ABC Media

ABC, Inc. DBA Circle 7 Media, Inc. (NYSE: CRCL), is an American broadcast and cable television and production/distribution company headquartered in New York City. The company owns and manages the ABC television network, as well as cable networks such as ESPN, Disney Channel, and Freeform. It was previously known as Disney Media Networks until its divesture from The Walt Disney Company.

Name and logo
The name and logo come from the Circle 7 logo originally designed in the early 1960s for ABC's five owned-and-operated stations, and will be applied to prepare for the split from Disney. The new company chose this name and logo because it reflects the heritage of the ABC brand in particular. The Circle 7 name was also used for a now-defunct division of Walt Disney Animation Studios specifically designed to create direct-to-video sequels to the Pixar films.

History
In 1996, Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC bringing ABC Television Network Group, CC/ABC Broadcasting Group (ABC Radio Network, eight TV and 21 radio stations), ABC Cable and International Broadcast Group, CC/ABC Publishing Group and CC/ABC Multimedia Group.The Cable and International Broadcast Group contained ownership shares of ESPN, Inc. (80%) A&E Television Networks (37.5%), Lifetime Television (50%) and its international investments. These investments included Tele-München (50%, Germany; included 20% of RTL II), Hamster Productions. (33%, France) and Scandinavian Broadcasting System (23%, Luxembourg). ESPN also had international holdings: Eurosport (33.3%, England), TV Sport (10%, France; Eurosportaffiliate) and The Japan Sports Channel (20%). The Publishing Group including Fairchild Publications, Chilton Publications, multiple newspapers from a dozen dailies (including the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star) and more weeklies, and dozens more publications in the fields of farm, business and law trade journals plus LA Magazine to Institutional Investor. The Multimedia Group pursued businesses in new and emerging media technologies, including the interactive television, pay-per-view, VOD, HDTV, video cassette, Optical disc, on-line services and location-based entertainment.

In April 1996, due to ongoing post Disney-CC/ABC merger realignment and retirement of its president, WDTT group's division were reassigned to other groups with Walt Disney Television International (including Disney Channel International and Buena Vista Television domestic syndication and Pay TV division and GMTV and Super RTL holdings) were transferred to Capital Cities/ABC. In May due to the merger, ABC ended its ABC Productions division operations while keeping its boutique production companies: Victor Television, DIC Entertainment and Greengrass Productions. The international operations of Disney TV International and ABC Cable and International Broadcast Group were merged in June as Disney/ABC International Television.

Disney had ABC Group sell various publishing companies in 1997. Chilton was sold to Reed Elsevier for $447 million and got $142 million from Euromoney Publications for Institutional Investor. While in April Knight Ridder purchased four newspapers including The Kansas City Star and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram for $1.65 billion. In August 1999, Fairchild Publications was sold to Conde Nast Publications.

In late 1999, Walt Disney Television, along with other WDS television units were transferred from The Walt Disney Studios again to Disney-ABC Television Group to merge with ABC's primetime division, ABC Entertainment, to form ABC Entertainment Group.

ABC Group chairman Robert A. Iger was named president and chief operating officer of The Walt Disney Company in January 2000. In September 2002, Disney Chairman/CEO Michael Eisner outlined a proposed realignment of the ABC broadcast network day parts with the similar unit in its cable channels: ABC Saturday mornings with Disney Channels (Toon & Playhouse), ABC daytime with Soapnet and ABC prime time with ABC Family.[16] In October October 2003, ABC Family Worldwide was changed from a Disney COO directly reporting unit to being with in the ABC Cable Networks Group run by Anne Sweeney.

Disney-ABC Television Group
On April 21, 2004, Disney announced a restructuring of its Disney Media Networks division with Sweeney being named president of ABC parent Disney–ABC, and ESPN president George Bodenheimer becoming co-CEO of the division with Sweeney, as well as president of ABC Sports. This move added ABC TV Network within Disney-ABC. ABC1 channel initially launched in the United Kingdom on September 27, 2004 as the first use of the ABC brand outside the US. While ABC News Now was launched that year in the US on digital subchannel of 70 ABC owned & operated and affiliates.

In February 2007, Touchstone Television was renamed ABC Television Studio as part of Disney's push to drop secondary brands like Buena Vista for Disney, ABC and ESPN. ABC1 in the UK was shut down on September 26, 2007. On January 22, 2009, Disney–ABC said it would merge ABC Entertainment and ABC Studios into a new unit called ABC Entertainment Group. That April, ABC Enterprises took an ownership stake in Hulu in exchange for online distribution license and $25 million in ABC network ad credits. The Live Well Network(LWN) was launched on April 27, 2009 by ABC Owned Television Stations on the stations' sub channels. Late that year, A+E Networks acquired Lifetime Entertainment Services with DATG ownership increasing to 42%. In November, Disney-ABC sells GMTV to ITV for $37 million.

On March 24, 2012, following the dissolution of the ABC Daytime division, ABC Family Worldwide Inc. began taking operational control of Soapnet until that network was slowly discontinued for Disney Junior. In July 2012, NBCUniversal confirmed plans to sell its 15.8% stake in A+E Networks to Disney and Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, who became 50-50 partners in the joint venture.

On August 21, 2013, Disney–ABC announced it will layoff 175 employees. The layoffs are expected to hit positions among technical operations as well as the unit's eight local stations. On October 28, ABC News and Univision launched Fusion, a Hispanic news and satire shows cable channel.

In August 2014, A+E took a 10% stake in Vice Media for $250 million, then announced in April 2015 that H2 would be rebrand into the Vice channel with an indicated early 2016 launch. Disney also made direct investment in Vice Media with two $200 investments in November 2015 then a week later in December for about a direct 10% to assist in funding programming. ABC Family became Freeform on January 12, 2016.

Independence from Disney, Circle 7 Media
On November 18, 2021, The Walt Disney Company announced that it was spinning off its media networks business into an independent publicly-traded company known as Circle 7 Media. Two primary reasons Disney chose to spin off its television and media networks business was to reposition itself to focus on film production, publishing/consumer products, and theme park operations using four core brands, Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. ABC, and ESPN bring prestige to the new company. The Disney name, used on Disney Channel, Disney Junior, and Disney XD, continues to be used under license from its former parent.

The newly spun-off company is lead by Ben Sherwood, who was brought in by Disney to succeed Anne Sweeney in leading the media networks division in 2014, and was tasked to oversee its transition from an arm of Disney into an independent corporation.

Divisions
Circle 7 is divided into three core groups:
 * ABC Television Group (formerly Disney-ABC Television Group)
 * ABC Television Network
 * ABC Owned Television Stations Group
 * Live Well Network
 * ABC National Television Sales
 * ABC Regional Sports and Entertainment Sales
 * Disney Channels Worldwide
 * Disney Channel
 * Disney XD
 * Disney Junior
 * Disney Cinemagic
 * Hungama
 * Radio Disney
 * Disney Channel Animation (formerly Disney Television Animation)
 * ABC Family Worldwide (Freeform)
 * A+E Networks (50%)
 * A&E
 * History
 * FYI
 * Military History
 * Crime & Investigation Network
 * A+E Networks International
 * A+E Networks Consumer Pruducts
 * A+E Studios
 * A&E IndieFilms
 * A+E Films
 * A+E Networks Digital
 * ESPN, Inc. (80%)
 * ESPN
 * ESPN2
 * ESPN3
 * ESPNU
 * ESPNews
 * ESPN Classic