From KECA To KABC…

Before we get to the history, notice the dual floodlights on the front of this RCA TK10. Channel 7 first signed on the air under the callsign KECA-TV on September 16, 1949. It was the last television station licensed to Los Angeles operating on the VHF band to sign on, and the last of ABC’s five original owned-and-operated stations to make their debut (after San Francisco’s KGO-TV, which signed on four months earlier).

The station’s callsign was named after Los Angeles broadcasting pioneer Earle C. Anthony, whose initials were also present on channel 7’s then-sister radio station, KECA (790 AM), which had served as the Los Angeles affiliate of the NBC Blue Network. Anthony’s other Los Angeles radio station, KFI, was aligned with the Red Network. The Red Network survived the split of the two NBC radio networks ordered by the Federal Communications Commission in 1943. Edward J. Noble, who bought the Blue Network (beginning its transformation into ABC), purchased KECA radio a year later when the FCC forced Anthony to divest one of his Los Angeles radio stations. On February 1, 1954, KECA-TV changed its callsign to the present-day KABC-TV.

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