ABC AM America promo

AM America was a morning news program by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Launched in January 1975, it lasted only ten months on the air. This promo clip was already mentioned in the post focusing on the program’s logo in Yagi Link Double. Here we’ll take a closer look at the other animated type in this spot, as it pretty much sums up the various trends in 1970s display typography in the United States.

The promo opens up with the name of host Bill Beutel, sliding in from both sides, in caps from the bold and informal Blippo Black, a geometric sans in the vein of Burko, Harry or Bauhaus Geometric. The typeface chosen for the name of co-host Stephanie Edwards – the only woman featured – is Ringlet, an 1880s design with curls, and one of the various Victorian faces that saw a revival in the 1960s and 1970s, in pink. Washington correspondent and news anchor Peter Jennings is represented by a wall of caps in a no-nonsense condensed grot, probably Helvetica schmalhalbfett. “News” gets the (then) futuristic MICR-style face Moore Computer. In further roles: Two staples from ITC; ITC Avant Garde Gothic Bold for Robert Trout and ITC Serif Gothic for Sam Ervin, both in all caps, and the inevitable Bookman with its artificially obliqued and boldened letterforms for John Lindsay. The multicolored “Entertainment” uses an all-caps/unicase face made of dots, available from Photo-Lettering as Dellacroce Marquee B.

See the animated version on YouTube.