224-489: Superstation is a term in North American broadcasting that has several meanings. Superstation or SuperStation may also refer to: Superstation Superstation (alternatively rendered as " super station " or informally as " SuperStation ") is a term in North American broadcasting that has several meanings. Commonly, a "superstation" is a form of distant signal , a broadcast television signal —usually
448-688: A Super Bowl since Super Bowl XL in 2006. ABC currently holds the broadcast rights to the Academy Awards , Primetime Emmy Awards , and the Country Music Association Awards . ABC has also aired the Miss America competition from 1954 to 1956, 1997 to 2004, and 2011 to 2018. From February 2001 to February 14, 2020, ABC held the television rights to most of the Peanuts television specials, having acquired
672-537: A Telemundo owned-and-operated station) in Dallas–Fort Worth. In December 1975, Ted Turner announced plans to redistribute Atlanta's WTCG via satellite to cable and C-band satellite services throughout the United States, beyond the 460,000 households in middle and southern Georgia and surrounding Deep South states that had been receiving its signal via microwave since the early 1970s. (Jack Matranga, then
896-644: A commercially licensed station—that is retransmitted via communications satellite or microwave relay to multichannel television providers (including cable , direct broadcast satellite and IPTV services) over a broad area beyond its primary terrestrial signal range . Outside of their originating media market , superstations are often treated akin to a conventional basic cable channel. Although six American television stations—none of which has widespread national distribution beyond home satellite or regional cable coverage—still are designated under this classification, these stations were primarily popularized between
1120-592: A , a design known as the ABC Circle A. In 1962, graphic designer Paul Rand redesigned the ABC logo into its current and best-known form, with the lowercase letters "abc" enclosed in a single black circle. The new logo debuted on-air on October 19 of the same year, but it was not until the following spring that it was fully adopted. The letters are strongly reminiscent of the Bauhaus typeface designed by Herbert Bayer in
1344-465: A 200-mile (320 km) radius. This interpretation of the rules became increasingly difficult to enforce as the number of cable-originated services increased, particularly following the emergence of communications satellites as a distribution method to the cable industry beginning in 1975. FCC soon began outlining a regulatory framework that allowed cable systems to import some out-of-market signals without running into copyright liability. In August 1975,
1568-615: A 25-game limit on the number of seasonal NBA telecasts that could be licensed to superstations (sixteen fewer than the 41-game maximum under existing NBA local broadcast rules). Concerned with the potential impact that the concurring returns of the Chicago Bulls and the Atlanta Hawks to WGN and WTBS, respectively, would have on its national contracts with NBC and ESPN, in April 1990, NBA Commissioner David Stern further reduced
1792-700: A CBS owned-and-operated station) in Fort Worth – Dallas and KHTV (channel 39, now CW owned-and-operated station KIAH ) in Houston —to be distributed to cable systems in their respective regions, as did the Christian Broadcasting Network 's Continental Broadcasting Network unit for two of its religious-secular hybrid independents, WYAH-TV (channel 27, now independent station WGNT ) in Virginia Beach and KXTX-TV (channel 39, now
2016-565: A Good Skate, Charlie Brown , Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! , The Mayflower Voyagers , A Charlie Brown Valentine , Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales and I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown ). ABC also broadcasts the annual Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade special on Christmas morning. Since 1974, ABC has generally aired Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve – a New Year's Eve special featuring music performances and coverage of festivities in New York's Times Square . ABC
2240-481: A Satcom-1 transponder. (Holiday Inns Inc. would withdraw from the Southern Satellite Systems partnership by April 1979, leaving the latter to handle uplink and promotional responsibilities for KTVU.) Despite a programming inventory comparable to other independents (including holding rights to San Francisco Giants baseball games), SCS was unsuccessful in marketing KTVU to cable systems to reach
2464-710: 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 then-new television network profitable by helping to develop and green-light many successful television series. In the 1980s, after purchasing an 80 percent interest in cable sports channel ESPN , the network's corporate parent, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., merged with Capital Cities Communications, owner of several television and radio stations and print publications, to form Capital Cities/ABC Inc. , which in turn merged into Disney in 1996. ABC has eight owned-and-operated and more than 230 affiliated television stations throughout
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#17327981762012688-500: A combined 105,000 square feet (9,800 m ) across two blocks with a total area of 159,000 square feet (14,800 m ). This main set of buildings includes: ABC also owns 7, 17 and 47 West 66th Street, three buildings on a 375-by-100-foot (114 m × 30 m) plot. The block of West 66th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, which houses the ABC News building, was renamed Peter Jennings Way in 2006 in honor of
2912-413: A combined 435 games for an annual fee of $ 20 million or a per-game cost of $ 46,000). A succession of three MLB Commissioners—which, among the position's responsibilities, handles negotiations for all national broadcasting contracts but is prohibited under the federal compulsory license law from controlling carriage of superstation telecasts—attempted to curb the telecasts or convince superstations to pay
3136-423: A compulsory widescreen format, either in high definition or standard definition. With this change, some programs also began positioning their main on-screen credits outside the 4:3 aspect ratio. The ABC logo has evolved many times since the network's creation in 1943. The network's first logo, introduced in 1946, consisted of a television screen containing the letters "T" and "V", with a vertical ABC microphone in
3360-1071: A consideration refusal on the case by the U.S. Supreme Court on December 19. Further expansion of "proto-superstation" signals came through federal court rulings on separate lawsuits filed in July 1961 by United Artists and WSTV Inc. (then-owner of WSTV [channel 9, now WTOV-TV ] in Steubenville, Ohio ) over Fortnightly Corp.'s importation of television stations from the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wheeling, West Virginia –Steubenville, Ohio markets to its Fairmont and Clarksburg, West Virginia systems and in December 1964 by CBS (over TelePrompTer 's importation of stations from New York City, Albuquerque, New Mexico , Billings, Montana and Denver, Colorado to its systems in Elmira, New York , Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Farmington, New Mexico ). In
3584-521: A copyright if the carrier had "no direct or indirect control over the content or selection of the primary transmission or over the particular recipients of the secondary transmission," and if the carrier's transmission activities only pertained to providing "wires, cables or other communications channels for the use of others." On March 12, 1982, District Judge Neal P. McCurn ruled that EMI and other satellite carriers were liable for royalty payments to program suppliers. The United States Court of Appeals for
3808-556: A digital subchannel or because a primary feed ABC affiliate has not yet upgraded their transmission equipment to allow content to be presented in HD. Although ABC has not fully transitioned to 1080p or ultra HD , some stations such as ABC affiliate station KNXV-TV in Phoenix, Arizona, transmit the network's programming at 1080p via an ATSC 3.0 multiplex stations, such as KASW with KNXV-TV. ABC began its conversion to high definition with
4032-406: A distant signal from among television stations in the top-25 media markets to only select a station from one of the two closest markets to the licensed system. The FCC Cable Television Bureau contended the formation of superstations was unlikely due to the absence of evidence that television stations economically benefited from cable carriage. On October 1, 1976, the U.S. Congress unanimously passed
4256-654: A facility on Empire Avenue near the Hollywood Burbank Airport . In nearby Glendale , Disney/ABC also maintains the Grand Central Creative Campus , which houses other company subsidiaries, including the studios of KABC-TV and the Los Angeles bureau of ABC News. ABC owns several facilities in New York, grouped mainly on West 66th Street, with the main set of facilities on the corner of Columbus Avenue. These facilities occupy
4480-554: A few cases, currently is) used by many other television and radio stations, but none of these operations is a superstation as defined by the FCC and solely use the term for marketing purposes. Similarly, the "superstation" term has also been occasionally stretched within the broadcasting industry to encompass major network affiliates imported by satellite common carriers to C-band and direct broadcast satellite providers—through packages such as Primetime 24 and its associated "Denver 5" tier, and
4704-399: A few markets, such as Birmingham, Alabama ( WBMA-LD ), Lima, Ohio ( WPNM-LD ) and South Bend, Indiana ( WBND-LD ). In some markets, including the former two mentioned, these stations also maintain digital simulcasts on a subchannel of a co-owned/co-managed full-power television station. The network has the unusual distinction of having separately owned-and-operated affiliates which serve
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#17327981762014928-526: A higher fee for the national telecasts to varying success. After Bowie Kuhn was appointed Commissioner in 1981, team owners lobbied the league to place a tax on superstation telecasts; the proposed tax passed in a 24–2 vote (with the Braves and the Cubs dissenting). Other legal attempts by Kuhn and league management to reduce the superstation telecasts ultimately failed because of federal copyright laws that protected
5152-432: A lack of corroborating evidence of any negative effects on game attendance and league revenue, suggesting that sports leagues have used superstation telecasts of their games as a scapegoat for financial problems incurred by the league caused by other factors such as the performance of certain teams and management issues. The only federal restrictions applying to sports events shown on superstations and other imported signals
5376-613: A lawsuit in United States Court of Appeals for the Eastern District of New York to stop the rules from going into effect. The National Association of Broadcasters and Field Communications subsequently filed stay motions to the FCC (which denied the requests) until the Malrite suit was adjudicated, amid concerns over harm that the repeal could incur to station revenue and local viewership of syndicated programs if
5600-596: A lawsuit involving RCA American and SSS's Satellite Communication Systems joint venture over the use of Satcom Transponder 18. While TBS partnered with a satellite carrier to relay the WTBS Atlanta signal to a national audience, United Video used the legally structured loophole in the Copyright Act's compulsory license statute to uplink the signal of WGN without the prior consent of owner WGN Continental Broadcasting Company (later known as Tribune Broadcasting ),
5824-407: A local network affiliate: NBC owned-and-operated station KCNC-TV (channel 4, now a CBS owned-and-operated station), ABC affiliate KUSA-TV (channel 9, now an NBC affiliate), CBS affiliate KMGH-TV (channel 7, now an ABC affiliate), PBS station KRMA-TV (channel 6) and Fox affiliate KDVR (channel 31). (KWGN's satellite feed was limited in its availability to home dish users; although, at its peak,
6048-569: A major commodity among cable systems because of WGN's telecasts of Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox baseball, DePaul Blue Demons college basketball, and Chicago Bulls basketball games and its locally popular in-house children's programs like The Bozo Show (the Chicago iteration of the Bozo the Clown television franchise). As the first superstation that offered long-form newscasts (compared to
6272-670: A major provider of CATV service and microwave relays throughout the U.S.), which began retransmitting the signal of WGN-TV (channel 9) in Chicago to subscribers of the Dubuque TV-FM Cable Company in Dubuque, Iowa ; WGN's signal soon began to be imported via microwave to other CATV systems throughout the Midwest . Because of changes to cable television regulations in the 1960s and 1970s, carriage of out-of-market independent stations increased significantly, allowing for
