Disney–ABC Television Group

ABC, Inc. DBA the Disney–ABC Television Group (simply Disney–ABC ), formerly known as Capital Cities/ABC Inc. and ABC Group, is a subsidiary holdings company that manages all of The Walt Disney Company's Disney and ABC-branded television properties. The group includes the ABC Television Network (including ABC Daytime, ABC Entertainment, and ABC News divisions), as well as Disney's A&E Television Networks and its 80% controlling stake in ESPN, Inc. While holding the controlling stake in ESPN, Disney–ABC and ESPN operate as separate units of Disney Media Networks.

History
In 1996, Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC Inc., bringing ABC Television Network Group, CC/ABC Broadcasting Group (ABC Radio Network, eight TV and 21 radio stations), ABC Cable and International Broadcast Group, CC/ABC Publishing Group and CC/ABC Multimedia Group to the fold. The Cable and International Broadcast Group contained ownership shares of ESPN, Inc. (80%) A&E Television Networks (37.5%), Lifetime Television (50%) and its international investments. These investments included Tele-München (50%, Germany; included 20% of RTL II), Hamster Productions. (33%, France) and Scandinavian Broadcasting System (23%, Luxembourg). ESPN also had international holdings: Eurosport (33.3%, England), TV Sport (10%, France; Eurosport affiliate) and The Japan Sports Channel (20%). The Publishing Group including Fairchild Publications, Chilton Publications, multiple newspapers from a dozen dailies (including the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star) and more weeklies, and dozens more publications in the fields of farm, business and law trade journals plus LA Magazine to Institutional Investor. The Multimedia Group pursued businesses in new and emerging media technologies, including the interactive television, pay-per-view, VOD, HDTV, video cassette, Optical disc, on-line services and location-based entertainment.

In 1993, DiC Animation City and Capital Cities/ABC formed a joint venture called DIC Entertainment L.P. In April 1996, due to ongoing post Disney-CC/ABC merger realignment and retirement of its president, WDTT group's division were reassigned to other groups with Walt Disney Television International (including Disney Channel International and Buena Vista Television domestic syndication and Pay TV division and GMTV and Super RTL holdings) were transferred to Capital Cities/ABC. In May due to the merger, ABC ended its ABC Productions division operations while keeping its boutique production companies: Victor Television, DIC Entertainment, ABC/Kane Productions and Greengrass Productions. The international operations of Disney TV International and ABC Cable and International Broadcast Group were merged in June as Disney/ABC International Television.

Under Disney, ABC Group sold various publishing companies in 1997. Chilton was sold to Reed Elsevier for $447 million and received $142 million from Euromoney Publications for Institutional Investor. In April, Knight Ridder purchased four newspapers including The Kansas City Star and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram for $1.65 billion. In August 1999, Fairchild Publications was sold to Conde Nast Publications. In March 1998, Disney-ABC placed it shares of Scandinavian Broadcasting System up for sale.

In late 1999, Walt Disney Television, along with other television units, were transferred again from The Walt Disney Studios to Disney–ABC Television Group and merged with ABC's primetime division, ABC Entertainment, forming ABC Entertainment Group.

In March 2000, ABC formed the Disney Kids Network (DKN) advertising group via consolidation to sell ads for ABC's "TGIF" primetime programming, Disney's One Saturday Morning, the Disney's One Too syndicated programming block, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Wonderful World of Disney and Winnie the Pooh primetime specials. DKN was placed under senior vice president of sales at ABC, Dan Barnathan, and would also work on some ads with Radio Disney, Disney.com and the Disney Adventures magazine. DKN added Toon Disney when the channel started accepting ads in September 2000.

ABC Group chairman Robert A. Iger was named president and chief operating officer of The Walt Disney Company in January 2000. In 2000, with an investment by Bain Capital and Chase Capital Partners, Heyward re-purchased DIC Enterprises.

In September 2002, Disney Chairman/CEO Michael Eisner outlined a proposed realignment of the ABC broadcast network's daytime parts with the similar unit in its cable channels: ABC Saturday mornings with Disney Channel units (Toon & Playhouse), ABC daytime with Soapnet and ABC prime time with ABC Family. In October 2003-10, ABC Family Worldwide was changed from a unit directly reporting to the Disney COO to a unit running within the ABC Cable Networks Group under Anne Sweeney.

Disney–ABC Television Group
On 2004-4-21, Disney announced a restructuring of its Disney Media Networks division with Sweeney being named president of ABC parent Disney–ABC, and ESPN president George Bodenheimer becoming co-CEO of the division with Sweeney, as well as president of ABC Sports. This move added ABC TV Network within Disney-ABC. ABC1 channel initially launched in the United Kingdom on 2004-9-27 as the first use of the ABC brand outside the US. While ABC News Now was launched that year in the US on digital subchannel of 70 ABC owned & operated and affiliates.

On June 12, 2007, Disney spun off its ABC Radio Networks and merged it into Citadel Communications with Citadel Broadcasting while retaining its ESPN Radio and Radio Disney networks and stations and a 10-year news provider licensing agreement with Citadel for ABC News Radio and the networks.

In February 2007, Touchstone Television was renamed ABC Television Studio as part of Disney's push to drop secondary brands like Buena Vista for Disney, ABC, ESPN, and most recently, A&E Networks. ABC1 in the UK was shut down on 2007-9-26.

On 2009-1-22, Disney–ABC said it would merge ABC Entertainment and ABC Studios into a new unit called ABC Entertainment Group. That April, ABC Enterprises took an ownership stake in Hulu in exchange for online distribution license and $25 million in the ABC network ad credits. The Live Well Network (LWN) was launched on 2009-4-27 by ABC Owned Television Stations on the stations' subchannels. Later that year, A+E Networks acquired Lifetime Entertainment Services with DATG ownership increasing to 42%. In November, Disney-ABC sells GMTV to ITV for $37 million.

