Sierran Broadcasting Company
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This page uses material from the Wikipedia page American Broadcasting Company, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors). |
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| Type |
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|---|---|
| Country | |
| Founded |
May 15, 1926 by Edward J. Noble |
| Headquarters |
Providencia,  Gold Coast,  Sierra |
| Area | Nationwide |
| Owner |
Independent (1926–1986) Homerun Communications/SBC Inc. (1986–1996) The Walt Disney Company (1996–present) |
| Parent | |
Key people |
|
Launch date |
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Picture format |
HDTV 720p (upscaled to 1080i, or distributed in 1080p via ATSC 3.0 in some markets) |
| Affiliates |
Lists: By Province, State, and Area or by market |
Official website | www.sbc.com |
| Language | English |
The Sierran Broadcasting Company (SBC) is a Sierran multinational commercial broadcast network that is the flagship property of Disney-SBC Group, a division of Disney General Entertainment Content of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Providencia, Gold Coast, in Hollywood, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Roy E. Disney Animation Building.
SBC launched as a radio network in 1927, under the guide of Edward J. Noble. It extended its operations to television in 1939, the first Sierran network to do so. In the 1980s, the network merged with Homerun Communications, owner of Homerun, Spanish over-the-air network Buena TV (Now Buena Vista TV) and several print publications. Most of Homerun/SBC's assets were purchased by Disney in 1995.
SBC has eight owned and operated and over 150 affiliated television stations throughout the Kingdom of Sierra. Some SBC-affiliated stations can also be seen in Astoria, Brazoria, and Superior via pay-television providers, and certain other affiliates can also be received over-the-air in areas near the Sierra–Astoria and Sierra-Superior border.
History
Origins
The company was founded as a provincial network of English-language news stations across Gold Coast by Edward J. Noble, an entrepreneur from the Northeast Union. Originally the founder of Life Savers, Noble fled during the Continental Revolutionary War. Noble eventually ended up in Gold Coast, where he invested in the Radio industry. He purchased the Providencial radio station KFXB, moving it to Porciúncula under the call sign KPP. KPP would remain as SBC's flagship station into the modern age.
Noble soon had the idea to set up a nationwide radio network. However, setting this up would be far from easy. As a result of monopolistic practices from the Western Bell Company, landline usage was very expensive. The Radio Company of Sierra (RCS), however, had the money and influence to help Noble with his goal, and had wanted to invest in radio for some time. Signing deals with other stations and with an investment from RCS, the Sierran Broadcasting Company would be founded on May 15th, 1926, as the first national network of Sierra. As a pioneer of Radio technology, RCS maintained close relations with SBC throughout it's early years, and many of their products were advertised on the network.
SBC initially competed with regional networks, though the rising Tokki Radio Service proved to be a rising competitor when it launched the following year. Tokki aimed primarily at Asian-Sierrans, but began expanding into English speaking audiences. Thus, SBC began to expand to Spanish speaking audiences.
SBC's biggest hit during this time was the soap opera Radio Tycoon, a prototype of sorts to their later Flagship Station.
Entry into television
While SBC made Noble and RCS money, RCS had an ambition to expand beyond radio, and into the developing market of Television. David Sarnoff, president of RCS, even drew up plans to introduce a TV station in Porciúncula. However, problems with the great depression and Great War I resulted in these plans being delayed by a couple of years. However, with the end of the war, a deal would be reached with RCS. SBC submitted five applications for television station licenses in 1938, one for each market where it owned and operated a radio station (Tijuana, Porciúncula, Salt Lake City, San Francisco City, and San Diego). These applications all requested for the stations to broadcast on VHF channel 7, as Gerald Ford Smith, then SBC's vice-president of engineering, thought that the low-band VHF frequencies (corresponding to channels 2 through 6) would be requisitioned from broadcasting use and reallocated for the Sierran Royal Army.
On May 25, 1939, SBC, in association with RCS, introduced the first, regularly scheduled, 441-line electronic television service in the Kingdom over Porciúncula's K2XGC from a transmitter atop Mount Wilson. This was an experimental station, meant to test the waters for further stations. In May 4, 1941, the station would be approved for commercial broadcasting, under the callsign KPP-TV. RCS would own 25% in this station and others, as part of their deal. SBC's other owned-and-operated stations launched over the course of the next 13 months: KTPN-TV in Tijuana would open on July 19, while KSLC-TV in Salt Lake City went on the air on September 17. KSDT began operations on December 31, while KSFC-TV would launch on March 6 of next year.