6496-841: A mere 55-mile (89 km) distance between the two cities and the Kansas City-based stations (including KMBC) providing better city-grade to Grade B coverage to the area compared to the signals of the primary ABC affiliates in the other aforementioned dual-affiliate markets. (KQTV was St. Joseph's lone major network affiliate until 2011, when locally based News-Press & Gazette Company began establishing low-power affiliates of ABC's four English-language competitors and Telemundo on three low-power stations to end St. Joseph's dependence on Kansas City.) WWSB, KHGI and WOTV, meanwhile, serve areas that do not receive an adequate signal from their market's primary ABC affiliate. (Of note, ABC initially affiliated with WWSB to cover southern portions of
6720-561: A microwave relay unit operated by Inland Microwave Co. to import three Spokane, Washington television stations, ABC affiliate KREM-TV (channel 2, now a CBS affiliate), CBS affiliate KXLY-TV (channel 4, now an ABC affiliate) and NBC affiliate KHQ-TV (channel 6), to its subscribers. Building on this, other cable and CATV systems in smaller municipalities and rural areas sought a foothold by "importing" broadcast television signals from larger nearby or distant cities for their customers, extending their reach beyond their normal coverage area (in
6944-554: A model that would be used for other superstations that emerged in the coming years. United Video did not compensate WGN directly for the retransmission of its signal, though the station and its parent company received royalty payments from cable systems that received the United Video-fed signal for any copyrighted programming (local newscasts, public affairs shows, locally originated children's programs and sports) that WGN owned and/or produced. The station quickly turned into
Superstation (disambiguation) - Misplaced Pages Continue
7168-915: A move seen by some as targeting the Cubs' WGN telecasts, Vincent ordered a realignment of the National League (NL) that sought to move the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals to the National League West and the Atlanta Braves and the Cincinnati Reds to the National League East starting with the 1993 season. Tribune staunchly opposed the proposed realignment, filing a breach of contract lawsuit accusing Vincent of overstepping his authority in ordering
7392-557: A move that would pave the way for the emergence of additional superstations. The policy also commenced review on FCC applications filed by four individual satellite carriers to authorize relay of other independent stations through the Satcom satellite fleet: Reactions to the FCC's 1978 "open entry" policy ruling among program distributors ranged from "anger to passive acceptance," with concerns that satellite-distributed superstations would not adequately compensate program syndicators based on
7616-700: A national game package to a television network and not those involving individual teams.) After four separate rulings in favor of Tribune and the Bulls issued by Northern District Judge Hubert L. Will (on January 26, 1991, and January 6, 1995), the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (on April 14, 1992), and the U.S. Supreme Court (on November 5, 1992), a Seventh Circuit judiciary panel overturned their 1992 ruling on September 10, 1996, which forced WGN-TV – which had been allowed to air at least 30 Bulls telecasts over its local and national feeds between
7840-579: A number of game shows, including The Dating Game , The Newlywed Game , Let's Make a Deal , Password , Split Second , The $ 10,000/$ 20,000 Pyramid , Family Feud , The Better Sex , Trivia Trap , All-Star Blitz and Hot Streak . Sports programming is provided on occasion, primarily on weekend afternoons and Saturday evenings. In 2006, the ABC Sports division was shut down, with all sports telecasts on ABC since then being produced in association with sister cable network ESPN under
8064-505: A previously blackout-subjected imported signal that was added after the rules were repealed, alongside existing royalties paid to the CRT "Basic Fund". The increase met with backlash from cable industry executives and lobbyists, led by National Cable Television Association (NCTA) President Tom Wheeler , who were concerned that it would result in the removal of superstations and other distant signals as well as harm independent stations supported by
8288-466: A production company. However, between the publication and implementation of these regulations, the separation of the network's catalog was made in 1973. The broadcast rights to pre-1973 productions were transferred to Worldvision, which became independent in the same year. The company has been sold several times since Paramount Television acquired it in 1999, and has most recently been absorbed into CBS Media Ventures (formerly CBS Television Distribution),
8512-575: A radio network called the NBC Blue Network . It became an independent radio (and eventually television) network known as the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1943. ABC later joined United Paramount Theatres forming American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres (later American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.). After its venture into radio and television throughout the 1960s and 1970s and the purchase of ESPN in 1982,
8736-478: A result of ratings or revenue losses from the imported signal, an action that was considered a greenlight to the creation of additional national superstations. While most superstations took on a passive stance on their distribution—programming to their local audience while benefiting tacitly from their extended distribution—a small number attempted to fight efforts to be redistributed; in March 1979, Metromedia —which
8960-422: A script font. Ten years later, in 1993, the "ABC Circle" logo reverted to its classic white-on-black color scheme, but with gloss effects on both the circle and the letters, and a bronze border surrounding the circle. The ABC logo first appeared as an on-screen bug in the 1993–94 season , appearing initially only for 60 seconds at the beginning of an act or segment, then appearing throughout programs beginning in
9184-577: A seasonal channel dedicated to Freeform's 25 Days of Christmas original content. On August 23, 2024, it was announced on the network's website that the ABC app would be shut down a month later, on September 23. It was later reported that it would be shut down along with all of Disney's other TV Everywhere apps, including those of ABC's sister networks, except for ESPN's. However, the websites belonging to said networks will still operate after September 23, and users will still be able to log in with their TV providers to watch full episodes. ABC's master feed
Superstation (disambiguation) - Misplaced Pages Continue
9408-500: A sequence of still photos of the stars of its programs during the timeslot card as well as the schedule sequence that began each night's prime time lineup). A new four-note theme tune (composed by Mad Bus Music) was introduced alongside the package, based around the network's then-new "We Love TV" image campaign from the 1998–99 season, creating an audio signature in comparative parlance to the NBC chimes , CBS's various sound marks (including
9632-422: A signal's reach to make this an unviable option, these systems selected major-market independent stations (often located anywhere between 60 and 200 miles [97 and 322 km] away from the relay towers) that aired popular feature films and local sports events. In 1962, Oneonta, New York -based Eastern Microwave Inc. (EMI) – a company that was developed after a technician employed with the parent CATV system observed
9856-664: A similar film library as other superstations (further boosted by the acquisition of the Universal Pictures film library when MCA Inc. acquired the station in a $ 387-million deal with the legally embattled RKO General in April 1987) and held rights to events from several New York-area professional sports teams (including the New York Mets , the New York Rangers , the New Jersey Devils and
10080-680: A six-story building occupying a 196-by-379-foot (60 m × 116 m) plot at 121–135 West End Avenue . On July 9, 2018, the Walt Disney Company announced that it was selling its two West 66th Street campuses (except for the National Guard Amory) to Silverstein Properties and purchasing one square block of property in lower Manhattan to build a new New York-based broadcast center. ABC maintains several video-on-demand (VOD) services for delayed viewing of
10304-476: A slate of original digital series for the WatchABC service, internally codenamed ABC3. In July 2016, ABC re-launched its streaming platforms, dropping the WatchABC brand, adding a streaming library of 38 classic ABC series, and introducing 7 original short-form series under the blanket branding ABCd. The most recent episodes of the network's shows are usually made available on the ABC app, Hulu and ABC on Demand
10528-646: A sports event—particularly one shown during prime time—was preempted.) One of the first known legal efforts to challenge superstation telecasts of sports events came in April 1981, when Eastern Microwave Inc. filed a declaratory judgement inquiry in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York , contending that its cable retransmissions of WOR's New York Mets telecasts did not constitute copyright infringement. Mets owner Doubleday Sports Inc. contended it had
10752-427: A team to terminate the contract if broadcasts were re-transmitted "by any means" to more than 200,000 homes outside the team's territory, launched a petition to the FCC to redefine how its non-duplication rules constitute a "network program" to force cable systems to blackout superstation-licensed live sports broadcasts, and asked Congress for the repeal the compulsory copyright license and the inclusion of an amendment to
10976-404: A television station exclusively holds the local broadcast rights to a particular program, even if the out-of-market station has the same owner as the program's claimant station. The main difference between the original Syndex law and the version enacted in 1988 was that the blackout provisions applied to almost all programming, including special event programs distributed through syndication (such as
11200-473: A unit of Paramount Global , which owns the competitor CBS . Nonetheless, Worldvision sold portions of its catalog, including the Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera libraries, to Turner Broadcasting System (now a part of Warner Bros. parent company Warner Bros. Discovery ) in 1991. With Disney's 1996 purchase of ABC, ABC Circle Films was absorbed into Touchstone Television, a Disney subsidiary which in turn
11424-651: Is also among the broadcasters of the Tournament of Roses Parade (although as mentioned, the Rose Bowl Game now airs exclusively on ESPN as a College Football Playoff " New Year's Six " bowl). ABC owns nearly all of its in-house television and theatrical productions made since the 1970s, with the exception of certain co-productions (for example, The Commish is now owned by the estate of its producer, Stephen Cannell ). Worldwide video rights are currently owned by various companies, for example, Kino Lorber owns
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#173279817620111648-730: Is also provided from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific weekdays (subtract 1 hour for all other time zones) (with a one-hour break at 12:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific for stations to air newscasts, locally produced programming or syndicated programs) featuring the talk-lifestyle shows The View and GMA3: What You Need to Know , and the soap opera General Hospital . In addition, ABC News programming includes Good Morning America from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. weekdays and Saturdays (along with one-hour Sunday editions), nightly editions of ABC World News Tonight (whose weekend editions are occasionally subject to abbreviation or preemption due to sports telecasts overrunning into
11872-666: Is also the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Hockey League (NHL), with its package (under the NHL on ESPN branding). In this deal, ABC broadcasts at least 10 regular season games (mostly afternoon), the NHL All-Star Game , the NHL Stadium Series , and four Stanley Cup Finals . During college football season, ABC typically carries an afternoon doubleheader on Saturdays, along with
12096-465: Is broadcast in 5.1 surround sound . On September 1, 2016, ABC began to use 16:9 framing for its most graphical imaging (primarily the network's bug , in-program promotions and generic closing credit sequences as well as sports telecasts, where the BottomLine and scoreboard elements now extend outside the 4:3 frame), requiring its stations and pay television providers to display its programming in
12320-516: Is licensed to Boston while WMUR-TV is licensed to Manchester, New Hampshire (which is officially part of the Boston market). WCVB is easily receivable in Manchester with a good antenna as well as having its own news department that covers New Hampshire ; it is the only station licensed to the state that does such. Both WCVB and WMUR are owned by Hearst Television . The Sinclair Broadcast Group
