The Circle 7 logo is an often-used

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the eart ...

logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Designed in the early 1960s for the

American Broadcasting Company The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Cali ...

's five owned-and-operated stations (all of which broadcast on VHF channel 7), the logo, or a version of it, is currently being used not only by several ABC stations and affiliates, but also by a number of television broadcasters around the world.

History and information

The Circle 7 logo was created by G. Dean Smith, a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

graphic designer, and was first used in 1962 by

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

as the logo for its (then) five owned-and-operated television stations:

WABC-TV WABC-TV (channel 7) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios in the Lincoln Square neig ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

;

KABC-TV KABC-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast of the United States, West Coast Flagship (broadcasting), flagship of the American Broadcasting Company, ABC network. ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

; WBKB (now

WLS-TV WLS-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios on North Stat ...

) in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

;

KGO-TV KGO-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's ABC network outlet. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, KGO-TV ma ...

in San Francisco; and

WXYZ-TV WXYZ-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside independent station WMYD (channel 20). Both stations share studios at Broadcast House on ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

. When ABC applied for television station licenses in the late 1940s, it was thought that the low-band channel frequencies (2 through 6) would be removed from use for television broadcasting, thus making these five stations broadcasting on VHF channel 7 the lowest on the television dial; those plans never came to pass.

American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, Inc. (originally United Paramount Theatres, later the American Broadcasting Companies and ABC Television) was the post-merger parent company of the American Broadcasting Company and United Paramount Thea ...

, ABC's then-corporate parent, registered the Circle 7 logo with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1962. When WABC-TV adopted the '' Eyewitness News'' format in January 1968, all reporters and anchors were required to wear a

blazer A blazer is a type of jacket resembling a suit jacket, but cut more casually. A blazer is generally distinguished from a sport coat as a more formal garment and tailored from solid colour fabrics. Blazers often have naval-style metal buttons ...

with a ''Circle 7'' patch (a lapel pin in later years) when they appeared on the air – a marketing practice that spread to the other ABC O&Os, and eventually to other ABC affiliates. Stations commonly used the logo on microphone flags, newscaster clothing and design of sets, as well as on-air graphics for locally originated programming.

Circle Seven Animation Circle Seven Animation (or Disney Circle Seven Animation) was a short-lived division of Walt Disney Feature Animation specializing in computer-generated imagery (CGI) animation and was originally intended to create sequels to the Disney-owned Pi ...

, a short-lived (2005-2006) division of ABC parent company

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

that was working on sequels to Disney-owned

Pixar Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californ ...

films, was indirectly named after the logo, as its studios were located on Circle Seven Drive in Glendale, California, a street which was renamed for the logo when KABC-TV moved its studios there.

U.S. stations currently using the Circle 7 logo or a variant

¹WZVN is operated through an LMA by

Waterman Broadcasting Corporation Waterman Broadcasting Corporation is a small American television broadcasting company based in Fort Myers, Florida. It was founded in 1978 in Fort Myers when it purchased WBBH from Broadcast Telecasting Services, Inc. It was founded by Bernard Wa ...

Non-U.S. use

* In Australia,

Seven Network The Seven Network (commonly known as Channel Seven or simply Seven) is a major Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by Seven West Media Limited, and is one of five main free-to-air television networks in Australia ...

affiliate

ATN-7 ATN is the Sydney flagship television station of the Seven Network in Australia. The licence, issued to a company named Amalgamated Television Services, a subsidiary of John Fairfax & Sons, was one of the first four licences (two in Sydney, ...

used the "Circle 7" logo from 1968 to 1969 with customized versions across the network from 1970 to 2000. * In Malaysia, this logo was adopted by NTV7 from 2001 until March 5, 2018. * In Peru, RTP (now

TV Perú TV Perú is the flagship public television network of Peruvian state broadcaster IRTP. It is Peru's first channel and the one to have the widest coverage area in the country. In 2010, it started broadcasting on digital terrestrial television and ...

) adopted this logo in 1989 and used it until 1991. * In the Philippines, GMA (also known as

DZBB-TV DZBB-TV, Channel 7 (analog) and Channel 15 (digital), is the flagship TV station of Philippine television network GMA. The station is owned and operated by GMA Network Inc. with its studios are located at the GMA Network Center, EDSA cor ...

) used the logo from 1961 until 1974 when it was dropped due to Marcos' martial law and the handover to new owners. The logo stayed until the latter part of the decade. * In Indonesia, TV7 used the stylized Circle 7 logo from its launch in November 2001 until its relaunch as

Trans7 Trans7 (pronounced ''Trans Tujuh'' in Indonesian, formerly known as TV7) is an Indonesian free-to-air television network owned by Trans Media, a part of Trans Corp, which in turn a subsidiary of CT Corp. For the first time, Trans7 was the officia ...

in December 2006. * In Brazil,

RecordTV RecordTV (), formerly known as Rede Record, is a Brazilian free-to-air television network. It is currently the second largest commercial TV station in Brazil, and the 28th largest in the 2012 world ranking. In 2010, it was elected by the adver ...

adopted the logo in 1965 and used it until 1970. * In Bermuda, ABC affiliate ZFB-TV uses the Circle 7 logo, although the station refers to being branded by cable channel 7 rather than actual virtual channel (station is on Channel 19). * In Turkey,

Kanal 7 Kanal 7 ( en, Channel 7) is a Turkish nationwide Islamic TV channel established and on 27 July 1994. It has a terrestrial broadcast licence, and it is also available throughout Turkey via satellite. It airs Indian and Korean dramas. The channel ...

used the Circle 7 logo since 2002, The circle in the logo is slightly oval and leg of digit 7 through the circle.

References

Sources

New '7' logo designed for KGO-TV (ch.7)
(PDF file), ''

Broadcasting Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting beg ...

'', August 27, 1962, p. 72.
"Designed Symbols for AT&T, ABC Stations Dean Smith; Corporate Logo Creator"
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'', March 28, 1987 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Circle 7 Logo American Broadcasting Company Local television programming in the United States Commercial logos Symbols introduced in 1962

History and information

U.S. stations currently using the Circle 7 logo or a variant

Non-U.S. use

See also

References

Sources