SBC began to expand, with many stations signing affiliate agreements. Two of their biggest hits during the early period were Sierran National TV Quiz and The Nathan Chapman Show. The Sierran National TV Quiz was one of the first game shows on Sierran Television, and helped codify many of the tropes and trends in the quiz show genre. The Nathan Chapman show was a comedy variety show, hosted by the famous comedian. It helped influence the Situation Comedy genre.
Throughout the decade, Tokki continued to serve as a rival to SBC; entering the TV business around the same time. However, a new network would emerge in the early 50's. The Royal Broadcasting Service, today known simply as RBS, was a public radio network that soon entered into TV. It would become one of the major rivals of both SBC and Tokki, and would even spawn a second channel, RBS 2. All three would continue to grow and expand.
Hollywood meets TV
With the end of the Studio system, many in Hollywood began looking to the growing TV industry for financial security. This proved to be lucrative for both the studios and the networks, as both benefited from the production of news shows. SBC's flagship productions at the time were Bear Republic, based on the radio program of the same title, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which held the record for the longest-running prime time comedy in U.S. television until 2003.
The most iconic of SBC's relationships with Hollywood producers was its agreement with Walt Disney. Walt and his brother Roy contacted network executives in late 1953 to secure funding for Disneyland Resort. Walt wanted SBC to invest $500,000, a third of the budget intended for the park. About a few months later, in early 1954, SBC agreed to finance Disneyland in exchange for the right to broadcast a new Wednesday night program, Disneyland, which debuted on the network on October 27, 1954 as the first of many anthology television programs that Disney would broadcast over the course of the next 50 years. When Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955, SBC aired Destination: Disneyland, which was essential Shortly thereafter, on October 3, 1955, a second regularly scheduled program produced by Disney made its debut, The Mickey Mouse Club, a children's program that aired Monday through Friday afternoons, which starred a group of 24 children known as the "Mouseketeers".
In the late 1950s the SBC network expanded it's programming slate with westerns and detective series. On September 3, 1958, the Disneyland anthology series was retitled Walt Disney Presents as it became disassociated with the theme park of the same name. The popularity of westerns, which SBC is credited for having started, represented a fifth of all primetime series on Sierran television in January 1959, at which point detective shows were beginning to rise in popularity as well. SBC requested additional productions from Disney. SBC picked up the detective series, P.I. Ricardo (after it was rejected by Tokki in late 1958) and debuted it in April 1959. The series became known for it's violent action and film noir stylings.
These kinds of programs presented SBC as having a "philosophy of counterprogramming against its competitors", offering a strong lineup of programs that contrasted with those seen on its rival networks, which helped Noble and create a continuum of programming which bridged film and television. SBC's western series as well as series such as the actioner Zorro, starring Ricardo Montalbán helped captivate audiences, and maintain good relations with Disney.
Color Broadcasting
During the 1960s, SBC continued its strategies from the mid-1950s by consolidating the network as part of its effort to maintain loyalty with the public. The network's finances improved and allowed it to invest in other properties and programming. In May 1960, two years after the death of Noble, management bought out RCS's stake in the company and it's owned and operated stations. This removed the Radio company's influence, and cemented Gerald Ford Smith as Noble's successor.
In 1960, ex-Superian Broadcasting Corporation and entrepreneur John Wulff was looking for investors for his new tv station: WNHM. SBC would purchase a 25% interest in what would become WNHM's parent, Wulf Communications. Though they would later sell their stake in 1965, SBC and SCT maintain decent relations.
SBC programming of the 1960s was marked by the rise of family-oriented series in an attempt to counterprogram against its competitors. The decade was also marked by the network's gradual transition to color and add sports programming. In 1959, Walt Disney Productions, having improved its financial situation, purchased SBC's shares in the Disneyland theme park for $7.5 million and initiated discussions to renew SBC's television contract for Walt Disney Presents. Zorro began switching to color, though many viewers wouldn't get to see it
On September 23, 1960, SBC premiered The Gato Family; although the animated series from Mike Goldman and Jeremy Myers was filmed in color from the beginning, it was initially broadcast to affiliates black and white, as SBC had only just began color broadcasting. The Gato Family allowed SBC to present a novelty – prime-time animated programming. Other animated series included Starman, Cuttlefish Blues, and The Bugs Bunny Show, the latter of which showcased classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts.