12544-537: Is the largest operator of ABC stations by numerical total, owning or providing services to 28 full, primary ABC affiliates and two subchannel-only affiliates. Sinclair owns the largest ABC subchannel affiliate by market size, WABM-DT2 / WDBB-DT2 in the Birmingham market, which serve as repeaters of WBMA-LD (which itself is also simulcast on a subchannel of former WBMA satellite WGWW , owned by Sinclair partner company Howard Stirk Holdings ). The E. W. Scripps Company
12768-407: Is the largest operator of ABC stations in terms of overall market reach, owning 15 ABC-affiliated stations (including affiliates in larger markets such as Cleveland , Phoenix , Detroit and Denver ), and through its ownership of Phoenix affiliate KNXV, Las Vegas affiliate KTNV-TV and Tucson affiliate KGUN-TV , it is the only provider of ABC programming for the majority of Arizona (outside
12992-458: Is the only major broadcast network that carries games from all of the traditional "big four" sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL). During the late winter months, ABC airs both men's and women's college basketball games on weekend afternoons. In the spring and summer months, ABC also airs games (usually on weekends) from the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), and is the broadcast home of
13216-498: Is transmitted in 720p high-definition , the native resolution format for the Walt Disney Company's American television properties. However, most of Hearst Television 's ABC-affiliated stations and some of Tegna 's ABC affiliates transmit the network's programming in 1080i , while 11 other affiliates owned by various companies carry the network feed in 480i standard definition either due to technical considerations for affiliates of other major networks that carry ABC programming on
13440-610: The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon and the Easter Seals Telethon ). The distant signal regulations allowed cable systems in the 100 largest markets to carry imported signals as a matter of right (including the addition of two distant signals not already available in the market), restricted cable systems in smaller markets to only being able to carry three network stations and one independent station (except for undefinable markets that would not be limited in
13664-477: The 1992–93 and 1995–96 seasons per agreement between the lawsuit parties – to relegate the 35 Bulls games it was scheduled to air during the 1996–97 season exclusively to the Chicago area signal. (The embargoed Bulls telecasts were supplanted on the WGN superstation feed by syndicated feature films, and caused the national preemption of the station's 9:00 p.m. newscast on nights when prime time games overran into
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#173279817620113888-414: The 1995–96 season , the respective iterations of the translucent logo bug were also incorporated within program promotions until the 2011–12 season. During the 1997–98 season, the network began using a minimalist graphical identity with a yellow and black motif, designed by Pittard Sullivan, featuring a small black-and-white "ABC Circle" logo on a yellow background (promotions during this time also featured
14112-732: The Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball club, the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA - both of which were owned by Turner - and the Atlanta Flames of the NHL ). Soon after it was uplinked, an increasing number of cable television systems throughout the United States sought to carry WTCG as part of their channel lineups, ultimately making it the most widely distributed superstation for the rest of its existence under
14336-492: The Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 that would force superstations to enforce blackouts of sporting events if a conflict occurred with a local telecast of the same game. (The latter amendment spurred an on-air campaign by Turner Broadcasting, which saw responses, mostly opposed to the proposed legislation, by more than 17,000 viewers.) Then in July 1992, in
14560-470: The Copyright Act of 1976 in separate Senate floor and House voice votes . The law provides cable systems with a compulsory license – which, under Section 111, also applies to "passive" (passthrough) satellite carriers, allowing them to retransmit "copyrighted programming from any over-the-air [television and radio] stations across the country [or, with range restrictions based on their distance from
14784-687: The Midwestern and Southeastern United States. At 1:00 pm. ET (12:00 pm. CT) that day, subscribers of Multi-Vue TV in Grand Island, Nebraska , Hampton Roads Cablevision in Newport News, Virginia , Troy Cablevision in Troy, Alabama and Newton Cable TV in Newton, Kansas began receiving WTCG's presentation of the 1948 Dana Andrews - Cesar Romero film Deep Waters (which had started on
15008-540: The National Association of Broadcasters [NAB] and broadcasting companies such as Kelly Broadcasting, McGraw-Hill Broadcasting and Taft Television & Radio Company , also lodged an unsuccessful bit to deny SSS's application to grant an expansion of WTCG's service to Puerto Rico , Alaska and Canada.) On October 25, 1978, the FCC implemented an "open entry" policy for satellite resale carriers wanting to feed local television stations to cable systems,
15232-616: The New York Knicks as well as college basketball games involving Big East Conference universities), the station's distribution—while broad—was still relatively regionally scattered and paced far behind that of WTBS and WGN well into the 1990s. United Video would eventually gain an oligopoly in superstation distribution throughout the 1980s, building on its success with WGN-TV by commencing distribution of three other superstations and handling marketing responsibilities for one more (including three that were owned by then-WGN parent Tribune Broadcasting). On May 1, 1984, United Video—which picked up
15456-475: The X Games and Little League World Series . In 2015, ESPN's annual ESPY Awards presentation moved to ABC from ESPN. Bolstered by Caitlyn Jenner accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage Award during the ceremony, the 2015 ESPY Awards ' viewership was roughly tripled over the 2014 ceremony on ESPN. After the NFL signed a new contract with the Walt Disney Company , ABC will air Super Bowl LXI in 2027 and Super Bowl LXV in 2031. The network has not aired
15680-560: The Yuma - El Centro market) and Southern Nevada . Scripps also owns and operates several ABC stations in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, including in Denver, San Diego , Bakersfield, California , and Boise, Idaho , and when combined with the ABC-owned stations in Los Angeles , Fresno , and San Francisco , the affiliations from the News-Press & Gazette Company in Santa Barbara , Palm Springs , Yuma-El Centro , and Colorado Springs-Pueblo , and Sinclair's affiliations in Seattle and Portland, Oregon , these four entities control
15904-412: The programming block is syndicated exclusively to ABC owned-and-operated and affiliated stations, rather than being leased out directly by the network to Litton. ABC's daytime schedule currently features the talk show The View , news show GMA3 , and the soap opera General Hospital . Originally premiering in 1963, General Hospital is ABC's longest-running entertainment program. In addition to
16128-565: The terrestrial loophole that allowed superstations like WGN and WTBS to continue paying local single market rates for programming acquisitions even as they were gaining national coverage, whilst selling that extended coverage to advertisers; this change made it so that other local stations which had their signals beamed to a satellite transponder – whether willingly or not – were charged appropriately for program content based on their actual national distribution, depending on arrangements with any given syndicator. A major concern brought about by
16352-568: The vertical blanking interval (VBI) of the WTBS feed. WTBS remained the most widely distributed superstation for the rest of its existence under the format; by 1987, WTBS was available to 41.6 million cable and satellite subscriber households nationwide. A separate feed of WTBS intended for distribution to cable providers outside the Atlanta market, incorporating national advertising substituting commercials intended for its Atlanta viewing audience,
16576-703: The " Thrilla in Manila " boxing match. With a more cost-effective and expeditious distribution method in place than would be capable through setting up microwave and coaxial telephone relay systems across the entire country, Turner got his idea off the ground by founding Southern Satellite Systems (SSS) – a common carrier uplink provider based in Tulsa, Oklahoma – to serve as the station's satellite redistributor, and subsequently purchased an earth-to-satellite transmitting station to be set up outside of WTCG's Peachtree Street studios in Atlanta. To get around FCC rules in effect at
16800-458: The 1920s, but also share similarities with several other fonts, such as ITC Avant Garde and Horatio, and most closely resembling Chalet. The logo's simplicity made it easier to redesign and duplicate, which was beneficial before the advent of computer graphics. A color version of the logo was also developed around 1963, and animated as a brief 10-second intro to be shown before the then-small handful of network programs broadcast in color (similar to
17024-552: The 58% interest by majority-owner Eddie Chiles , a share that Chiles would ultimately sell in a $ 46-million deal to an ownership group led by eventual Texas Governor and U.S. President George W. Bush , real estate developer H. Bert Mack and investor Frank L. Morsani in April 1989. Ueberroth's successor, Fay Vincent , took a more hard-line approach against baseball telecasts shown over superstations. During his two-year tenure as league commissioner, he tried to introduce contract language in local broadcast agreements that would allow
17248-433: The ABC Circle logo's many variants was a 1977 ID sequence that featured a bubble on a black background representing the circle with glossy gold letters, and was the first ABC identification card to simulate a three-dimensional appearance. In 1983, for the 40th anniversary of the network's founding, ID sequences had the logo appear in a gold CGI design on a blue background, accompanied by the slogan "That Special Feeling" in
17472-594: The Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks, and WGN-TV's broadcasts of sporting events featuring the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls—superstation broadcasts of National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB) games were met with resistance from league commissioners, who contended these telecasts—regardless of the positive effects on team loyalty—diluted the value of their national television contracts with other broadcast and cable networks. Some superstation operators (like Ted Turner and former Tribune Company vice president John Madigan) note
17696-462: The Atlanta broadcast signal 30 minutes prior). Southern Satellite Systems initially charged prospective cable systems 10¢ per subscriber to transmit WTCG full-time and 2¢ per subscriber to carry it as an intermediary, post-sign-off timeshare service (from as early as midnight to as late as 6:00 a.m. local time). One key legal point in Turner's contracts with programming distributors and advertisers
17920-477: The CRT delayed the fee imposition), various distant signals experienced a combined loss of 493 cable clearances, with WTBS, WGN-TV and WOR-TV making up half the defections with a combined loss of 249 clearances. Other cable-originated services benefited from the fee increases and distant signal defections, with the Cable Health Network (CHN; merged with Daytime in 1984 to form Lifetime ) experiencing
18144-464: The Chicago broadcast feed). To blunt potential subscriber complaints over widespread programming blackouts, many cable systems removed both regional and quasi-national superstations (like WSBK, WPIX and KTVT) as well as other distant signals that their satellite carriers were unable or unwilling to take immediate steps to ensure their programming was "Syndex-proofed" to avoid blackouts. WGN and WTBS saw little negative impact to their distribution following
18368-800: The Communications Act of 1996 that were added through the November 1999 implementation of the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act (SHVIA), which allowed satellite providers to carry local broadcast signals on the Congressionally-suggested condition that the FCC develop rules protecting the sports, network and syndicated programming rights of local broadcasters. On November 2, 2000, the FCC approved identical network non-duplication, syndication exclusivity and sports blackout rules applying to
18592-530: The Copyright Act's definition of what constitutes as a public performance was broad enough to encompass indirect transmission through cable affiliates. The MPAA, the NAB (despite its insistence that the CRT had limited to no authority to set rates outside the mandatory five-year interval), sports leagues and other copyright holders soon asked the Copyright Office to hike its royalty rates to compensate for
