American Broadcasting Company television. The fifth-oldest major broadcasting network in the world and the youngest of the Big Three television networks, ABC is often nicknamed as "The Alphabet Network", as its initialism also represents the first three letters of the English alphabet, in order. ABC launched as a radio network on October 12, 1943, serving 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. In the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres, a chain of movie
King Broadcasting Company King Broadcasting in 1987. Following Dorothy Bullitt's death, KING Broadcasting Company was sold to The Providence Journal newspaper in 1991, which was later sold to the Belo Corporation in 1997, which included King Broadcasting. Belo itself was acquired by the Gannett Company in 2013. Gannett's print and broadcast assets were split into two companies in 2015, with King Broadcasting following the broadcast assets into the newly created Tegna, Inc. The King Broadcasting name lives on as a holding company within Tegna's corporate structure (as is also the case with Multimedia and a forerunner of Combined Communications, Pacific and Southern Company,