On 2012-3-24, following the dissolution of the ABC Daytime division, ABC Family Worldwide Inc. began taking operational control of Soapnet until that network was slowly discontinued for Disney Junior.

In 2012-7, NBCUniversal confirmed plans to sell its 15.8% stake in A+E Networks to Disney (along with its previous owner Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, who became 50-50 partners in the joint venture).

On 2013-8-21, Disney–ABC announced it will lay off 175 employees. The layoffs are expected to hit positions among technical operations as well as the unit's eight local stations. On October 28, ABC News and Univision Communications launched Fusion, a cable Hispanic news and satire channel.

In August 2014, A+E took a 10% stake in Vice Media for $250 million, then announced in April 2015 that H2 would be rebranded into the Vice channel with an indicated early 2016 launch. Disney also directly made two $200 investments in Vice Media in November 2015, then a week later in December, they directly invested in it again for 10% to assist in funding its programming. ABC Family became Freeform on January 12, 2016.

On April 21, 2016, Disney–ABC sold its share in Fusion to Univision. In September 2016, the group's president Ben Sherwood named Bruce Rosenblum, Television Academy chairman and former head of Warner Bros. TV Group, as president of business operations in s the newly created position, to reduce the number of direct reports from 17 to about 8. Roseblum would oversee ad sales in conjunction with channel heads, affiliate sales and marketing, engineering, digital media, global distribution, IT, research and strategy and business development. This allows Sherwood to focus on content and direct operating units that continue to directly report to him, ABC network units, cable channel units (Disney Channels Worldwide, and Freeform), ABC Studios and ABC TV Stations.

Units
ABC, Inc. DBA Disney–ABC Television Group (formerly Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.)
 * American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. - generally seen as the copyright holder for ABC owned shows
 * Disney/ABC Television Group Digital Media
 * Walt Disney Television
 * Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment - also known as Disney-ABC Home Entertainment and Television Distribution
 * Disney–ABC Domestic Television - formerly Buena Vista Television
 * Disney Media Distribution - formerly Disney-ABC International Television and before that, ABC Cable and International Broadcast Group
 * ABC Entertainment Group
 * ABC Entertainment
 * American Broadcasting Company (radio – 1943, television – 1948)
 * Times Square Studios
 * ABC Daytime (1960)
 * ABC Media Productions - formerly Buena Vista Productions
 * Valleycrest Productions
 * ABC News (1945–)
 * ABC News Radio (1968–)
 * ABC News All Media
 * ABC News production unit
 * ABC News Productions (1994–)
 * Lincoln Square Productions (2003–)
 * ABC Digital
 * ABC Studios - formerly Touchstone Television & ABC Television Studio
 * Greengrass Productions
 * Keep Calm and Carry On Productions
 * Victor Television Productions
 * ABC/Kane Productions
 * ABC Family Worldwide
 * Freeform
 * ABC Family Digital
 * ProdCo, Inc., ABC Family production company
 * BVS Entertainment, formerly Saban Entertainment
 * Saban / Fox Kids library.
 * DePatie-Freleng Enterprises / Marvel Productions, Ltd. library
 * ABC Owned Television Stations (1948–)
 * Live Well Network (2009–)
 * ABC National Television Sales
 * ABC Regional Sports and Entertainment Sales
 * Disney Channels Worldwide
 * Disney Channel (1983–)
 * Disney XD
 * Disney Cinemagic
 * Disney Junior
 * Broadcast Satellite Disney Co., Ltd. (April 2009) - operator of Dlife channel (Japan)
 * Hungama (2006)
 * Radio Disney (1996–)
 * Radio Disney Group (2003–2014) sold individual stations
 * Disney Television Animation
 * It's a Laugh Productions
 * joint ventures
 * ESPN, Inc. (80%)
 * A+E Networks (50%), includes Lifetime Entertainment Services (see article for channels and other units)
 * ABC Enterprises
 * Hulu (30%; 2009–)
 * Buena Vista International Television Investments
 * RTL Disney Television Limited Partnership, 50%
 * Super RTL (1995) Germany
 * Kividoo subscription video-on-demand (2015)
 * Toggo Plus (2016)
 * ABC Cable and International Broadcasting Worldwide Holdings, Inc.
 * Tele Munich Television Media Participation Limited Partnership, 50%
 * RTL 2 Television Limited Partnership, 31.5%
 * RTL II (Germany)
 * GMTV (1993–2009) UK, 25%

Walt Disney Television and Telecommunications
Walt Disney Television and Telecommunications (WDTT) was a division of The Walt Disney Company. At the time Disney and Capital Cities/ABC merged, WDTT's divisions were The Disney Channel, KCAL-TV Los Angeles, Walt Disney Television, Touchstone Television and Buena Vista Home Video International, and Disney Interactive.

WDTT history
On August 24, 1994, with Jeffrey Katzenberg's resignation, a reorganization of Disney took place in which Richard H. Frank became head of newly formed Walt Disney Television and Telecommunications, which was split from its filmed entertainment business, Walt Disney Studios. On December 5, 1994, Walt Disney Computer Software was transferred within WDTT as Disney Interactive. At the end of his contract on April 30, 1995, Frank left Disney. Dennis Hightower, a marketing executive, was appointed by April 9 to succeed Frank.

In April 1996, due to ongoing post-Disney-CC/ABC merger realignment and the retirement of Hightower as president, WDTT's divisions were reassigned to other groups, with most of them transferred to either The Walt Disney Studios or CC/ABC. KCAL was sold to Young Broadcasting in May 1996 due to CC/ABC ownership of KABC-TV.