18816-553: The Copyright Act's existing structure. Outside of the teams that benefited from the broader exposure the telecasts gave them, Major League Baseball had long felt that superstations ate into their ability to gain revenue from agreements with national networks like ESPN. (As a comparison, in 1992, ESPN televised 175 baseball games as part of a broader $ 100-million-per year deal at a per-game cost of $ 571,428, about 12 times more than what TBS, WGN, WWOR and WPIX paid cumulatively for their respective team-based packages that year, encompassing
19040-610: The Copyright Royalty Tribunal, a five-member commission of the U.S. Copyright Office that is tasked with reviewing cable and other royalty rates every five years (or sooner, if changes to program exclusivity or signal importation rules are made by the FCC) and compensates eligible owners of a copyrighted program who submit a written claim to receive the mandatory royalty paid by the cable system. Compulsory license rules for broadcast signal distribution were extended to
19264-420: The Cubs on July 23, 1992, six weeks prior to an 18-9-1 motion of no confidence against Vincent among team owners on September 4. Impacts to baseball's attempts to curb superstation telecasts were felt following Vincent's subsequent resignation as MLB Commissioner on September 7, 1992; one week after his departure, the proposed blackout amendment failed to make a Cable Television Act reconciliation bill due to
19488-528: The Cubs), MCA Inc. (then owner of WWOR) and Gaylord Broadcasting (then owner of KTVT) soon each agreed to contribute to the fund for the right to air Cubs, White Sox, Yankees, Mets and Rangers games outside the teams' respective home markets. (The total payment reflected the reach of each superstation; by 1992, Turner and the Cubs paid $ 12 million and $ 6 million, respectively, reflecting WTBS's 58-million subscriber audience and WGN's 35 million subscribers at
19712-479: The EMI Service were shown unaltered during simulcasts of programs aired on the New York signal. (This was not an issue with the WGN national feed, as United Video chose to substitute program promotions for shows airing on the Chicago signal that were not cleared on the national feed with those for the replacement shows exclusively seen on the latter, albeit still using station logos and promotional graphics used by
19936-454: The English alphabet in order. ABC launched as a radio network in 1943, 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 , as well as the lesser-known DuMont . In the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres (UPT),
20160-528: The FCC constitutes as FCC-licensed television stations permitted by Congress for retransmission by satellite carriers regardless of whether they reach "served" or "unserved" subscribers pursuant to the Copyright Act (effectively preventing them from subjection to geographic retransmission restrictions and absolving them from copyright liability if received by subscribers not residing in "unserved households" that have limited to no access to television stations offering similar programming). These stations must also fit
20384-442: The FCC granted approval to operate satellite transponders to relay the signal following the institution of the FCC's distant signal "open entry" policy for carrier firms – uplinked its signal onto a Satcom-3 transponder for redistribution to cable and satellite subscribers. United Video stepped in to assert uplink responsibilities as SSS had become embroiled in a transponder lease dispute with RCA American Communications in pertinence to
20608-455: The FCC order in January 1982. Interpretations of the copyright act also led to legal cases against superstation distributors. In April 1981, Tribune Broadcasting filed a copyright infringement suit against United Video in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois , on grounds that United inserted teletext content from its Dow Jones business news service over
20832-673: The FCC passed a new version of the Syndication Exclusivity Rights Rule. The new policy—spurred in part by a 1987 study conducted by the Association of Independent Television Stations (INTV), which provided evidence that programming duplication between superstations and local stations created significant ratings dilution for the latter group in certain time periods and a resulting significant loss of advertising revenue—not only allowed television stations to claim local exclusivity over syndicated programs (even if
21056-714: The FCC to temporarily halt all authority for the satellite distribution and marketing of superstation signals. Concurrent with the Metromedia petition, the NAB—later to be joined in the petition by, among others, the MPAA, the NBA, the National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn , WGN Continental Broadcasting and ABC—urged the FCC to conduct an expedited rulemaking aimed at curbing "the harmful impact of superstation development on broadcast program service to
21280-591: The NBC "Laramie" peacock intro used during that era). The "a" was rendered in red, the "b" in blue, and the "c" in green, against the same single black circle. A variant of this color logo, with the colored letters against a white circle, was also commonly used throughout the 1960s. The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of many graphical imaging packages for the network which based the logo's setting mainly on special lighting effects then under development including white, blue, pink, rainbow neon, and glittering dotted lines. Among
21504-762: The Netlink-distributed A3 package—that could not receive locally based network stations prior the implementation of the Satellite Television Extension and Localization Act in 1999. In the early days of television broadcasting, most large media markets – primarily those ranked among the top 20 in Arbitron and Nielsen estimates – had, by standards of the period, a sizeable number of television stations (sometimes as many as eight or nine in operation). Generally, these markets had three VHF stations that operated as affiliates of
21728-420: The North American home video rights to the ABC feature film library (along with some lesser known live action films from Disney's library, mostly from Touchstone Pictures , Hollywood Pictures and 20th Century Studios ). When the FCC imposed its Financial Interest and Syndication Rules in 1970, ABC proactively created two companies: Worldvision Enterprises as a syndication distributor, and ABC Circle Films as
21952-519: The Northeastern United States since 1965), when it began retransmitting the New York station's signal to cable affiliates and C-band satellite receivers throughout the remainder of the country over transponder 17 of Satcom I in April 1979. Until WOR adopted a 24-hour schedule in 1980, the satellite feed initially included a backup feed of CBS-owned New York City station WCBS-TV (channel 2) during WOR's off-hours. Even though WOR had
22176-670: The Second Circuit (in a reversal of the Central District Court decision on October 20) and the Supreme Court (in a February 25, 1983, decision refusing review of the case) both concurred with EMI's arguments, holding that the company constituted as a "passive" carrier exempt from copyright fee payments—along with noting that EMI had only one available transponder for its extraterrestrial services and "naturally" sought to re-transmit "a marketable station"—under
22400-750: The Southeastern United States (including Alabama , Tennessee and South Carolina ). Two major independent station operators began extending coverage of their stations throughout their respective home states and even surrounding states. Gaylord Broadcasting began allowing its independents— WUAB (channel 43, now a CW affiliate) in Lorain – Cleveland , WVTV (channel 18, now a CW affiliate) in Milwaukee , KSTW (channel 11, now an independent station) in Tacoma – Seattle , KTVT (channel 11, now
22624-611: The Supreme Court's framework on the Fortnightly v. United Artists case. On March 31, 1972, the FCC implemented a broad package of cable industry regulations passed that February, which included two rules pertaining to distant signal importation. Among the implemented rules was the original incarnation of the Syndication Exclusivity Rules (or "SyndEx"), which required cable providers to black out any syndicated programs carried on out-of-market stations if
22848-485: The Syndex implementation, with WGN actually heavily benefiting from provider removals of other superstations (including then sister station WPIX) during the early 1990s, allowing for further expansion of its distribution reach. EMI estimated simultaneous losses of 500,000 subscribers and an increase of around one million households to its cable distribution of WWOR, the latter being attributed to some local cable systems adding
23072-879: The Syndex-proof WWOR EMI Service feed. Most complaints over the removal of some regional and quasi-national superstations were because of the loss of access to coverage from regional professional sports teams (such as the Boston Red Sox via WSBK, the Texas Rangers and Dallas Mavericks via KTVT and the New York Yankees via WPIX), leading some systems to resort to cherrypicking sports from the removed superstations to mollify subscribers and local politicians acceding to complaints from their constituents by pushing other cable systems to seek solutions to resume sporting events lost through
23296-533: The Tampa–St. Petersburg market—including WWSB's city of license , Sarasota —as the transmitters of WTSP , the market's former primary ABC affiliate from 1965 to 1994, and Miami affiliate WPLG had been short-spaced to avoid interference between their respective analog-VHF channel 10 signals, WWSB remained an ABC affiliate after its Tampa affiliation moved from WTSP to WFTS in December 1994, even though WFTS's signal reaches Sarasota and some surrounding areas.) WCVB-TV
23520-523: The Texas Rangers on January 11, 1985, in a 9–5 confirmation vote (below the two-thirds votes needed to approve the sale). Ueberroth would invoke a "best interests of baseball" clause on February 8 to approve the sale and associated broadcast contract with KTVT, which required Gaylord Broadcasting to pay re-transmission fees for games that the station televised outside of its six-state cable footprint. Similar issues also prevented Gaylord from buying
23744-409: The U.S. border, from Canada or Mexico]" without seeking the originating station's express permission – that requires payment of a flat semi-annual royalty fee based both on the number of distant signals retransmitted by the system and on their total subscriber receipts (0.675% of their gross receipts for the first distant signal, 0.425% for any other signal up to the fourth and 0.2% for each signal beyond
23968-870: The United States and its territories. Some ABC-affiliated stations can also be seen in Canada via pay-television providers, and certain other affiliates can also be received over-the-air in areas near the Canada–United States border , although most of its prime time programming is subject to simultaneous substitution regulations for pay television providers imposed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to protect rights held by domestically based networks. ABC News provides news and features content for select radio stations owned by Cumulus Media , as these stations are former ABC Radio properties. In 1927, NBC operated
24192-544: The United States. Immediately after achieving superstation status, WGN-TV became available to an estimated approximately 200 cable systems and 1.5 million subscribers throughout the country; its distribution was heavily concentrated in the Central U.S. until the early 1980s and, by the end of the decade, had gradually expanded to encompass most of the nation with some gaps in the Northeastern U.S. that remained into
24416-552: The United Video case, determining that United was not required to carry the station's teletext transmission. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Northern District of Illinois disagreed, ruling in August 1982 that United Video must retransmit WGN-TV's VBI teletext where directly related to and part of the 9:00 p.m. news simulcast, noting that United had no grounds to claim the unseen teletext exempted it from copyright liability as
24640-441: The [FCC], that is secondarily transmitted by a satellite carrier." Superstations may fall into one of two classifications, based on the factoring of their extended reach for advertising and program acquisition purposes: Through an amendment to the compulsory license statute of the 1947 copyright law, the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999 (SHVIA) created a sub-definition for "nationally distributed superstations," which
24864-515: The access of ABC network programming in most of the Western United States, particularly in terms of audience reach. All of ABC's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates have had their own facilities and studios, but transverse entities have been created to produce national programming. As a result, television series were produced by ABC Circle Films beginning in 1962 and by Touchstone Television beginning in 1985, before Touchstone
