Osaka Tower was completed in 1966 at a cost of 400 million yen, built beside ABC's headquarters in Kita-ku as both a radio transmission tower and a public observation platform. Rising 160 meters on a quadratic lattice of metal tubing, it was engineered to withstand vibrations and wind velocities of extraordinary force. The design was functional rather than flamboyant: white paint covered the lower section below the observation deck at 102 meters, while the upper portion alternated red and white, the standard aviation warning pattern for tall structures in Japan. An elevator carried 30 passengers at a time to the two-story observation deck, which could hold 270 people. On opening day, 4,000 visitors rode up to see Osaka spread out beneath them, from the dense commercial districts of Kita-ku to the distant shimmer of Osaka Bay.

For its first 13 years, the tower served primarily as a transmission facility and tourist attraction. That changed in 1979 when ABC installed the Sky Studio on the second floor of the observation deck, transforming the tower from a passive landmark into an active broadcasting platform. Every morning, presenters delivered weather forecasts and traffic reports from the glass-walled studio high above the city, their backdrop the live panorama of Osaka's streets and rooftops. The Sky Studio made the tower a familiar presence in millions of Kansai households, a daily reminder of the structure that stood watch over the city. The tower also featured prominently in ABC's own identity: its sign-on and sign-off broadcast sequences from 1967 through the early 1990s showcased the tower as the station's visual emblem.

The observation deck closed to the public in 1997, and the reason reflected the anxieties of a changing era. Heightened security concerns, driven in part by a mail bomb incident at the tower in 1994, led to the decision to shut the viewing platform permanently. The mid-1990s were a tense period in Japan: the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack on the Tokyo subway had shaken the nation's sense of public safety, and exposed structures like observation towers became targets of precaution. The Sky Studio continued to operate for a time, but the tower's public life was effectively over. For its final decade, it stood as a broadcasting and transmission facility only, its observation windows dark, its elevator carrying technicians rather than tourists.

When ABC relocated its headquarters to Fukushima-ku, Osaka, in 2008, the tower lost its primary purpose. Demolition was scheduled, but the dense urban setting of Kita-ku demanded an unconventional approach. Rather than the standard top-down dismantling used for most tall structures, engineers employed a bottom-up method, removing sections from the base while lowering the remaining structure. The technique, unusual enough to attract attention from the demolition industry, reflected the practical reality of taking apart a 160-meter tower in one of Osaka's most crowded neighborhoods. By 2009, the tower was gone. No replacement was built. The skyline simply absorbed the absence, and a structure that had defined a corner of Kita-ku for more than four decades left behind only broadcast archives and the memories of 4,000 opening-day visitors who once gazed out from 102 meters above the city.