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
In 1959, Walt Disney Productions, having improved its financial situation, had purchased ABC's shares in the Disneyland theme park for $7.5 million and initiated discussions to renew ABC's television contract for "Walt Disney Presents", which was due to expire in 1961. Walt Disney was approached by NBC to produce color broadcasts of his anthology series (which would be renamed "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color"). Goldenson said ABC could not counter the offer, because the network did not have the technical and financial resources to carry the program in the format. As a result, ABC and Disney's first television collaboration ended in 1961 (the network would resume its relationship with Disney in 1985, when the anthology series returned to the network for a three-season run as the "Disney Sunday Movie" until it lost the rights to NBC again in 1988; the Disney anthology series would return to ABC in 1996, following the company's purchase of the future Capital Cities/ABC, as "The Wonderful World of Disney").