25088-471: The acquired program's national availability and provide difficulty for program sales once content was sold to broadcasters in smaller markets with superstation importation via cable. Then on November 4, the FCC rescinded a provision requiring cable systems seeking a waiver of signal importation limits to prove the unique circumstances that justified the waiver, while still requiring them to show that local stations would not suffer adverse public service impacts as
25312-405: The agency began allowing unlimited signal importation upon either the final daily sign-off of a local " must carry " station or starting at 1:00 a.m. ( Eastern and Pacific Time )/12:00 a.m. (in all other time zones), to avoid programming conflicts with late-night programing being carried "in progress" or avoid instances in which systems would have to run a blank screen until the start of
25536-399: The amount of superstation-licensed NBA telecasts to 20 games per season. This sparked a 5½-year legal battle against the NBA by Tribune Broadcasting and Chicago Bulls parent Chicago Professional Sports L.P. The conspiracy and antitrust lawsuit filed by the co-plaintiffs in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on October 16, 1990, alleged that the 20-game limit
25760-639: The available population reach of the region, most mid-sized and smaller media markets often had only the basic three network-affiliated stations (either in the form of three standalone affiliates or a primary-secondary structure in which one or two stations carried programs selected among the schedules of two or all three major networks), with imported network affiliates often serving as default outlets where one or more networks were not available locally. Early community antenna television (CATV) systems were restricted from retransmitting distant signals to communities no more than approximately 100 miles (160 km) from
25984-445: The basis that "local stations are not adversely affected when a cable system offers subscribers signals from television stations in other cities." The repeal of its signal importation and Syndex rules resulted in many cable systems beginning to carry other national superstations and additional regional out-of-market independents. The following day (July 23), television station owner Malrite Broadcasting (later Malrite Communications) filed
26208-630: The branding ESPN on ABC . General industry trends and changes in rights have prompted reductions in sports on broadcast television, with Disney preferring to schedule the majority of its sports rights on the networks of ESPN (until 2020). Since 2020 ESPN has prioritized ABC with airings of its sports telecasts with occasional simulcasts and exclusive games of ESPN Monday Night Football broadcasts on ABC. Since 2006, ABC has at least aired ten weeks of primetime sports programming, and since 2020 has aired sports programming almost every week from September to May each year (with primetime encores and movies airing
26432-582: The broadcast rights from CBS, which originated the specials in 1965 with the debut of A Charlie Brown Christmas (other Peanuts specials broadcast annually by ABC, in addition to A Charlie Brown Christmas , include Charlie Brown's All Stars! , It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown , You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown , A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving , It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown , Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown , She's
26656-521: The broadcasts. The tax was implemented in January 1985, under successor Peter Ueberroth , with Ted Turner becoming the first MLB team owner to agree to the revenue-sharing plan, under which he made annual contributions to the league's Central Fund for the continued right to carry Braves baseball games over WTBS. The Tribune Company (then-owner of WGN and WPIX, the former of which cited its absent accounting of its national cable audience in its advertising rates for its initial participation reluctance, as well as
26880-455: The case of WWOR, local advertising sold by individual cable systems. This would be achieved by "splitting" the signal, often requiring the use of a separate transponder to switch between the local feed and the alternate programming feed, so that certain programs viewed in the station's home market could be easily replaced with separate content that would only be shown over the national cable feed. While United Video made efforts to clear as much of
27104-565: The case of network-affiliated stations, this was to improve reception into areas that could not adequately receive the station's signal, whether within or at the edge of the contour, even with an outdoor antenna). Anxious for more viewers, the stations assisted by relaying their signals by wire or microwave transmission. Within a few years, many other microwave-capable CATV system operators began to import out-of-market television signals based on program offerings they thought would appeal to their subscribers. Except for areas that were far enough out of
27328-466: The center, referencing the network's roots in radio. When the ABC-UPT merger was finalized in 1953, the network introduced a new logo based on the FCC seal, with the letters "ABC" enclosed in a circular shield surmounted by a bald eagle. In 1957, just before the television network began its first color broadcasts, the ABC logo consisted of a tiny lowercase "abc" in the center of a large lowercase letter
27552-588: The cities of minor league franchises and a 35-mile [56 km] zone around a team's local television rights-holder.) The major professional sports leagues eventually imposed their own broadcasting restrictions around the number of games that could air annually on any out-of-market stations, which resulted in superstations sometimes substituting sports events with syndicated programming and feature films in adherence. (This had an adverse effect on WGN, WWOR and WPIX, which each had news departments, as some of their respective newscasts would be subjected to substitutions if
27776-454: The classification for those stations) and the various owners of WSBK ( Gillett Communications , Paramount Stations Group and CBS Television Stations ) have treated their satellite-delivered stations as "passive" superstations, opting to assert a neutral position over the relay of its signal by an intermediate common carrier to a national audience and leaving national promotional duties for multichannel television services and their subscribers to
28000-641: The closest signal, which was a detriment to many small communities, especially sparsely populated areas of the Western United States, that were too distant from any receivable signal. As CATV system capacity increased from three channels to five during the early 1950s, several communities in the Western U.S. began incorporating CATV systems using microwave relay systems that made it possible to retransmit broadcast signals over great distances. In September 1956, Columbia Television Co. in Pendleton, Oregon began using
28224-493: The company was acquired and merged with Capital Cities, forming Capital Cities/ABC in 1986. The company was sold to the Walt Disney Company in 1996. The ABC television network currently provides an average of 89 hours of network programming each week. It also offers 22 hours of prime-time programming to affiliated stations from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday (Eastern and Pacific Time) and 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Sundays. Daytime programming
28448-421: The company was spinning off its satellite carrier assets to focus on TV Guide ' s magazine, direct-to-cable program listings and interactive program guide services. Tribune, as a whole, had also shifted from opposing satellite retransmission of its stations sans permission to weighing in the benefits of having its stations be distributed to a wide audience, to the point of being in strong opposition against
28672-447: The copyright. Cable systems found WTCG—one of the few American television stations offering a 24-hour-a-day programming schedule at the time—an attractive offering as it had an extensive film library heavily reliant on classic feature films (amounting to 30 movies per week out of the 2,700 titles that Turner had accrued since taking over the station), high-profile syndicated programs and games from various Atlanta-area sports teams (including
28896-508: The current five-note version introduced in 2020) and the Fox fanfare (which was phased out by the Fox network in 2019). The four-note signature has been updated with every television season thereafter until 2020–21 season. In 1999, ABC launched a web-based promotional campaign focused around its circle logo, also called 'the dot', in which comic book character Little Dot prompted visitors to "download
29120-399: The day after their original broadcast. In addition, ABC on Demand disallows fast forwarding of accessed content. In 2021, ABC updated the app to allow app users to watch shows from ABC's sister networks: Freeform , FX , and National Geographic . Free ad-supported streaming television channels were added to the ABC app in 2022 and 2023, including a 24-hour version of ESPN8 The Ocho and
29344-504: The definition of what may constitute even a de facto superstation varies depending on the country and the overall availability of the distributed stations. In its most precise meaning, per an amended definition under the Copyright Act of 1947, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States defines a superstation as a "television broadcast station, other than a network station, licensed by
29568-422: The development of the first true "regional superstations." By way of the microwave connections, Ted Turner began allowing the signal of Atlanta, Georgia independent station WTCG (channel 17, later renamed WTBS and now WPCH-TV ) – which he purchased from station founder and fellow Atlanta-based entrepreneur Jack Rice Jr. in December 1969 in a $ 3-million all-stock transaction – to be distributed into other parts of
29792-421: The distant network stations could only be distributed to "unserved households" that were unable to receive a local affiliate off-air.) For many years after the passage of SyndEx for cable systems, the satellite television industry remained exempt from syndication exclusivity regulations, resulting in subscribers of direct broadcast satellite and C-Band providers continuing to be able to view all programming seen on
30016-439: The distribution of WGN as its national feed was compliant with those restrictions.) The Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act (SHVERA), signed into law on December 8, 2004, allowed satellite providers to carry " significantly viewed " superstations and distant network signals to subscribers royalty-free and with the payment of retransmission consent, provided that the subscriber also receives local stations from
30240-579: The earliest opponents to the emergence of superstations was the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which in 1977, with the growing distribution of WTCG, petitioned the FCC to investigate the impact of and regulate superstations amid concerns over the potential financial losses for programs that MPAA member companies distributed to other television stations, which it posited would not be offset by royalty payments by cable systems. (The MPAA, which had its inquiry petition backed by
30464-552: The early 1990s, as some of the cable affiliates that carried either superstation began replacing them with the WGN national feed. The passage of the Satellite Home Viewer Act of 1988 on October 19, 1988, extended the compulsory license to direct-to-home (DTH) satellite services, protecting distribution of broadcast signals to dish owners under existing copyright statutes. (The act's provisions primarily benefited so-called "affiliate superstations," provided that
30688-461: The early 2010s. In 1985, Tribune—which would assume satellite distribution rights for the WGN national feed through its April 2001 purchase of the portion of United's UVTV unit that handled the feed's uplink and marketing responsibilities—began providing a direct microwave link of the WGN Chicago signal to United Video, providing it a second signal source in the event technical problems arose with
30912-535: The eastern half of the country. The Braves as well as the Cubs' American League [AL] rivals, the Chicago White Sox, had each already played many late-evening [Eastern/Central Time] games during the regular and postseason against West Coast teams in the western divisions of the National and American Leagues .) U.S. District Judge Suzanne B. Conlon issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Tribune and
31136-829: The enactment of SHVIA) are restrictive, leaving little possibility that any television stations would in the future be able to befit such criteria and legally be considered a national superstation. While the FCC defines "superstation" as a term, it does not prohibit its use by others outside of that scope; for example, primary ABC /subchannel-only CW affiliate KYUR (channel 13) in Anchorage, Alaska had collectively branded itself and its network of repeater stations (including full-power satellites in Fairbanks and Juneau ) as " Alaska 's SuperStation" from 1996 to 2011. Some Spanish language networks like Telemundo and Univision may only have one station within an entire state that serves
