, channel seven, is the flagship station of the
Walt Disney Company -owned
ABC television network, located in
New York City . In the few areas of the eastern United States where ABC programming is not available over-the-air, WABC-TV is seen via satellite through
Dish Network and
DirecTV , which also provides coverage of the station to
Latin America .
WABC-TV is best known in broadcasting circles for the its highly successful version of the ''
Eyewitness News '' format, and for its morning show ''
Live With Regis And Kelly ,'' syndicated nationally by corporate cousin
Buena Vista Distribution .
The station signed on
August 10 ,
1948 as , the first of three television stations signed-on by the American Broadcasting Company during that same year, with WENR-TV (now
WLS-TV ) in
Chicago and
WXYZ-TV in
Detroit being the other two. Channel seven's call letters came from its sister radio station, WJZ (770 kHz., now
WABC ). In its early years, WJZ-TV was programmed like an independent station, as the ABC television network was still, for the most part, in the planning stages; the ABC-owned stations did air common programming during this period. The call letters were changed to '''WABC-TV''' in February 1953, after ABC merged its operations with United Paramount Theaters, a firm which was broken-off from former parent company
Paramount Pictures by decree of the U.S. government.
On
September 11, 2001 , the
Transmitter facilities of WABC-TV, as well as eight other local television stations and several radio stations, were destroyed when two
Hijacked Airplanes Crashed into and destroyed the
World Trade Center towers. In the immediate aftermath, WABC-TV fed its signal to several
UHF stations that were still broadcasting before establishing temporary facilities in
Alpine, New Jersey , notably
WNYE-TV . The station eventually established transmission facilities at the
Empire State Building .
