Abc Television Network

Daniel Burke, considered one of the architects of the modern television industry and a former president and chief executive of Capital Cities/ABC, died Wednesday. He was 82. He died at his home in Rye, N.Y., of complications from type 1 diabetes, according to his family. Burke spent more than 30 years at CapCities, rising from manager of its television station in Albany, N.Y., to chief executive. Working closely with Tom Murphy, the chairman of CapCities, the duo transformed the company from a handful of TV stations into a broadcasting and publishing giant.

Daniel Burke, considered one of the architects of the modern television industry and a former president and chief executive of Capital Cities/ABC, died Wednesday. He was 82. He died at his home in Rye, N.Y., of complications from type 1 diabetes, according to his family. Burke spent more than 30 years at CapCities, rising from manager of its television station in Albany, N.Y., to chief executive. Working closely with Tom Murphy, the chairman of CapCities, the duo transformed the company from a handful of TV stations into a broadcasting and publishing giant.

In a radical restructuring of its prime-time TV operation, Walt Disney Co. plans to merge its Buena Vista Television Production group, which is now part of Disney Studios, into the ABC Television Network.

One of the longest streaks in television history ... will continue. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the ABC television network said Thursday that they had extended their licensing agreement by six years ? through 2020. The announcement comes just days before this weekend's 83rd annual Oscar gala on the network, and the new agreement keeps the Academy Awards telecast a fixture on ABC. "This contract ensures that the Oscar show will be an ABC tradition for 45 consecutive years," Tom Sherak, the academy's president, said in a prepared statement.

ABC on Thursday became the second major broadcaster to combine its television network and production studio into a single unit, an acknowledgment of troubled economic times and changing viewer preferences. Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, like all television companies, is scaling back amid a deepening recession. Networks are particularly vulnerable now because their audiences are shrinking and their advertising revenues are falling but production costs for dramas and comedies are continuing to climb.

ABC has acquired the television rights to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and its first sequel from Warner Bros., in a deal estimated to be worth nearly $140million--an amount that could establish a new record, according to the companies and sources close to the deal. The Walt Disney Co.

ABC, seeking to rebuild its prime-time lineup, reportedly will schedule nine new shows in the fall, including a comedy starring Michael J. Fox, series based on the movies "Clueless" and "Dangerous Minds," and a third news magazine to go up against NBC's "ER." The network is also expected to renew a number of marginally rated first-year programs, among them "Murder One," "High Incident" and "Second Noah"--all one-hour shows that have received critical praise but attracted relatively few viewers.

Deleese Williams, a young Texas woman so ill at ease with her looks that she avoided family photos, saw ABC's "Extreme Makeover" as a chance to have the face she had always wanted. After medical and psychological exams, intense personal interviews and the promise of a Cindy Crawford smile, Williams was slated for plastic surgery in Los Angeles. But at the last minute, her reality TV makeover was scrapped and she was put on a plane home.

J. Larre Barrett has been promoted to vice president for sports sales for the ABC television network.

IT was the perfect cast for an uplifting reality TV show: five orphaned siblings and the loving family friends who took them in. The story line certainly appealed to the producers of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." After learning that Phil and Loki Leomiti had opened their doors to the Higgins clan -- their former neighbors and fellow church members -- the show's executives proposed transforming the couple's modest Santa Fe Springs house into a nine-bedroom showpiece.

A week of brinkmanship ended Sunday when Walt Disney Co. and Cablevision Systems Corp. settled their dispute over a new contract, a breakthrough that allowed viewers in 3.1 million homes in the New York area to watch the Academy Awards -- starting 13 minutes into the telecast. The post-deadline tentative accord came after the two companies spent a week exchanging barbs that led to Disney stripping its ABC signal from Cablevision's systems early Sunday. Many Cablevision customers spent the day trekking to electronics stores to buy digital rabbit ears so they wouldn't miss the Oscars.

Diane Sawyer will anchor ABC's "World News" from Afghanistan tonight and Tuesday, her second trip abroad since taking the helm of the evening newscast less than a month ago. In her fifth trip to the country, which she last visited in April 2007, Sawyer will report on the status of the war effort as part of ABC's "Afghanistan: Where Things Stand" series. Her coverage will include an interview with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. "Good Morning America Weekend" anchor Bill Weir, embedded with U.S. forces, also will report.

With eight comedies and dramas premiering this fall -- seven of them in the next few weeks -- Walt Disney Co.'s ABC is making the unusual move of reducing the number of commercials in the premiere episodes of its new shows. Although that may seem an odd decision in a tough economy when networks are scrambling for every advertising dollar they can get, they are also fighting to hold on to every viewer. ABC hopes that fewer ads will prevent people from switching the channel to a rival network.

In the opening of ABC's new drama "FlashForward," the world's population blacks out at the same moment and has a vision of events on a day in April 2010. ABC executives, particularly Entertainment Group President Steve McPherson, may also be having visions of what the future will look like seven months from now. By then it will be clear to them whether the network's risky move to premiere twice as many new shows as its rivals this fall has paid off or not. The Walt Disney Co.-owned network, which last season ranked third in prime time, is facing its toughest programming challenge in years.

Call it the Marion Cotillard Effect. Few American moviegoers had heard of the French actress before she won the Academy Award last year for her performance in the art-house film "La Vie en Rose." That year also marked the lowest ratings ever for an Oscar telecast. Publicly, executives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and ABC, which has broadcast the show annually since 1976, shrugged off the sinking ratings.

For years, the ABC television network seeded its prime-time schedule with shows produced by the company's production studio. Walt Disney Co.'s "keep it in the family" approach aimed to ensure that if any of the shows hit it big, as "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" have, the company would reap the financial rewards. But times are tougher, and the Disney-owned network is breaking with tradition. On Tuesday, ABC rolled out its slate of new shows -- and most come from outside suppliers.

Walt Disney Co., seeking to broaden the audience for its broadcast and cable shows on the Internet's most popular video site, struck a deal Monday with Google Inc.'s YouTube to distribute short-form content from ESPN and ABC. The agreement would extend the Internet reach for ESPN's sports highlights and ABC News updates and provide another outlet for video snippets taken from the ABC broadcast network and ABC Family cable channel shows.

This year, Oscar is a little less golden. The ABC network, in a move that reverses years of escalating prices and underscores the worsening economy, has shaved the cost of a commercial for Sunday's annual Academy Awards show, one of TV's most-watched programs. Once considered invincible to downturns, big events such as the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl, which attract tens of millions of viewers, can no longer command automatic rate hikes.