April 19, 1948…The Start Of The ABC Television Network

68 years ago today, on April 19, 1948, the ABC Television Network began its broadcasts on its first primary affiliate, WFIL-TV in Philadelphia. The debut show was “On The Corner” with host Henry Morgan, which was also the name of his radio show on ABC’s Blue Network. Until WJZ-TV signed on in August, ABC programs were carried in New York by Dumont’s WABD. Other stations carrying the initial broadcast were WMAR-TV in Baltimore, and WMAL-TV in Washington, D.C.

In August 1948, the network’s flagship owned-and-operated station, WJZ-TV in New York City, began its broadcasts. That first WJZ broadcast ran for two hours on the evening of August 10, 1948. ABC’s other owned-and-operated stations launched over the course of the next 13 months.

WENR-TV in Chicago launched on September 17, 1948, while WXYZ-TV in Detroit went on the air October 9, 1948. KGO-TV in San Francisco went on the air May 5, 1949.

In early 1948, ABC bought the Durland Riding Academy at 7 West 66th Street, in preparation for network and local program production. On May 7, 1949, Billboard revealed that ABC would spend $2.5 million to convert the old Vitagraph/Warner East Annex in Hollywood into The Prospect Studios, and construct a transmitter on Mount Wilson in anticipation of the launch of KECA-TV, which went on the air on September 16, 1949.

As the rest of ABC’s fleet of owned-and-operated major market stations, in Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, came to life, that gave them some parity with CBS, and NBC in the important area of big-city presence, as well as a long term advantage in guaranteed reach over the rival DuMont Television Network, by the fall of 1949.

For the next few years, ABC was a television network mostly in name. Except for the largest markets, most cities had only one or two stations. The FCC froze applications for new stations in 1948 while it sorted out the thousands of applicants and re-thought the technical and allocation standards set down between 1938 and 1946.

What was meant to be a six-month freeze lasted until the middle of 1952. Some large cities, like Pittsburgh and St. Louis, had only one station on the air for a prolonged period, and many more of the largest cities such as Boston only had two. Many sizable cities including Denver and Portland had no television service at all until the second half of 1952 after the freeze ended.

For a late-comer like ABC, this meant being relegated to secondary status in many markets, and no reach at all in some. This was the period when local stations could cherry pick shows from as many networks as they wanted, as very few stations were exclusive affiliates.

Although ABC struggled financially for the first 15 or so years, they did catch two very lucky breaks in 1947. The first one was that they beat the freeze by filing for 5 TV licenses that year, all on Channel 7, which gave them their 5 O&O major market stations.

Thier second break came when the WFIL-TV engineers went on strike in 1947. Management locked them out and began replacing them, which allowed ABC New York to pick up a strong core of top engineers for their new broadcast center on West 66th Street. The rest, as they say, is history. Happy 68th Birthday to the ABC Television Network! -Bobby Ellerbee

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