In search of new programs for a competitive edge, SBC's management believed that sports could be a major catalyst in improving the network's market share. On April 29, 1961, SBC launched Sports World, an anthology series created by Eduardo Gomez through his company Homerun Communications, and produced by a young Ricky Valentino. The series featured a different sporting event each broadcast, from baseball and football, to professional wrestling and boxing. SBC and Homerun would form a partnership that would last up until their 1986 merger.
Due to pressure from film studios which wished to increase their production, the major networks began airing theatrically released films. SBC launched the SBC TV Matinee in 1962, a year behind similar programs on RBS and Tokki and initially in black-and-white. Despite an increase in viewership share to 39% (from 25% in 1953), SBC often wavered between second and first place in revenue, often coming short RBS TV and/or Tokki. To compete, SBC ordered another series from Goldman-Myers, Dinosaur City, which debuted on September 16, 1962, as the network's first color series. On March 18, 1962, SBC premiered the soap opera Flagship Station, which later became the network's longest-running entertainment program. That year also saw the premiere of Riverside PD, a drama series centered around the Riverside police department.
The 1964–65 season was marked by the debuts of several classic series including The Newport Boys (on September 17) and Sisters of L Street (on September 18). Valentino's success with acquiring prime sports content was confirmed in 1964 when he was appointed COO of SBC Sports. Color became the dominant format for the Original Three networks in the 1965–66 Sierra network television season. However, SBC was slow to adapt at first. Despite this, the network managed to keep it's pace, and in the early 1970s, all SBC shows had switched to color.
SBC began phasing out non-news radio programming throughout the rest of the decade, with the crews being transferred to various television productions. In 1963, SBC would air produce it's first in-house game show, Codeword.
Homerun merger
Disney Purchase
Programming
The SBC television network provides 89 hours of regularly scheduled network programming each week. It provides 22 hours of prime-time programming to affiliated stations from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday (all times Pacific) and 7:00–11:00 p.m. on Sundays.
Daytime programming is also provided from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Pacific weekdays, (with a one-hour break at 12:00 p.m. Pacific for stations to air newscasts, locally produced programming or syndicated programs) featuring the talk-lifestyle shows Perspectives and Know Your Job, and the soap opera Flagship Station. SBC News programming includes Morning Spotlight from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. weekdays and Saturdays (along with one-hour Sunday editions); nightly editions of SBC Royal News Tonight (whose weekend editions are occasionally subject to abbreviation or preemption due to sports telecasts overrunning into the program's timeslot), the Sunday political talk show Weekend at the Capital, early morning news programs Wake Up Sierra! and SBC At Breakfast, and the late night newsmagazine Vision. Late-nights feature the weeknight talk show SBC Live.
Daytime
SBC's daytime schedule currently features the talk show Perspectives, lifestyle show Know Your Job, and the soap opera Flagship Station. Originally premiering in 1963, Flagship Station is SBC's longest-running entertainment program.
In addition to the long-running The Heart Grows Fonder (1970–2011) and Emergency Room (1968–2012), notable past soap operas seen on the daytime lineup include Ian's Hometown, Specters, and Fort Royal. SBC also aired the last nine years of Endless Nights, following its cancellation by RBS in 1975. SBC Daytime has also aired a number of game shows, including The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, Let's Make a Deal, Password, Split Second, The $10,000/$20,000 Pyramid, Family Feud, The Better Sex, Trivia Trap, All-Star Blitz and Hot Streak.
Sports
Sports programming is provided on occasion, primarily on weekend afternoons. Since 2000, the SBC Sports division has been defunct, with all sports telecasts on SBC being produced in association with sister cable network Homerun under the branding Homerun on SBC. While SBC has, in the past, aired notable sporting events such as the NFL's Monday Night Football, and various college football bowl games, general industry trends and changes in rights have prompted reductions in sports on broadcast television, with Disney preferring to schedule the majority of its sports rights on the networks of Homerun. This changed in 2020 with occasional simulcasts of Homerun Monday Night Football broadcasts on SBC.
