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.
History of Freeform (TV channel)
The American cable and satellite television network Freeform was originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service on April 29, 1977, and has gone through several different owners (as well as six different name changes) during its history. This article details the network's existence from its founding by the Christian Broadcasting Network on April 29, 1977 to its current ownership under The Walt Disney Company, which renamed ABC Family as Freeform on January 12, 2016.