ABC

In what appears to be a simulacrum of last year’s orderly upfront bazaar, Fox and ABC have started writing deals with some of the major media agencies. And while both networks are believed to be the furthest along in the process, every broadcast sales chief is currently engaged in discussing budgets and pricing with buyers. While the numbers remain fuzzy, sources on Wednesday said that Fox is looking for CPM increases that are in line with the 8% gains it secured during the 2012-13 bazaar.

ABC Regional Sports & Entertainment Sales, a division of ABC National Television Sales Inc., and Branded Cities Network, a division of Phoenix-based EL Media Holdings USA, have signed an exclusive […]

Broadcast networks filed suit on Thursday to halt a company from offering streams of their signals in the Washington, D.C. market, in the latest effort to challenge the legality of a bevy of services seeking to provide over-the-air TV on the Internet. Fox, NBC, ABC and Allbritton Communications filed a claim in U.S. District Court in Washington against Aereokiller, the provocatively named company founded by FilmOn’s Alki David.

Hulu’s three TV-focused owners — ABC, Fox and NBC — are taking more control of the streaming-video site’s ad sales, another sign of the tension that sometimes flashes between the popular video hub and the media conglomerates that control it.

NEW YORK (AP) – The ACLU is lobbying for the gay couple on “Modern Family” to get married. ACLU Action started a campaign to urge the show’s producers to write […]

Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings will provide demographic data for tablet and smartphone media. ABC will be able to measure audience demographics and understand the reach and frequency of online campaigns across ABC content on the Web and in mobile apps.

The No. 4-ranked network will play off hits with four new comedies, including Conan O’Brien’s Super Fun Night with Rebel Wilson that will lead out of top-rated Modern Family on Wednesdays.

Rhimes is among the few remaining bona fide network hitmakers; her pull at ABC is matched only by Chuck Lorre, with his three sitcoms at CBS, or Seth MacFarlane, with his three animated shows at Fox. Before Scandal, Rhimes created the hit medical drama Grey’s Anatomy and, later, the sudsier Grey’s spinoff, Private Practice, which ended this past January after a six-year run.

Veteran ABC News anchor Barbara Walters is set to announce this morning on The View that she will retire from TV journalism next summer.

The network, staking a claim to growth in online video ads, will brief advertisers next week on a service providing live shows on mobile phones and tablets, people with knowledge of the plan said. Watch ABC, a first-of-its-kind application from a broadcaster, will stream live and archived shows to pay-TV subscribers, said the people, who sought anonymity because the plans aren’t public.

ABC also says no to a comedy pilot starring Kelly Preston and a gothic soap opera from Mark Gordon.

With Big Five upfront presentations set for May 13, 14, 15 and 16, the networks are looking to fill a lot of slots in hopes of finding significantly more keepers than last season.

ABC is expected to finally fill a key position in its scheduling department by hiring Whitney Holland as its new vice president of program planning and acquisitions, according to people close to her and ABC.

Producers behind the revived All My Children and One Life to Live hoped to buy ad time during broadcast soaps, but CBS and NBC refused to help tout the competition and ABC has since filed a lawsuit over one spot.

So you sit down for some important programming.You’ve got all the fixings: Comfy chair, tasty snacks and, of course, your second screen device of choice to keep up with online chatter. Now would you add one more thing to the mix by spending the next thirty minutes continuously clicking a range of emoticons to register the ebbs and flows of your viewing emotions? That’s the idea behind Social Soundtracker, an iPhone app from ABC.

ABC responded to the lawsuit filed last week by studio Prospect Park seeking $25 million in damages — which alleged the network maliciously killed three One Life to Live characters to sabotage its online resurrection of the show — terming the legal action “baseless.”

ABC, CBS and NBC all announce additional coverage on Friday night to include the latest developments in the ongoing fallout from the marathon bombings.

One week before Prospect Park is set to launch online soaps All My Children and One Life to Live, the production company is filing a breach of contract lawsuit against ABC, which licensed the shows to Prospect Park, the company of Jeff Kwatinetz and former Walt Disney studios president Rich Frank, two years ago. In the complaint, which has been filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court, Prospect Park claims that ABC has been breaking the licensing agreement and sabotaging Prospect Park’s efforts to continue on AMC and OLTL online.

He was the first African-American to hold a president post at the network, serving as head of broadcast operations and engineering for ABC Television Network Group since 1993. He started his career at ABC as an engineer in 1976. He was 63.

Today marks an extraordinary broadcast milestone: the 50th anniversary of ABC’s General Hospital. Given all the excitement surrounding this event, it is somewhat sobering to note that just last year ABC seemed ready to cancel this still-vital series.

After years of speculation, Barbara Walters may be finally ready to hang up her microphone. A plan has been put in place for Walters to announce, probably in May, her retirement next year. Fitting for Walters’ status as the grande dame of TV journalism and a signature face of ABC News, she would be given a big sendoff with retrospectives and other special content in the weeks leading to her retirement that would celebrate her 52-year broadcast career.

The 70-year-old comedian is leaving the daytime talk show at the end of the current season in August.

The new ABC-Univision English-language cable network targeted to Hispanics is busy building its suburban Miami headquarters (pictured), staffing up and developing marketing and advertising strategies. The next big step will be the hiring of a CEO, which is in the works. Fusion will be a completely separate entity with its own employees, talent and executives. However, during the startup, Univision will lead the charge in terms of programming, while Disney/ABC will focus on ad sales and distribution.

ABC, ABC Family and ESPN will announce Tuesday that they have adopted the Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings system to measure viewing across both television and online sites, and will base all sales on estimates of what total viewing will be on all those platforms.