SBC is the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Basketball Association (NBA), with its package (under the NBA on Homerun branding) traditionally beginning with its Christmas Day games, followed by a series of Saturday night and Sunday afternoon games through the remainder of the season, weekend playoff games, and all games of the NBA Finals. During college football season, SBC typically carries an afternoon doubleheader on Saturdays, along with the primetime Saturday Night Football. SBC also airs coverage of selected bowl games. Beginning in the 2015 NFL season, Homerun agreed to begin simulcasting a wild card playoff game on SBC.
Radio
Most of SBC's current radio programs are either news programs, or short dramas, though many of their biggest hits got their start on radio.
Specials
SBC currently holds the broadcast rights to the Royal Academy Awards, the Telly Awards, and the Sierran Music Awards.
Children's programming
In regard to children's programming, SBC has aired mostly programming from Walt Disney Television or other producers.
The crown jewel of the network's children's programming lineup was the award-winning Schoolhouse Rock! series of educational shorts, which mixed original songs and animation with lessons on basic school subjects such as mathematics, science, and history. The series aired from 1973 to 1985, before going on what turned out to be a temporary hiatus prior to its return to SBC's Saturday morning schedule in 1992. New episodes concerning money were released from 1994 to 1996.
At the start of the 1991–92 season, around the same time that SBC launched Saturday Night is Alright – a block that was inspired by the success of SBC's Friday night sitcom block Friday Funnies, executive producer Jim Janicek also brought the hosted programming block concept to Saturday mornings, under the brand Kids Love Saturday Night (KLSN).
The network's three-hour morning children's programming timeslot, SBC Kids, existed from 1989 to 2009. It featured a mixture of animated and live-action series from Walt Disney Television and other producers, aimed at children between the ages of 3 and 13. With the digital transition, SBC Kids was to be relaunched as a 24 hour subchannel available as a sub channel on SBC stations. Prior to launch, however, it was merged with Disney Channel; the saturday morning timeslot was given to the affiliates.
Stations
Since its inception, SBC has had over 150 television and radio stations that have carried programming from the network at various times throughout its history, including O&Os KSBC and KSBC-TV. As of 2020, SBC has eight owned-and-operated stations, and current and pending affiliation agreements with 165 stations encompassing the entire Kingdom of Sierra. The network has an estimated national reach of 97.72% of all households in the Kingdom.
Facilities and studios
All of SBC's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates have had their own facilities and studios, but transverse entities have been created to produce national programming. As a result, television series were produced by SBC Stars (Now SBC Touchstone Studios) beginning in 1951. Since the 1950s, SBC has had two major production facilities: the SBC Central Studios on Prospect Avenue in Hollywood, Porciúncula, and The Providencia Studios in Providencia.
In addition to the headquarters building on Riverside Drive, other SBC facilities in Providencia include a building at 3800 West Alameda, known as 'Buena Vista Center', which is primarily associated with Walt Disney Television and functions as the headquarters and broadcast center for Buena Vista TV, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, and Radio Disney. Additionally, Disney Television Animation has a facility on Empire Avenue near the Hollywood Providencia Airport. In nearby Glendale, Disney and SBC also maintain the Grand Central Creative Campus, which houses other company subsidiaries, including the studios of KSBC-TV and SBC News.
Entrance of SBC's headquarters at 77 West 66 Street
WABC-TV building at 500 Circle Seven Drive
Front gate of the The Prospect Studios
Related services
Video-on-demand services
SBC maintains several video-on-demand (VOD) services for delayed viewing of the network's programming, including a traditional VOD service called SBC on Demand, which is carried on most traditional cable and IPTV providers.
In May 2013, SBC launched "SBC Online" a revamp of its traditional multi-platform streaming services encompassing the network's existing streaming portal at SBC.com and a mobile app for smartphones and tablet computers. This service provides full-length episodes of SBC programs and live streams of local affiliates in select markets (this was the first such offering by a Sierra broadcast network). However, live streams are only available to authenticated subscribers of participating pay television providers. KSBC-TV Porciuncula was the first station to offer streams of their programming on the service.
In November 2015, it was reported that SBC had been developing a slate of original digital series for the SBC Online service, internally codenamed SBC+. In July 2016, SBC re-launched its streaming platforms, dropping the SBC Online brand, adding a streaming library of 38 classic SBC series, and introducing 7 original short-form series under the blanket branding SBC Net.
