American Broadcasting Corporation
| American Broadcasting Corporation | |
|---|---|
| |
| Type | Public company |
| Slogan | "We Bring The World To You" |
| Founded | 1926 |
| Location | New Amsterdam, Castreleon New, NAL |
| Key people | Beau Davidson, President |
| Employees | 45,264 |
| Industry | broadcasting |
| Products | News & entertainment |
| Revenue |  £ 291 million (fiscal 2007)
|
The American Broadcasting Corporaton is an American broadcasting network headquartered in New Amsterdam, NAL. From its beginnings in radio following the First Great War, it has expanded into television and made a name for itself as the network with the most prestigious news department in current American television.
Its flagship news magazine (a form it pioneered in the 1970s) is Fifty Five (originally "55 Minutes") which premiered in 1976 and continues to air. Each program has four segments of roughly eleven to thirteen minutes each, focusing on some story. Past segments have included the James Wainwright Assassination, the Florida War and the Pegre.
During the early 1980s, ABC began an experiment in network programming that was radical for the time. Facing decreasing revenues, the corporation restructured its budget. The news department was revamped and given more funding, while local affiliates were encouraged to create "mini-networks" under the ABC umbrella. These would pool their resources with funding and coordination from the corporate HQ, and produce/order entertainment tailored to specific markets. For example, "novels for television" proved more popular in the Native markets such as Cherokee Nation while detective dramas tended to go over well in places like Kent and Oxbridge.
The experiment proved a success, creating what were in effect five mini-networks:
- ABC1 (Castreleon New, Kent, Oxbridge, Pennsylvaania, Rhode Island, Massachussets Bay, New Hampshire and Connecticut)
- ABC2 (Illinoise, Ontario, Les Plaines, Miami and Ouisconsin)
- ABC3 (New Iceland, New Sweden, Alba Nuadh, )
- ABC4 (Cherokee, Nunavik, Utawia,Mascoutensi, Mueva Sefarad, Aquanishuonigy and Unincorporated Territories).
- ABC5 (Jacobia, Kentucky, Ter Mair, Tenisi, Carolina)
Since 1999 ABC has come under increased criticism for developing several successful news magazines focusing not upon current events or sports but entertainment, gossip and what the network refers to as "historical mysteries of popular interest" but which many others refer to as "sensationalism as history."
Despite the mini-networks, ABC has always produced a small group of entertainment programs aimed at wide audiences. Sometimes these prove popular with only a narrow audience and end up broadcast only upon a mini-network. The advent of Video Disks has also proved to be a new source of revenue, with sales of old (or "classic") programs proving popular.
