The company was founded on June 13, 1946, an American electronics engineer who went into radio equipment assembly and radio broadcasting. In 1949, Lindenberg shifted Bolinao to radio broadcasting with DZBC and masterminded
the introduction of television to the country in 1953. In 1951, Lindenberg partnered with Antonio Quirino, brother of then-Philippine President
Elpidio Quirino, in order to try their hand at television broadcasting. In 1952, BEC was renamed as Alto Broadcasting System or ABS (with Alto Sales Corporation as its corporate name). "Alto" was a contraction of Quirino's and his wife's first names, Tony and Aleli, and is Spanish for "tall". Though they had little money and resources, ABS was able to put up its TV tower by July 1953 and import some 300 television sets. The initial test broadcasts began in September of the same year. The first full-blown broadcast was on October 23, 1953, of a party in Tony Quirino's humble abode. The television station was known as
DZAQ-TV. CBN was founded on September 24, 1956, by
Eugenio Lopez Sr. and the then-
Philippine Vice President Fernando Lopez. The network initially focused only on radio broadcasting. It launched its very own TV station,
DZXL-TV 9, on April 19 (or July), 1958. In 1958, the network's new headquarters at
Dewey Boulevard was inaugurated, and all radio and television operations were consolidated into its two buildings – the radio stations at the Chronicle Building at Aduana Street,
Intramuros,
Manila and the TV operations at the brand new Dewey Boulevard building in
Pasay,
Rizal. ABS-CBN president Geny López was arrested in November 1972, imprisoned and held without trial for five years until he and his cellmate
Sergio Osmeña III launched a daring jailbreak on October 1, 1977. They fled into exile in the United States together with their families. ABS-CBN general manager Jake Almeda Lopez was also jailed for a year for his protest activities. After his daring and successful escape from
Fort Bonifacio, he joined López in exile in the United States and kept himself busy protesting the Marcos Sr. dictatorship from abroad. He was a key figure in the protest over the
Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. The company was replaced by taken over by
Banahaw Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on November 4, 1973, with DZAQ-TV Channel 2 changed to its new call sign (DWWX-TV), logo, slogan and a theme song (composed by
Jose Mari Chan entitled "Big Beautiful Country") under
Roberto Benedicto, a
crony of Ferdinand Marcos, then-Philippines ambassador to Japan, and sugar plantation owner, who used the Broadcasting Center at Bohol Avenue, then renamed "
Broadcast Plaza", as the home of
Government Television/Maharlika Broadcasting System (GTV/MBS, originally from
Intramuros) and
Kanlaon Broadcasting System/Radio Philippines Network (KBS/RPN, after the studio in Pasay was destroyed by fire on June 6, 1973). ==Assets, divisions, and subsidiaries==