The most recent episodes of the network's shows are usually made available on the SBC app, Disney+ and SBC on Demand the day after their original broadcast. In addition, SBC on Demand disallows fast forwarding of accessed content. Restrictions implemented on January 7, 2014, restrict streaming of the most recent episode of any SBC program on Hulu and the SBC app until eight days after their initial broadcast, in order to encourage live or same-week viewing (via DVR and cable on demand), with day-after-air streaming on either service limited to subscribers of participating pay television providers using an authenticated internet account.
SBC HD
SBC's network feeds are transmitted in 720p high definition (HD), the native resolution format for The Walt Disney Company's U.S. television properties. However, most of Western Communications SBC-affiliated stations transmit the network's programming in 1080i, while 11 other affiliates owned by various companies carry the network feed in 480i standard definition either due to technical considerations for affiliates of other major networks that carry SBC programming on a digital subchannel or because a primary feed SBC affiliate has not yet upgraded their transmission equipment to allow content to be presented in HD.
SBC began its conversion to high definition with the launch of its simulcast feed, SBC HD, on September 16, 2001, at the start of the 2001–02 season, with its scripted prime-time series becoming the first shows to upgrade to the format, the simulcast feed was launched first on SBC's owned television stations that same date with many major affiliates following after that.
Buena Vista
Buena Vista Network (formerly Buena TV until 1996), launched in 1982 as a merger of three Spanish language independent stations owned by Homerun: KBWN in Porciúncula, KMEX in Tijuana, and KESP in San Diego. Buena Vista Network is the dominant Spanish language network in the Kingdom, with its ratings having risen to levels where it has beaten at least one of its English language competitors since the late 1990s.
International presence
The first attempts to internationalize the SBC television network dates to the 1950s. Smith said that SBC's first international activity was broadcasting the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953; RBS and Tokki were delayed in covering the coronation due to flight delays. Smith tried international investing, having SBC invest in stations in the Latin American market, acquiring a 51% interest in a network covering Central America and in 1959 established program distributor SBC International. The goal was to create a network of wholly and partially owned channels and affiliates to rebroadcast the network's programs. In 1959, this rerun activity was completed with program syndication, with SBC Films selling programs to networks not owned by SBC. The arrival of satellite television ended the need for SBC to hold interests in other countries; many governments also wanted to increase their independence and strengthen legislation to limit foreign ownership of broadcasting properties. As a result, SBC was forced to sell all of its interests in international networks, mainly in Latin America, in the 1970s.
The second period of international expansion is linked to that of the Homerun network in the 1990s, and policies enacted in the 2000s by Disney Media Networks. These policies included the expansion of several of the company's cable networks including Disney Channel and its spinoffs Toon Disney, Playhouse Disney, and the Media Corp joint venture Art Cable Channel (ARC).
Visual Identity
The SBC logo has evolved many times since the network's creation. The network's first logo, introduced in 1930, consisted of an SBC microphone in monochrome. In 1952, the logo would be revised into a seal with the letters "SBC" enclosed in a circular shield surmounted by an eagle. In 1957, just before the television network began its first color broadcasts, the SBC logo consisted of a tiny lowercase "sbc" in the center of a large lowercase letter a, a design known as the SBC Circle 1.
In 1962, graphic designer Paul Rand redesigned the SBC logo into its current and best-known form, with the lowercase letters "sbc" and a star enclosed in a single black circle. The new logo debuted on-air on October 19 of the same year, but it was not until the following spring that it was fully adopted. The letters are strongly reminiscent of the Bauhaus typeface designed by Herbert Bayer in the 1920s, but also share similarities with several other fonts, such as ITC Avant Garde and Horatio, and most closely resembling Chalet. The logo's simplicity made it easier to redesign and duplicate, which was beneficial before the advent of computer graphics. A color version of the logo was also developed around 1963, and animated as a brief 10-second intro to be shown before the then-small handful of network programs broadcast in color. The "s" was rendered in blue, the "b" in yellow, the "c" in red, and the star in purple, against the same single black circle. A variant of this color logo, with the colored letters against a white circle, was also commonly used throughout the 1960s.
The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of many graphical imaging packages for the network which based the logo's setting mainly on special lighting effects then under development including white, blue, pink, rainbow neon, and glittering dotted lines. Among the SBC Circle logo's many variants was a 1977 ID sequence that featured a bubble on a black background representing the circle with glossy gold letters, and was the first SBC identification card to simulate a three-dimensional appearance.
See also
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| Awards and events | ||
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