ABC Network

ABC Network may refer to any of the following:

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) (stylized in its logo as abc since 1957) is an American commercial broadcast television network that is owned by the Disney–ABC Television Group, a subsidiary of Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is part of the Big Three television networks. The network is headquartered on Columbus Avenue and West 66th Street in Manhattan, with additional major offices and production facilities in New York City, Los Angeles and Burbank, California.

Since 2007, when ABC Radio (also known as Cumulus Media Networks) was sold to Citadel Broadcasting, ABC has reduced its broadcasting operations almost exclusively to television. The fifth-oldest major broadcasting network in the world, ABC is often nicknamed as "the Alphabet Network", as its initialism also represent the first three letters of the English alphabet.

ABC originally launched on October 12, 1943 as a radio network, separated from and serving as the successor to the NBC Blue Network, which had been purchased by Edward J. Noble. It extended its operations to television in 1948, following in the footsteps of established broadcast networks CBS and NBC. In the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres, a chain of movie theaters that formerly operated as a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Leonard Goldenson, who had been the head of UPT, made the new television network profitable by helping develop and greenlight many successful series. In the 1980s, after purchasing an 80% interest in cable sports channel ESPN, the network's parent merged with Capital Cities Communications, owner of several print publications, and television and radio stations. In 1996, most of Capital Cities/ABC's assets were purchased by The Walt Disney Company.