ABC Owned Television Stations

Leaders from E.W. Scripps, Sinclair, Fox Television Stations, ABC Owned Television Stations, Nexstar and Avid will discuss how cross-group collaborations and content sharing have ushered in a new era of efficiencies and content ROI at TVNewsCheck’s TV2025: Monetizing the Future Conference at the NAB Show New York on Oct. 25. Register here.

WLS (ABC 7) Chicago has debuted the long-anticipated ABC Owned Television Stations group graphics package, marking the first appearance of the new design. The package has been in development for nearly four years with extensive market research from SmithGeiger guiding the overall rebranding effort.

The ABC Owned Television Stations will present an hour-long documentary examining the state of mental health in America, looking inside the lives of those who suffer, the stigma associated with mental illness, organizations making a difference, and those standing up to give hope.

The ABC Owned Television Stations salute their parent company when the 30-minute special Disney100: The Exhibition–Making the Magic debuts March 23 on WPVI Philadelphia and across the station group on linear, digital and streaming platforms. Hosted by Alicia Vitarelli and TaRhonda Thomas of WPVI Philadelphia, the special will also be available on Localish and Hulu.

The new interactive websites provide viewers with essential crime and safety data in their neighborhoods in the O&O’s eight markets.

The Disney company’s owned and operated stations have ponied up a big increase to keep the long-running gameshows on their schedule. It has renewed both shows, which are the two-most watched shows in syndication, for five years through the 2027-28 season. This will take Wheel of Fortune through its 45th season and Jeopardy! through its 44th.

She will be tasked with creating, leading and executing the multiplatform content vision and strategies across all eight ABC Owned Television Stations.

WLS, the ABC O&O in Chicago, has quietly switched over to new weather graphics that are the first pieces of a new overall graphics package redesign for the station and a jumping-off point for its sister stations. The new ABC Owned Television Stations package is the product of three years of development with consulting firm SmithGeiger, which conducted extensive research for the redesign effort.

Viewers can stream local newscasts from the group’s eight owned stations, breaking news, weather, premium content, ABC’s Localish and more across the station group’s websites, mobile and connected TV Apps on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV.

Chad Matthews, president and general manager of WABC New York, has been named president of ABC Owned Television Stations. He starts immediately and reports to Debra OConnell, president, Networks, Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution. Matthews will oversee the eight ABC-owned stations in New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Houston; Raleigh-Durham,  N.C.; and Fresno, Calif.

Broadcasters and their technology vendors are carefully moving from traditional capital expenditure models to software-based operational expenditure models. A Discovery executive says it’s about time as the industry moves toward its own distribution costs being based on volume.

The eight ABC Owned Television Stations premiered Our America Equity Report in local newscasts on Sept. 28. The report tracks and measures racial equity across 100 of the largest U.S. cities. ABC’s data journalism team, led by Director of Data Journalism John Kelly, analyzed more than 10 million data points across five quality-of-life categories: policing, housing, education, health and environment.

Digital leaders from Tegna, ABC Owned Television Stations, Graham Media and Allen Media told a TVNewsCheck webinar audience last week that OTT has opened a wealth of content opportunities to connect with new audiences, while the industry is also getting better at using first-party data to deepen audience ties and boost revenue.

Debra O’Connell: “Using an impressions-based currency to evaluate, sell and buy local broadcast video enables us to offer our advertisers full visibility into local audiences and extends the overall reach of their messaging across platforms. The ABC Owned Television Stations fully support the adoption of impressions as the currency for local broadcast TV.”

TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp talks with Mariel Myers, Nzinga Blake and Porsha Grant, executive producers of ABC Owned Television Stations’ new race and culture reporting team, about the project’s bold goals to bring depth and context to reporting on underrepresented communities across the group’s eight stations.

Wendy McMahon, the president of ABC Owned Television Stations, is leaving the company, effective immediately. In an internal email, McMahon wrote: “Leading the ABC Owned Television Stations has been a tremendous honor and blessing… I am grateful to have had the opportunity to serve you.” She has been with the Walt Disney Co. for 11 years and previously worked at CBS.

ABC’s newly announced “race and culture” team is an ambitious experiment in collaboration and a significant commitment of resources: a dedicated “multi-skilled journalist” embedded in each of ABC’s eight owned-station newsrooms, three executive producers and two senior executives.

ABC owned stations has formed a content team focusing on race and culture. The station group says the team will publish stories from underrepresented and marginalized communities across multiple platforms for both daily news coverage and special projects.

ABC’s Owned TV Stations division has launched a new race and culture content team that will oversee an expansion in the group’s coverage of underrepresented communities. The new initiative launched with the docuseries Our America: Living While Black, and has since staffed up to expand its output with several more specials in the works.

With Our America: Hidden Stories, the eight ABC Owned Television Stations combine data and storytelling to break new ground in a series of broadcast and digital reports and specials that seeks to address systemic racism with a distinctive combination of historical perspective, inspiring stories from today, and hard numbers.

When it comes to mobile apps, broadcasters still face a range of options from a single- or multiple-app approach to adopting back-end tech allowing user personalization. But some goals remain constant: keeping users on owned-and-operated mobile platforms over social and monetizing the experience wherever possible.

Not content to simply win in the ratings, ABC Owned Television Stations keeps rethinking how to best connect with consumers both at home and on the go.

ABC Owned Television Stations’ relatively new data journalism unit, headed by John Kelly, has quickly come into its own via the massive twin stories of the election and the pandemic. The team’s work has already impacted equity issues at the polls and made inroads with a younger audience that Kelly says “particularly values evidence, hard facts and data that they can easily consume and share with one another.”

Executives and editors from the BBC, CNN, ABC Owned Stations and Gray Television will look at how their storytelling on digital platforms will change in 2021 amid ongoing remote production and emerging technology at TVNewsCheck’s virtual NewsTECHForum on Dec. 16. Register here.

The ABC Owned Television Stations explore the Black experience in an unprecedented collaboration that unleashes the power of collaboration to break new ground in local TV news.

Technology executives from ABC News, NBCU Owned Stations, ABC Owned Television Stations and Hearst Television will explore how pandemic-necessitated at-home production has overhauled the industry’s thinking at TVNewsCheck’s virtual TV2025 event in October. Register here.