Television in the United States Gray Television, whose 131 stations cover mostly smaller metropolitan areas reaching only 10% of the population. The five major U.S. broadcast television networks are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), CBS (formerly known as the Columbia Broadcasting System), the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox) and the CW Television Network. The first and elder three (which are colloquially known as the "Big Three") began as radio networks: NBC and CBS respectively began operations in 1924 and 1927, while ABC was spun off from NBC to Edward J. Noble in 1943 as the Blue Network during FCC inquiries over
Library of American Broadcasting to its new location. Now housed in the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland, the Library of American Broadcasting is a wide-ranging collection of audio/video recordings, books, pamphlets, periodicals, personal collections, photographs, scripts, and vertical files devoted exclusively to the history of broadcasting. LAB holds many collections of note, including the papers of Sol Taishoff, founder of the influential industry publication "Broadcasting"; the papers of Helen J. Sioussat, director of the Talks Department at CBS (1937–58); the scrapbooks of Edward J. Kirby, chief of the radio branch of the War Department in World War II; and the papers of