WJLA - ABC 7 News online - Television live

WJLA - ABC 7 News Live Stream

WJLA - ABC 7 News - is Washington's ABC affiliate: the District's third television station, on the air since 3 October 1947 and today one of the two flagship stations of the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Broadcasting from studios on Wilson Boulevard in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Virginia, and transmitting from Tenleytown in northwest Washington, it pairs ABC's national programming with a newsroom covering the capital region, and its newscasts also stream live online.

Few American stations carry a lineage like this one: it began life as the Washington Star's television outlet, carries the initials of a Texas banker who bought the paper's media empire, and has held its ABC affiliation longer than any other station in the country.

The Capital's Newsroom

ABC 7 News covers the District, the Maryland suburbs and Northern Virginia from morning to late night, with a beat list no other local newsroom can match - the White House, the Capitol, the federal agencies, and the region's own government - plus live coverage of the events that stop the capital: rallies, hearings, storms and motorcades. The sister cable channel WJLA 24/7 News - the former News Channel 8, merged with channel 7's news department in 2002 - extends the newsroom around the clock, while the long-running 7 On Your Side consumer franchise remains the station's best-known brand in a market where viewers have problems worth solving.

From the Star to Allbritton to Sinclair

Channel 7 signed on 3 October 1947 as WMAL-TV, owned by the Washington Star alongside WMAL radio - the first high-band VHF television station in the United States. It started with CBS programming because ABC's television network did not yet exist; when ABC launched on television in 1948, channel 7 became the network's third primary affiliate, a relationship that has now outlasted every other. Houston banker Joe Allbritton bought the Star's media properties in 1975, and when the FCC's cross-ownership rules forced the combination apart - WMAL radio went to ABC, the paper to Time Inc. - the television station took the call letters WJLA on 6 June 1977, after Allbritton's own initials. Allbritton Communications held the station until Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired the group in 2014, making Washington one of Sinclair's flagship markets.

The Rosslyn Complex and the Tenleytown Tower

The 2002 merger of News Channel 8 with WJLA's news department created a unified operation in Rosslyn that has anchored the station's identity since - a newsroom serving the capital from the Virginia side of the Potomac, with the Tenleytown transmitter carrying the signal across the whole region. The subchannel history runs from the experimental Local Point TV of the 2000s to today's digital lineup, and the station's live event coverage - from election nights to breaking Washington news - streams to an audience that follows the capital's news from wherever in the world it happens to be.

WJLA - ABC 7 News Watch Live Streaming now online