ABC News

ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company, 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.

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.

Under Roone Arledge
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, 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.

Association with ESPN
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.

Job layoffs
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.

Univision-ABC News Network
Univision Communications and ABC News have agreed on a joint venture to launch a network for English speaking Latinos in 2013.

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. '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.

Other forms of broadcasting
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 following The Revolution, before the start of General Hospital (though these newsbriefs are not aired on all ABC stations).

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.

Slogans

 * (More Americans choose ABC News to) See the Whole Picture.


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


 * From the global resources of ABC News this is:
 * Nightline (since 2005)
 * World News with Diane Sawyer (2009-2010)


 * "From ABC News, Live in Times Square," this is:
 * Good Morning America (Since 2009 on weekdays. They used New York on Weekends rather than just Times Square. Starting on March, They started using the date on weekdays)
 * NOTE: Weekend broadcasts say New York because they do not air from the Times Square Studios. They air from the ABC News Headquarters.**


 * "From ABC News"
 * "ABC World News with Diane Sawyer" (March 2010-May 2010, August 2010-September 2012)


 * "From ABC News (World) Headquarters" this is:''
 * ABC World News with Diane Sawyer (May 2010-August 2010, October 2012-Present)

Controversial stories
ABC News is publishing stories with citations of the Daily Mail newspaper, which is known of publishing articles without fact checking. These have generated controversy for being hoaxes or for distorting or exaggerating events. One such case is the story of a dentist who pulled her boyfriend's teeth, and was largely suspected to be a hoax. Another example is of the faked photos of Tropical storm Isaac, which Mail Online published without checking in a misinformed article under an attention-grabbing headline. In 2011 Mail Online published an article on the guilty verdict of Amanda Knox's trial. She was in fact found not guilty but the Mail Online had published the wrong article in anticipation - complete with made up quotes from prosecutors and further claims of Amanda Knox put on suicide watch - none of which were true or happened.

Former notable personnel
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