Leonard Goldenson
Goldenson orchestrated the merger of United Paramount Theatres with ABC in 1953 (after Paramount was ordered to spin it off in the wake of "United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.", a 1948 decree of the U.S. Supreme Court). ABC was originally formed in 1943 in the wake of an earlier Supreme Court decree effectively ordering the spinoff of the largely secondary-status "Blue Network" from its then-parent, NBC; its buyer, industrialist Edward J. Noble, tried to build ABC into a competitive Broadcasting company, but by 1951 was rumored to be on the verge of selling the nearly bankrupt operation to CBS, whose management apparently wanted ABC's critically important owned-and-operated television stations.
American Broadcasting Company
On March 1, 1953, ABC's New York City flagship stations – WJZ, WJZ-FM and WJZ-TV – changed their respective callsigns to WABC, WABC-FM and WABC-TV, and moved their operations to facilities at 7 West 66th Street, one block away from Central Park. The WABC call letters were previously used by the flagship station of CBS Radio (now WCBS (AM)) until 1946. The WJZ calls would later be reassigned to the then-ABC affiliate in Baltimore in 1959, in an historical nod to the fact that WJZ was originally established by the Baltimore station's owner at the time, Westinghouse.