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ABC News Radio 10-year license

A

actioncentral

Guest
According to the Disney press release ABC News and Citadel will enter into a 10 year licensing agreement whereby ABC News will provide content for Citadel. Now, will this be similar to the original 20-year license agreement that NBC News had with WW1, wherein WW1 received NBC News actualities but WW1 did the actual newscasts as "NBC Radio News" or will ABC News do the actual newscast and Citadel/ABC Radio will distribute it?
action central
 
> According to the Disney press release ABC News and Citadel
> will enter into a 10 year licensing agreement whereby ABC
> News will provide content for Citadel. Now, will this be
> similar to the original 20-year license agreement that NBC
> News had with WW1, wherein WW1 received NBC News actualities
> but WW1 did the actual newscasts as "NBC Radio News" or will
> ABC News do the actual newscast and Citadel/ABC Radio will
> distribute it?
> action central
>

I tend to think ABC News will do the actual casts, which Citadel will then distribute, more like the CBS - Westwood One deal than the NBC - Westwood One deal of old. Citadel doesn't have an already existing staff of anchors ready to handle the casts the way Westwood did when it merged NBC into Mutual. Who wants to take on the responsibility of staffing newscasts for a network in which your stake is just 49 percent?
 
ABC News Radio - ABC News: Not the same

ABC News is part of the TV Network. Radio news has been part of the radio division since the early 60's and is a completely separate operation. They were able to use sound from the TV news and draw on talent from the TV side but it is a separate operation and goes along with the radio network and owned radio stations.

CBS Radio News, likewise, was spun off in the early 60's. NBC News produced news programming for NBC at least into the 70's. Similarly, ABC and CBS separated their O&O local news operations from the network news divisions in the early 60's (but NBC News continued to produce local newscasts for some time).

ABC Radio News and its people go to Citadel with rights to use ABC sound and talent, as well as the ABC name. Listeners likely won't notice any difference.
 
Re: ABC News Radio - ABC News: Not the same

> ABC News is part of the TV Network. Radio news has been
> part of the radio division since the early 60's and is a
> completely separate operation. They were able to use sound
> from the TV news and draw on talent from the TV side but it
> is a separate operation and goes along with the radio
> network and owned radio stations.

No. Citadel will not be running a newsroom. ABC News Radio (not ABC Radio News)
has executives who answer to the executives who run ABC News on the TV side.
ABC News (the TV operation which a staff creating news for radio) will create content and distribute it to Citadel under a contract. Citadel will not be running a separate organization called "ABC Radio News." There is no such thing.
>
> CBS Radio News, likewise, was spun off in the early 60's.

No. Again, the executives at CBS News Radio (backwards again) answer to the
executives at CBS News. Westwood One isn't managing CBS's radio newscasts. It is paying CBS News to produce newscasts for it to distribute.
> NBC News produced news programming for NBC at least into the
> 70's.

NBC News produced the TOH newscasts for NBC Radio until it was sold off in the 1980's.

>
> ABC Radio News and its people go to Citadel with rights to
> use ABC sound and talent, as well as the ABC name.
> Listeners likely won't notice any difference.
>
No they will not. This is not the NBC-Westwood deal of 1987. They work for and will answer to ABC News. Citadel is not taking on a payroll. It is paying ABC News to create news content for terrestrial radio, which ABC can then redistribute separate from Citadel in satellite radio or other media.
 
Re: ABC News Radio - ABC News: Not the same

> ABC News Radio (not ABC Radio News)has executives who answer
> to the executives who run ABC News on the TV side.
>

You are wrong. "Radio News" (the original name before they changed it) was spun off from TV News and became accountable to management of the radio division. The decision was made because radio realized as long as radio news was under TV news, "radio would end up sucking hind teat." (The words of former ABC Radio Chicago Bureau chief Tom Casey.) Freed from TV, the ABC's radio people went on to create the style of radio news as we know it today in presentation, writing and use of sound.

The president of ABC Radio in the late 50's, Robert Eastman, moved to distance radio from TV in various ways including dropping all on-air reference to "ABC" and using instead "American" and "American Radio Network." The radio side again dropped on-air reference to "ABC" in 1968 and went back to "American" as in: "News of the hour, on the hour, throughout the day from American Information Radio."

The split of radio and TV news was one factor leading to the enventual resignation of ABC TV VP of News and Public Affairs John Charles Daly. The same kind of reorganization led to the resignation of Friend Friendly as president of CBS News (although not the final straw) and in fictional form was part of Robert Duval's package of organizational changes that led William Holden to submit his resignation in the movie "Network."
 
Re: ABC News Radio - ABC News: Not the same

> The president of ABC Radio in the late 50's, Robert Eastman,
> moved to distance radio from TV in various ways including
> dropping all on-air reference to "ABC" and using instead
> "American" and "American Radio Network." The radio side
> again dropped on-air reference to "ABC" in 1968 and went
> back to "American" as in: "News of the hour, on the hour,
> throughout the day from American Information Radio."

That was part of the four-way demographic split of ABC Radio to:

American Information Network :)00)
American FM Network :)15)
American Entertainment Network :)30)
American Contemporary Network :)55)

Since the rules prohibiting operating more than one network were still on the books in 1968 (the same rules that forced NBC to spin the Blue Network off to Noble, which renamed it ABC in the first place), ABC was required to coordinate between its affiliates so that they were never on the air simultaneously in a market, with the exception of long-form public affairs programming and breaking news.

As an example, here is how it worked in the Ventura-Oxnard, Calif. market:

KAAP, Santa Paula ran Information live at :00
KPMJ, Oxnard delayed FM to :30, except at 6:25am because of a paid religious program from 6:30-7:00am (this is important when you look at the next entry)
KVEN, Ventura delayed Entertainment to :55, except for carrying the 6:30am newscast live
KACY, Port Hueneme delayed Contemporary to :20

The gradual switch back to the ABC identity began with the Information network adopting a version of the "World News Tonight" sounder and the opening "From ABC News, I'm (anchor)." That switch started with the 6:00am ET newscast on Wednesday, January 2, 1980, if memory serves.<P ID="signature">______________


</P>
 
Re: ABC News Radio - ABC News: Not the same

As I recall all of the network newscasts were tagged with "a service of ABC News".
 
Re: Billboard Radio Monitor: ABC News Radio Remains with Disney

That's kind of what I thought they were doing, but even the Disney press release earlier in the week was not very clear.

In other words, Citdel will be the exclusive distributor of ABC news for radio broadcast, but the program will still be produced by ABC/Disney.
 
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