Linden’s acquisition of control over NRS in Spring, 1928 brought him the four radio stations NRS owned as well as the existing American Broadcasting Company (ABC) name and circuit connections. While ABC had apparently previously been an informally assumed business name, Linden opened an ABC New York City sales office in April and formally incorporated the American Broadcasting Company in the state of Washington in November 1928. Both gave some indication of his intention to compete on a national scale on the existing networks’ home grounds. While the ABC programming had initially been more sporadic, under Linden’s more ambitious ABC vision the network’s program schedule debuted on December 22, 1928, with a three-hour special sponsored by the Union Oil Company followed by an expanded schedule of network offerings. Linden also contracted with the Columbia Broadcasting System whose network at that time ended in Omaha and was, therefore was anxious to extend its coverage in the West. Under the arrangement ABC picked up Columbia’s programming in Omaha and relayed it to ABC’s affiliated stations. Occasionally, Columbia would reverse the phone lines and relay ABC’s programs to the Eastern half of the U.S. ABC’s first carriage of a Columbia program occurred on October 9, 1928 and consisted of a performance by the popular vaudeville team Moran and Mack as “The Two Crows”. And on January 9, 1928, Columbia formally inaugurated its connection with Linden’s ABC. In 1929, the ABC rapidly expanded and placed AT&T line orders to connect stations both in California as it simultaneously began moving east. According to Homer Pope, who began working at KJR/ABC in mid-1928, initially ABC used telegraph lines to link the stations. There was precedent for that since the NBC Blue Network had started out linking its stations with Western Union lines. But the telegraph lines provided inferior quality and Linden gradually moved to connect ABC’s stations with the more expensive AT&T long-distance circuits. On January 6, 1929, new telephone circuits were added to feed additional affiliated ABC stations in Omaha (KOIL), Denver (KLZ), Salt Lake City (KDYL) and Los Angele KMTR (which later took the call sign KLAC). The burgeoning network now had eight stations. At its height, ABC's connections went as far east as Chicago while the network was simultaneously announcing new affiliation agreements with stations all the way to the Atlantic seaboard.