31360-456: The extended audience. By the time the fees were imposed on March 15 (which was dubbed by cable systems as "Black Tuesday for Cable Viewers"), NCTA estimates showed that about 6.3 million subscribers nationwide had lost access to one or more distant signals because of defections by cable systems that wanted to avoid paying the increased copyright fees. Dating back weeks prior to the deadline (as some systems chose to remove imported signals after
31584-422: The first stations to offer streams of their programming on the service, with the six remaining ABC O&Os offering streams by the start of the 2013–14 season. Hearst Television also reached a deal to offer streams of its ABC affiliates on the service, though as of 2016 these stations are only available for live-streaming for DirecTV subscribers. In November 2015, it was reported that ABC had been developing
31808-601: The first to have their signals scrambled from the outset, using the Videocipher II encryption system as well as the second and third EMI-delivered superstations to be encrypted, after having converted the WWOR satellite signal to an encrypted format in March 1986. (Within two months of EMI making the station available via satellite, United Video assumed marketing rights for KTLA under a partnership with Eastern Microwave.) Both services had their distribution limited primarily to
32032-688: The flagship property of the Disney Entertainment division of the Walt Disney Company . ABC is headquartered on Riverside Drive in Burbank, California , directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Team Disney – Roy E. Disney Animation Building. The network maintains secondary offices at 77 West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan , New York City , which houses its broadcast center and
32256-504: The following tight date-specific criteria: Beyond the six stations that fit that criteria (including WPIX , KTLA and KWGN-TV , which, at present, uniquely constitute as both "network stations" as well as "nationally distributed superstations" under the FCC and the SHVIA's overlapping definitions for both), the definitions under SHVIA and Congressional retransmission consent rules (per Section 325 of U.S. Code Title 47 , as amended through
32480-449: The format. By May 1978, WTCG was being received by 1.5 million households in 45 states, with figures suggesting that its reach had been increasing at the rate of 100,000 cable households per month; by the end of that year, the station was available through cable systems in all 50 states. By July 1979, the station (by then, known as WTBS) was available to 4.8 million cable subscribers plus an additional 556,000 households that received
32704-471: The former case, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5–1 vote on June 18, 1968, that CATV systems like Fortnightly did not incur copyright liability by retransmitting distant signals as they acted more akin to "viewers" than broadcasters; the latter case, ruled on May 2, 1972, by Judge Constance Baker Motley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York , affirmed that stance based on
32928-400: The fourth, with a separate fixed-rate exemptions for systems that have a semi-annual revenue either below $ 80,000 or between $ 80,000 and $ 160,000), prohibits any modifications to the imported broadcast signal and its copyrighted content (such as commercials substituted by the cable system, permitting local broadcast stations to sue the systems if violating modifications are made), and established
33152-689: The framework of the 1963 Carter Mountain Transmission Corp. v. FCC case, which stemmed from a legal challenge by Chief Washakie TV, then-owner of KWRB-TV (channel 10, now KFNE and operating a satellite station of Casper Fox affiliate KLWY ) in Riverton, Wyoming , against the FCC license of Cody -based microwave relay firm Carter Mountain Transmission Corp., which intended to relay the signal of CBS/NBC affiliate KTWO-TV (channel 2) in Casper, Wyoming to CATV systems in three cities that were within
33376-476: The headquarters building on Riverside Drive, other ABC facilities in Burbank include a building at 3800 West Alameda, known as 'Burbank Center', which is primarily associated with Walt Disney Television and functions as the headquarters and broadcast center for Disney Channel , Disney Junior , Disney XD , Freeform , FX , National Geographic , and Radio Disney . Additionally, Disney Television Animation has
33600-487: The headquarters of its news division, ABC News . 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 youngest of the " Big Three " U.S. television networks, the network is sometimes referred to as the Alphabet Network , as its initialism also represents the first three letters of
33824-586: The home dish market, whereas their cable distribution remained confined to their respective regions ( New England for WSBK and the Southwestern United States for KTLA). Unlike with WTCG/WTBS, Tribune Broadcasting (owners of WGN-TV, WPIX, KTLA and KWGN-TV until the completion of Tribune's purchase by Nexstar Media Group and concurring spin-off of WPIX to the E. W. Scripps Company in September 2019, with both successor parents inheriting
34048-568: The home satellite industry on October 21, 1988, through the passage of Satellite Home Viewer Act of 1988 , which also restricted access to network programs exclusively to home dish users in "white areas" where broadcast signals are unviewable via antenna or cable (a provision that would become pertinent to most of the remaining superstations following network launches that took place in 1995). The distribution of these superstations eventually caused conflicts between these stations and providers of similar, or identical, programming in local markets. Among
34272-605: The in-house productions it continues to produce (such as America's Funniest Home Videos , General Hospital , ABC News productions, and series from Disney Television Studios ( ABC Signature and 20th Television ). Disney–ABC Domestic Television (formerly known as Buena Vista Television and 20th Television) handles domestic television distribution, while Disney–ABC International Television (formerly known as Buena Vista International Television) handles international television distribution. Since its inception, ABC has had over 300 television stations that have carried programming from
34496-458: The intercepted satellite signal and vice versa. WGN would become the only superstation to come close to reaching parity with WTBS, although it would continue to lag somewhat in coverage partly due to the two-year headstart of WTBS into the cable market. KTVU (channel 2) in Oakland –San Francisco followed behind on December 16, 1978, when Satellite Communications Systems uplinked the station onto
34720-524: The lack of support for the provision in the Senate. The NBA also undertook actions to limit superstation telecasts of the league's games. In 1982, it began prohibiting television stations that reached at least 5% of all out-of-market cable households from airing games that conflicted with those shown on the league's national cable partners (at the time, ESPN and USA Network ); this transitioned in June 1985 to
34944-424: The largest U.S. broadcast television network by total number of affiliates. The network has an estimated national reach of 97.72% of all households in the United States (or 305,347,338 Americans with at least one television set). Currently, New Jersey , Rhode Island , and Delaware are the only U.S. states where ABC does not have a locally licensed affiliate (New Jersey is served by New York City O&O WABC-TV in
35168-517: The largest city in their market and is distributed statewide via cable; one such case is Telemundo affiliate WYTU-LD (channel 63) in Milwaukee , which maintains cable distribution throughout Wisconsin via Charter Spectrum , along with extended coverage on low-power stations in Rockford, Illinois , and South Bend, Indiana , providing it broad coverage resembling a regional superstation though not marketing itself as such. The term has been (and, in
35392-637: The late 1970s and the 1990s, in large part because of their carriage of sporting events from local professional sports franchises and theatrical feature films, offerings that were common of the time among independent stations that composed the superstation concept. These signals were also popular among C-band satellite subscribers in rural areas where broadcast signals could not be picked up off-air. Individual radio stations have also been redistributed via satellite as superstations through cable radio services offered by television providers and standalone satellite radio services. In other parts of North America,
35616-484: The latter two aspects of the aforementioned FCC-defined "national superstation" criteria, provided that the service complies with the non-duplication, syndication exclusivity and sports blackout rules. (TBS was not covered under the SHVIA's de facto distant signal grandfathering clause as its national feed was considered a technically separate entity from its over-the-air parent feed in Atlanta. The act's network non-duplication and Syndex rules were thought to negatively affect
35840-442: The launch of its simulcast feed, ABC HD, on September 16, 2001, at the start of the 2001–02 season , with its scripted prime-time series becoming the first shows to upgrade to the format, the simulcast feed was launched first on ABC's owned television stations that same date with many major affiliates following after that. Both new and returning scripted series were broadcast in high definition. In 2011, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
36064-477: The level of WTBS, WGN-TV and WOR-TV. In April 1980, Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment purchased the transponder space from SCS to distribute upstart music video channel MTV ; KTVU's national cable distribution would be reduced to systems that already carried the station in the Western United States by early 1981. Eastern Microwave was somewhat more successful in distributing WOR-TV (which had been available to cable and CATV systems via microwave throughout much of
36288-469: The local broadcast signal to some degree—comprising both programs aired by the parent station for which the companies were able to secure the national retransmission rights (including some held over from before the SyndEx law was enacted), and supplementary programs acquired specifically for the national cable feed to absolve any holes caused by exclusivity claims—as well as separate national advertising, and in
36512-484: The local broadcast signals of national and regional superstations (except where the provider already offered the SyndEx-compliant cable feed). An FCC inquiry on whether SyndEx rules should be applied to home dish services concluded in January 1991 that extending those rules to satellite "would be technically and economically infeasible" as equipment that would allow programs to be selectively blacked out based on
36736-454: The long-running All My Children (1970–2011) and One Life to Live (1968–2012), notable past soap operas seen on the daytime lineup include Ryan's Hope , Dark Shadows , Loving , The City and Port Charles . ABC also aired the last nine years of the Procter & Gamble -produced soap The Edge of Night , following its cancellation by CBS in 1975. ABC Daytime has also aired
36960-428: The loss of the distant signal carriage and syndication exclusivity deregulation. On October 22, 1982, the Copyright Royalty Tribunal instituted a statutory license rate adjustment, establishing a 3.75% royalty fee of a cable system's gross receipts from subscribers (if their semi-annual revenue exceeds $ 214,000) for carriage of each previously impermissible distant signal and a SyndEx surcharge for programs transmitted on
37184-584: The majority of its programming for carriage on both its national and Atlanta area feeds. (Certain local programs carried by the station, such as public affairs and educational children's programs, were not carried on the TBS national feed, but these omissions were because those programs were strictly intended to fulfill local obligations for public affairs content.) United Video and Eastern Microwave respectively opted to devise standalone national feeds of WGN and WWOR, each incorporating an alternate schedule differing from
37408-423: The media market would not likely be marketed until after the initial compulsory license expired in 1994 and that the expense of "preventing viewing by a relatively few authorized home satellite dish owners for a relatively short period" would be greater than that incurred by cable providers. Copyright laws pertaining to broadcast signal carriage by satellite providers were eventually overhauled through amendments to
37632-445: The most growth; by March 1983, 1.2 million of the 9.1 million subscribers that CHN had at the time came from cable systems that replaced a distant signal with the channel. (Later estimates showed that WTBS lost 320,000 subscribers, while Eastern Microwave recouped around 200,000 subscribers for WOR and United Video recouped around 600,000 of its CRT-related losses of 1.2 million subscribers by May 1983.) On May 18, 1988,
