosting a local children's comedy program on KABC-TV. The series was also seen in national syndication for the 1964 and 1965 TV seasons. But the program fell prey to creative interference from the show's producers and from station management. Lee tried to fight off the creative interference, but his efforts were for naught. The 1960s version of "The Pinky Lee Kids TV Show" went off the air after one season.

Rebroadcasters [edit]

KABC is rebroadcast on the following translator stations:

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ KABC-DT3
  2. ^ http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf
  3. ^ YouTube video of analog TV shutoffs in Los Angeles
  4. ^ FCC DTV status report for KABC
  5. ^ https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/cdbsmenu.hts?context=25&appn=101303825&formid=301&fac_num=282
  6. ^ http://licensing.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/Auth_Files/1378318.pdf
  7. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ZXgqBA5S4
  8. ^ YouTube – KABC New Year 2000 Footage
  9. ^ Entertainment ABC to return to Time Warner Cable CNN, May 3, 2000
  10. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpkLGI2f9ZQ
  11. ^ Meet The Team
  12. ^ "Steve Edwards' bio". KTTV. Retrieved 13 March 2013. 
  13. ^ "Kevin O'Connell Basic Information". Retrieved 5 July 2012. 

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