The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) came to be because of a U.S. Supreme Court anti-trust ruling, forcing the National Broadcasting Company to divest itself of its second radio network, the NBC Blue Network. On October 12, 1943, NBC Blue became simply the Blue Network, purchased for $8,000,000 by conservative businessman Edward Noble, a self-made millionaire and owner of Life-Savers candies as well as the Rexall Drug Store chain, then changed again to ABC Radio on June 15, 1945.
Noble thought that "Blue" was not the best name for a broadcast network. It was suggested that a name beginning with "A" be chosen so the network would be at the beginning of alphabetical listings. Thus, the American Broadcasting Company was born. At the time it consisted of three wholly owned radio stations, and over 200 network affiliates.
The original ABC Radio was split into four networks - the American Contemporary Network, the American Information Network, the American Entertainment Network and the American FM Network - on January 1, 1968.[1] This was followed by the addition of three more networks - the ABC Rock Network, the ABC Directional Network and ABC Talk Radio - in 1982. It acquired the Satellite Music Network, a satellite-fed network of themed music channels, in 1989. Another network, ESPN Radio, was added in 1992, followed by Radio Disney in 1996.
ABC, by then owned by the Walt Disney Company, sold its radio division (excluding ESPN Radio and Radio Disney, which were both retained by Disney) in 2007 to Citadel Broadcasting, which later changed the ABC Radio name to Citadel Media in 2009. Citadel was acquired by Cumulus Media in 2011 and Citadel Media was folded into Cumulus Media Networks,[2] which was merged with Westwood One in 2015 under parent Cumulus Media.[3]
A new ABC radio syndication service, under the name ABC Radio, was launched by Disney (through its ABC News division) in 2015 and was renamed as ABC Audio in 2019.[4]