37856-492: The network at various times throughout its history, including its first two owned-and-operated and affiliated stations, founding O&O WABC-TV and inaugural affiliate WPVI-TV . As of 2020 , ABC has eight owned-and-operated stations, and current and pending affiliation agreements with 236 additional television stations encompassing 50 states, the District of Columbia, four U.S. possessions, Bermuda, and Saba . This makes ABC
38080-438: The network's existing streaming portal at ABC.com and a mobile app for smartphones and tablet computers. This service provides full-length episodes of ABC programs and live streams of local affiliates in select markets (this was the first such offering by a U.S. broadcast network). Live streams are only available to authenticated subscribers of participating pay television providers . WABC-TV New York and WPVI-TV Philadelphia were
38304-440: The network's programming, including a traditional VOD service called ABC on Demand, which is carried on most traditional cable and IPTV providers. The Walt Disney Company is also a part-owner of Hulu , and has offered full-length episodes of most of ABC's programming through this streaming service since July 6, 2009. In May 2013, ABC launched "WatchABC", a revamp of its traditional multi-platform streaming services encompassing
38528-458: The new rules was that it would force cable systems to drop certain superstations altogether, rather than shoulder expenses that would be incurred with the resultant blackouts and any responsibilities for acquiring substitute programming, thereby denying viewers access to sporting events popular among subscribers who received those signals. In preparation for the policy's implementation – which took effect on January 1, 1990, after FCC-enforced delays in
38752-722: The newsbriefs offered by WTCG/WTBS for most of the time until 1996 as well as an abbreviated daily satirical newscast, 17 Update Early in the Morning , which aired from 1976 to 1979 and mixed improvisational and scripted comedy with actual news content), upon moving its late evening newscast to 9:00 p.m. Central Time in March 1980, it also provided a prime time news alternative for viewers wanting to find out national and international headlines without having to wait for post-prime-time newscasts on local network stations, something of particular benefit to snowbirds and other Chicago residents who temporarily or permanently relocated elsewhere in
38976-408: The next program. As such, the distant signal would act as a timeshare feed on a cable channel otherwise occupied by a local or out-of-market broadcast station during the occupying station's normal sign-off period. The last major obstacle to the creation of a national superstation was knocked down on December 19, 1975, when the FCC unanimously voted to repeal a 1972 rule requiring cable systems selecting
39200-542: The north half of the state and Philadelphia O&O WPVI-TV in the south, Rhode Island is served by New Bedford, Massachusetts -licensed WLNE , though outside of the transmitter, all other operations for the station are based in Providence , and Delaware is served by WPVI in the northern two thirds and Salisbury, Maryland , affiliate WMDT in the southern third of the state). ABC maintains affiliations with low-power stations (broadcasting either in analog or digital) in
39424-407: The number of carried imported signals), and instituted leapfrogging rules that required systems importing distant independent stations from the top-25 markets to choose from one or both of the two markets closest to the provider's city of license and any systems carrying the signal of a third independent being required to pick up a UHF or, if such a station is not available, VHF station located within
39648-861: The operations of Montana -based microwave-to-CATV firm Western Microwave – was founded to relay the signals of WPIX, WNEW-TV and WOR-TV (channel 9, now MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station WWOR-TV and licensed to Secaucus, New Jersey ) to Oneonta Video and other CATV systems in surrounding areas. Eastern Microwave began distributing WOR-TV and either WPIX or WNEW (depending on the system) in March 1965 to three Upstate New York cable systems (Valley Cable Vision in Canajoharie , Carthage Video Division in Carthage and Cortland Video in Carthage ). Other microwave firms were also developed to relay independent television stations to cable systems, including H&B Microwave (a subsidiary of H&B Communications Corp.,
39872-640: The other superstations that would soon emerge did not purposely seek such widespread reach and were either recalcitrant about having their signals imported without consent or ignored the issue directly and allowed their newfound expanded distribution to continue unfettered. On November 9, 1978, Chicago independent WGN-TV became America's second national superstation, when Tulsa, Oklahoma-based common carrier firm United Video Satellite Group, Inc. – one of four applicants, along with Southern Satellite Systems, Lansing, Michigan -based American Microwave & Communications and Milwaukee -based Midwestern Relay Company, that
40096-490: The out-of-market station has the same owner as the station with that particular exclusive program) and required cable systems to black out claimed programs; it also granted cable systems or carrier firms the ability to secure an agreement with the claimant station or a syndication distributor to continue carrying a claimed program through an out-of-market station, allowing some superstations to acquire partial or exclusive national cable rights to certain programs. The law also closed
40320-489: The preceding calendar week of the proposed deletion. (Other leagues had proposed a broader blackout zone: the National Hockey League [NHL] suggested that the protection zone should be extended across a team's entire home market, while the National Football League [NFL] and Major League Baseball each advocated for a 75-mile (121 km) zone, with the latter also seeking a 20-mile [32 km] zone around
40544-422: The president of KTXL [channel 40, now a Fox affiliate] also unveiled similar plans for his Sacramento, California independent, which were never formulated to fruition.) Turner conceptualized the idea upon hearing of premium cable service Home Box Office ( HBO )'s groundbreaking innovation to retransmit its programming nationwide using communications satellites beginning with its September 30, 1975, telecast of
40768-435: The primetime Saturday Night Football . ABC also airs coverage of selected bowl games, ABC is also the secondary broadcast partner of Major League Baseball (MLB) with the network at least airing wild card series games since 2020 (except for 2021), and select Sunday Night Baseball games by sister network ESPN. Beginning in the 2015 NFL season , ESPN agreed to begin simulcasting/exclusively airing NFL games on ABC. Thus, ABC
40992-531: The program's timeslot), the Sunday political talk show This Week , early morning news programs World News Now and America This Morning and the late-night newsmagazine Nightline . Late nights feature the weeknight talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! . The network's three-hour Weekend morning children's programming timeslot is programmed by syndication distributor Litton Entertainment , which produces Litton's Weekend Adventure under an arrangement in which
41216-511: The programming seen on the WGN Chicago feed as it possibly could, EMI increasingly filled the national WWOR EMI Service feed with library content distributed by Universal Television , MGM Television and Quinn Martin —consisting of classic television series from the 1950s to the 1970s—as well as select programs from the Christian Science Monitor television service, alongside shows on WWOR's local program schedule that it
41440-439: The provider, and permitted providers to deliver superstations to commercial businesses. Much of the appeal of superstations to viewers came from the national carriage of sporting events involving professional league teams that contracted their telecasts to the originating stations within home markets. Although professional sports teams benefited heavily from their national exposure—especially with regards to WTCG/WTBS's carriage of
41664-434: The public," positing that they posed a serious threat to the ability of program producers to guarantee exclusive local rights to prospective stations seeking to buy programs being offered on the syndication market. ASN rebutted that KTTV had acknowledged the company was being authorized to redistribute its programming without distributor permission as the station could not do it on its own without shouldering liability. The issue
41888-476: The range of KWRB's off-air signal: Riverton, Lander and Thermopolis . The FCC's denial of Carter's license renewal—because of its refusal to guarantee KWRB program duplication protection and the harm it would induce to the station, especially given Carter's refusal to offer the KWRB signal—was affirmed in a unanimous, three-judge decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on May 24, 1963, and
42112-408: The realignment and arguing it would dilute existing team rivalries. (The realignment proposal also sparked concerns that local advertising revenue for WGN's prime time newscast would be depressed by frequent post-9:00 p.m. [ Central Time ] delays during the regular season from an increased number of Cubs games involving Pacific Time Zone -based Western Division teams starting in the late evening in
42336-399: The regulation's rollout – some superstations decided to indemnify cable systems from potential blackouts by ensuring that, at least, some programs that could be subjected to local syndication exclusivity claims could continue to be shown to their national audience, so as to prevent the loss of sports access. WTBS effectively limited the number of necessary blackouts or substitutions by licensing
42560-451: The reimposition of the syndicated exclusivity rules and filing court proceedings against major sports leagues that sought to prevent game telecasts involving local NBA and Major League Baseball teams from being imported to other media markets. During the 1960s, the FCC began to severely restrict the importation of distant signals by larger CATV and cable systems, limiting their distribution to smaller-market and rural systems, based in part on
42784-401: The remainder of the year). ABC is the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Basketball Association (NBA), with its package (under the NBA on ESPN branding) traditionally beginning with its Christmas Day games , followed by a series of Saturday night and Sunday afternoon games through the remainder of the season, weekend playoff games, and all games of the NBA Finals . ABC
43008-428: The remaining systems reinstating WGN through 1999. The Bulls, WGN and the NBA reached a settlement on December 12, 1996, allowing WGN-TV to air the league broadcast maximum of 41 games for the remainder of the 1996–97 season (35 that would air only on the Chicago signal and twelve that would be shown on both the local and superstation feeds). From the 1997–98 season thereafter, the number of games permitted to air on
43232-616: The removal of those superstations. (For example, amid public pressure from the Providence City Council and Rhode Island Department of Public Utilities and Carriers, Dimension Cable Services's Providence, Rhode Island system [now operated by Cox Communications ], which removed the 24-hour WPIX feed upon the Syndex rollout, began placing the station's Yankees telecasts on a local origination channel in May 1990, in exchange for paying United Video full-time copyright fees.) The WWOR EMI Service—despite having SyndEx-proofed its programming schedule—and WPIX would each see their distribution erode during
43456-419: The right to control the telecasts outside of its home market and informed EMI that the telecasts would be recorded upon transmission, effectively subjecting them to copyright by Doubleday; EMI contended that it was exempt from paying royalties for the telecasts under Section 111 (a) (3) of the Copyright Act, which contends that the secondary transmission of a program by an intermediary carrier did not infringe upon
43680-399: The same market in Tampa, Florida ( WFTS-TV and WWSB ), Boston, Massachusetts ( WCVB-TV and WMUR-TV ), Lincoln, Nebraska ( KLKN and KHGI-TV ), and Grand Rapids, Michigan ( WZZM and WOTV ), with an analogous situation arising in Kansas City, Missouri ( KMBC-TV and KQTV ). KQTV is licensed to St. Joseph , which Nielsen designates as a separate market from Kansas City, despite
43904-416: The same program could be duplicated by superstations and other distant signals. On June 19, 1981, the three-judge New York Court of Appeals panel unanimously affirmed the distant signal and syndication exclusivity repeals; after multiple delays, the repeal of both regulations went into effect one week later on June 24. The U.S. Supreme Court also affirmed the repeal by declining a request by the NAB to review
