ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Its flagship program is World News with Diane Sawyer; other programs include morning show Good Morning America, Nightline, television news magazine shows Primetime & 20/20, and Sunday morning political affairs program This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
ABC began news broadcasts early in its independent existence as a radio network after the Federal Communications Commission ordered the former NBC Blue Network to be spun off as an independent company in 1943. This was done to keep single or a few companies such as NBC and CBS from dominating radio broadcasting in the U.S., and in particular, from dominating news and political broadcasting and projecting narrow points-of-view. Television broadcasting was suspended however, during World War II.
Regular ABC television news broadcasts began soon after ABC started transmitting from its initial New York City television station and production center in late summer 1948. ABC-TV news broadcasts have continued as the ABC television network spread across the country, a process that took many years, from that beginning in 1948 through today, but they have not always had the same level of success that they enjoy now. Throughout the 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s, ABC News consistently ranked third in viewership behind CBS News and NBC News. Until the 1970s, the ABC-TV network had fewer affiliate stations, and also weaker prime-time programming lineups to support the network's news departments than the two larger networks had, each of which had established their radio news operations during the 1930s.
George Robert Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) is an American television journalist and a former political advisor.
Stephanopoulos rose to early prominence as a quick-witted communications director for the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, subsequently becoming White House Communications Director then Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy before departing in December 1996. Today he is chief political correspondent for ABC News, co-anchor of ABC News' Good Morning America (GMA), host of ABC's Sunday morning This Week, and primary substitute for ABC network anchor Diane Sawyer on ABC World News.
In recent years he has co-hosted ABC News' special live coverage of political events with Sawyer and Charles Gibson and launched an ABCNews.com blog, George's Bottom Line.
Stephanopoulos is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Stephanopoulos was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, to Greek immigrants, Robert George and Nickolitsa ("Nikki") Gloria (née Chafos) Stephanopoulos.
David Muir (born November 8, 1973) is an American journalist and anchor for ABC News, the news division of the ABC broadcast-television network based in New York City, New York.
Muir attended Onondaga Junior-Senior High School in Nedrow, a suburb of Syracuse, New York. He then attended Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1995. Following graduation, he attended the Institute on Political Journalism at The Fund for American Studies, affiliated with Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. He also studied at the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain.
Muir spent five years as an anchor and reporter at WTVH television in his hometown of Syracuse. While in Syracuse, he filed reports from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel, as well as from the Gaza Strip following the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel. The reports earned him top honors from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. The Associated Press honored him for Best Enterprise Reporting and Best Television Interview. The Syracuse Press Club recognized him as anchor of the "Best Local Newscast" and he was voted one of Syracuse's "Best Local News Anchors."
Timothy D. “Tim” Cook (born November 1, 1960) is the CEO of Apple. Cook joined Apple in March 1998 as SVP of Worldwide Operations and also served as EVP of Worldwide Sales and Operations and was COO until he was named the CEO of Apple on August 24, 2011, succeeding Steve Jobs, who died on October 5, 2011, from pancreatic cancer. Cook had previously served as acting CEO of Apple after Jobs began a medical leave in January 2011.
In early 2012, he was awarded compensation of 1 million shares, vesting in 2021, by Apple's Board of Directors. As of April 2012, these shares are valued at US $600 million, making him the world's highest paid CEO.
Cook grew up in Robertsdale, Alabama, near Mobile. His father was a shipyard worker, while his mother was a homemaker. Cook graduated from high school at Robertsdale High School, earned a B.S. degree in industrial engineering from Auburn University in 1982, and his M.B.A. from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in 1988.
Cook spent six months at Compaq as VP for Corporate Materials before he was hired by Steve Jobs to join Apple in 1998. He initially served as Senior Vice President for Worldwide Operations. Prior to that, Cook served as the chief operating officer (COO) of the computer reseller division of Intelligent Electronics and spent 12 years in IBM's personal computer business as the director of North American Fulfillment.