The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. It first broadcast on television in 1948. Corporate headquarters are in Manhattan, while programming offices are in Burbank, adjacent to the Walt Disney Studios and the Walt Disney Company corporate headquarters. ABC is among the most successful networks as of 2006.
The current logo is "Start Here", except television idents continue to use the former "America's Broadcasting Company" slogan. Prior to the "America's Broadcasting Company" slogan, television idents used the full corporate name from 1997-1999.
The formal name of the operation is American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., and that name appears on copyright notices for its in-house network productions and on all official documents of the company, including paychecks and contracts. A separate entity named ABC Inc., formerly Capital Cities/ABC Inc., is that firm's direct parent company, and that company is owned in turn by Disney. The network is sometimes referred to as the Alphabet Network, due to the letters "ABC" being the first three Latin letters.