44128-438: The satellite carriers that retransmitted their signals; in kind, neither station received direct compensation from United Video or EMI for retransmission or promotion of their signals but received royalty payments paid by carrier cable systems to the Copyright Royalty Tribunal (CRT) for their retransmission of programs that are copyrighted in the name of the individual stations and/or their respective parent companies. This benefited
44352-488: The satellite feed's vertical blanking interval (VBI) during retransmissions of WGN's newscasts and other local programs in place of the teletext listings data that the station was relaying to United's Electronic Program Guide (EPG) service (later Prevue Guide and now the entertainment-based Pop ) in violation of the Copyright Act's passive carrier rules. In October 1981, District Court Judge Susan Getzendanner denied an injunction to WGN Continental Broadcasting and dismissed
44576-549: The six FCC-designated national superstations (WGN-TV, KTLA, WPIX, KWGN-TV, WSBK-TV and WWOR-TV) and, in the case of the sports blackouts, other distant signals retransmitted over home dish units to an extent where it would be "technically feasible and not economically prohibitive;" this statute would eventually limit distribution of the five grandfathered stations to rural areas without distributors of similar programming. The rules, which took effect on November 30 and also applied to satellite common carriers that uplinked and distributed
44800-451: The station itself had cable carriage throughout Colorado's Western Slope , Idaho , Kansas , Montana , Nebraska , New Mexico , South Dakota , Utah , Washington and Wyoming .) On February 15, 1988, Eastern Microwave Inc. began distributing WSBK-TV and KTLA (channel 5) in Los Angeles via the Satcom I-R satellite. (WSBK-TV was selected primarily for its broadcasts of Boston Bruins hockey and Boston Red Sox baseball games, while KTLA
45024-448: The station through other distribution methods (including microwave and MMDS services). As WTBS, the station also served to help promote Turner's subsequent cable efforts, providing simulcasts of Cable News Network ( CNN ) and CNN2 (later Headline News and now HLN ) upon their launches in June 1980 and January 1982, respectively, as well as offering weekend-long marathons promoting the 1992 launch of Cartoon Network . (CNN also produced
45248-414: The station's only conventional, long-form news effort as a superstation, the TBS Evening News , a prime time newscast that ran from July 1980 to July 1984.) Aside from Turner's use of WTBS to help launch his other cable ventures, Southern Satellite Systems also distributed the United Press International (UPI) teletext news service (from 1978 to 1981) and the Electra teletext service (from 1981 to 1993) to
45472-400: The station's satellite retransmission rights from Southern Satellite Systems—uplinked the signal of WPIX to the Westar V satellite; this was followed on July 1, 1984, with its uplink of the signal of KTVT in Dallas–Fort Worth to the Satcom IV satellite, in a move undertaken by then-owner Gaylord Broadcasting to persuade cable providers that either already imported or were considering receiving
45696-541: The station's signal by microwave to begin transmitting the KTVT satellite feed. (United Video would later relocate KTVT's transponder to the Spacenet III in December 1988.) On October 24, 1987, Netlink—then a subsidiary of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI)—began distributing KWGN-TV (channel 2, now a CW affiliate) over Satcom I as part of the company's " Denver 5" direct-to-home package of television stations from Colorado 's state capital that also included five default network feeds for home dish subscribers without access to
45920-455: The stations as it allowed them to continue paying for syndicated programming and advertising at local rates rather than those comparable to other national networks. Even so, WGN would gradually switch to a more "active" stance in later years; Tribune began relaying the station's Chicago broadcast feed to United Video directly in 1985, and eventually acquired a majority stake in the rechristened TV Guide Inc. 's UVTV satellite unit in April 2001 as
46144-433: The superstation feed increased to 15 per year. The parties also agreed to replace the NBA's licensing tax for superstations with a revenue sharing model, under which the NBA would collect 50% of all advertising revenue accrued from the national WGN telecasts. American Broadcasting Company The American Broadcasting Company ( ABC ) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network that serves as
46368-418: The superstations, gave satellite providers at least four months to implement duplication protections for network and syndicated programs and 60 days notice to comply with sports and programming blackout requests. An exemption to the Communications Act's retransmission consent statute in the SHVIA rules allowed satellite carriers to retransmit a superstation signal absent the station's prior written consent under
46592-834: The then dominant television networks – NBC , ABC, and CBS ; one or more public television stations – which usually were member stations of National Educational Television (NET) and its later successor, the Public Broadcasting Service ( PBS ); one or more UHF stations; and in the largest markets (such as New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago), at least one VHF station without a network affiliation. These independent stations generally relied on syndicated reruns of current or defunct network shows, classic theatrical feature films and some variety of local programming – such as news programs (ranging from as limited as hourly news updates to long-form newscasts, usually airing in prime time and, in some cases, at midday), children's programming or sporting events – to fill their broadcast schedules. Because of
46816-412: The then-recently deceased news anchor. Disney formerly leased 70,000 sq ft (6,500 m ) at 157 Columbus Avenue, on the northern side of 67th Street. ABC also owns the Times Square Studios at 1500 Broadway, on land owned by a development fund for the 42nd Street Project. Opened in 1999, Good Morning America is broadcast from this facility. ABC News has premises on West 66th Street, in
47040-487: The time slot.) Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI, now defunct) cited the national restrictions on the Bulls as partly being behind its December 1996 decision to remove the WGN national feed from most of its systems throughout the country, affecting around 3.5 million TCI subscribers by March 1997, though criticism over the move led TCI to rescind its plans to remove the WGN national feed from affected systems in Illinois , Indiana , Iowa , Wisconsin and Michigan with
47264-566: The time that prohibited a common carrier from having involvement in program origination, Turner decided to sell SSS to former Western Union vice president of marketing Edward L. Taylor for $ 1 and sold the transmitting station to RCA American Communications . Upon the sale's consummation in March 1976, Turner reached an agreement with Taylor to have the firm uplink the WTCG signal to the Satcom 1 satellite. WTCG became America's first nationally distributed superstation on December 17, 1976, when its signal began to be relayed to four cable systems in
47488-516: The time, whereas WWOR and WPIX each chipped in only $ 1 million, better reflecting their more regionalized distribution.). Concerns by many of Major League Baseball team owners that the share would be used to buoy the expansion of KTVT into a fourth national superstation (a move that would have had to be undertaken by United Video as it was the station's satellite redistributor), American League team owners voted down Gaylord Broadcasting President Edward L. Gaylord 's initial bid to purchase 33% of
47712-437: Was able to acquire retransmission rights at the national level (including local newscasts, sports and other WWOR-produced programming as well as special events, the station's overnight simulcast of the Shop at Home Network and a limited number of syndicated shows that did not have exclusivity claims in any market). Confusingly for WWOR's national cable viewers, on-air promotions for programs not contracted to air nationally over
47936-415: Was aimed at "phas[ing] out such superstations telecasts entirely in increments of five games each year over the next five years," a separate plan proposed by Stern that was never voted upon by NBA team owners. (The NBA contended the restriction was exempt from antitrust law under a provision of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 , which was deemed in later rulings to only be applicable to the sale or transfer
48160-434: Was fighting an FCC grant allowing ASN Inc. (which also had been given permission to uplink WGN-TV and WOR-TV) to make KTTV an "involuntary superstation," claiming such retransmission would be a violation of a provision of Section 325 of the Communications Act that prohibited signal retransmission without a broadcaster's express consent, even though Section 111 of the 1976 Copyright Act effectively allowed such importation – asked
48384-575: Was launched in 1981. (Since the original incarnation of the syndication exclusivity rules had been repealed by that time, program substitutions on the national feed were very limited.) Turner's innovation signaled the development of basic cable programming in the United States and, within three years of WTCG achieving national status, was soon copied by other common carrier firms who decided to apply for satellite uplinks to distribute other independent stations as national superstations; however, while Turner had aggressively pursued national availability for WTCG,
48608-403: Was never fully settled, however, as ASN Inc. ceased operations amid financial issues before it could be able to retransmit KTTV's signal. The FCC repealed its remaining cable television regulations in a 4–3 vote on July 22, 1980, eliminating its restrictions on the number of broadcast stations that cable systems could carry and syndication exclusivity protections for local television stations on
48832-489: Was renamed ABC Studios in 2007. Also part of the library are most films in the David O. Selznick library, productions from their previous motion picture divisions ABC Pictures International , Selmur Productions , and Palomar Pictures International (before its takeover by Bristol-Myers-Squibb) released by Cinerama Productions (films produced by the company themselves are now under the control of Pacific Theatres ), their later theatrical division ABC Motion Pictures , and
49056-439: Was reorganized as ABC Studios in February 2007 and later renamed to its current name ABC Signature in August 2020. Since the 1950s, ABC has had two main production facilities: the ABC Television Center (now The Prospect Studios ) on Prospect Avenue in Hollywood, California , shared with the operations of KABC-TV until 1999, and the ABC Television Center, East, a set of studios located throughout New York City. In addition to
49280-408: Was selected for its broadcasts of Los Angeles Clippers basketball and California Angels baseball games.) EMI chose to encourage rather than compel cable systems in the Northeastern U.S. that already received WSBK by microwave to begin receiving the satellite feed, and outsourced marketing of the signals to home dish owners through HBO and TEMPO Enterprises . Both superstations were notable for being
49504-458: Was that it directly promoted its programming to its national audience, made investments in programming production as well as acquisitions, and charged separate advertising rates at the national and local levels. Given Turner's deep pockets, the station paid for syndicated programming at (albeit reasonably cheaper) rates comparable to other national networks, rather than merely receiving royalty payments from cable systems for programs to which it held
49728-503: Was that they continued to charge him for programming content and commercial time as if his station were reaching only a local market. No one had thought of adding contract language to deal with satellite-delivered broadcasts of a television station to a much larger region. Turner Communications Group also chose to revise its advertising rates to better reflect WTCG's national cable audience in October 1978. Also setting WTCG apart from other superstations that would soon follow in its footsteps
49952-442: Was the last program on the network's schedule that was broadcast in 4:3 standard definition. All of the network's new programming has been presented in HD since January 2012. The affiliate-syndicated Saturday morning educational and informative ( E/I ) block Litton's Weekend Adventure was the first children's program block on U.S. network television to feature programs available in HD upon its September 2011 debut. The HD programming
50176-429: Was the so-called "same-game rule," enacted by the FCC in June 1975 to prohibit cable systems from retransmitting a sports event through a distant signal within a 35 miles (56 km) zone around the city of the home team's arena if the game is not airing on a local television broadcaster, with a subsequent amendment requiring the broadcast rights-holder to inform local cable systems of game deletions no later than Monday of
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