KABC-TV

KABC-TV, channel 7, is an ABC owned-and-operated television station located in Los Angeles, California, United States. The station is owned by ABC Owned Television Stations, a unit of the Disney-ABC Television Group division of the Disney Media Networks subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. KABC maintains studios and offices on Circle Seven Drive (off Interstate 5) in Glendale, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.

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.

History

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 its 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, now KABC), 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 NBC 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.