ABC Family - History

History

ABC Family launched on April 29, 1977, as the CBN Satellite Service, an arm of Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). The name later changed to the CBN Cable Network in 1984 and grew to a million homes by that year. On August 1, 1988, the word "Family" was incorporated into the name to better reflect the format, becoming The CBN Family Channel. By 1990, the network had grown too profitable to remain under the CBN banner without endangering CBN's non-profit status. CBN spun it off to a new company called International Family Entertainment Inc. (run by Robertson's son, Tim Robertson), and the name was changed to simply The Family Channel on September 15, 1990.

As The Family Channel, it attracted a slightly older (and religious) audience not sought by advertisers; only about one-third of homes watching the network included children or youth. The Family Channel started airing television shows for preschool children, preteens, and teenagers to target all members of the family.

International Family Entertainment, Inc. was sold to Fox Kids Worldwide Inc. in July 1997, and Fox Kids Worldwide Inc. was renamed Fox Family Worldwide Inc. The Family Channel was officially renamed Fox Family Channel on August 15, 1998. Following the sale to News Corporation, The 700 Club was scaled back to two airings a day (though the sale agreement required the channel to air it three times daily, once each in the morning, late evening and overnight hours), with the evening broadcast being moved out of prime time, pushed an hour later to 11 p.m. ET from 10 p.m., while Columbo was moved from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET on Sundays. More cartoons were added to the lineup, many of which were from the Fox Kids library, with about eight hours of cartoons airing a day. However, Fox Family also became a cornerstone for syndicating foreign TV series, such as the popular British S Club 7 TV series, which became their flagship series for the channel until the early 2000s. The channel also syndicated many Canadian series, both animated and live action, including Angela Anaconda, Big Wolf on Campus, I Was a 6th Grade Alien, and briefly The Zack Files; along with running cartoons and anime based on video games, such as Donkey Kong Country, Megaman, and Monster Rancher, mostly a part of the channel's morning lineup. The channel aired reruns of some Fox Kids series such as Bobby's World, Eek! The Cat, and Life with Louie, and added some recent family sitcoms as well. The new schedule also included reruns of the CBS Saturday morning series Pee-wee's Playhouse, which had not been seen on television since 1991. When Fox bought the channel in 1997, programmers sought a new dual audience—kids in daytime, families at night. In 1999, Fox tried to spin off two digital cable networks from Fox Family, the Boyz Channel and the Girlz Channel, which both contained content focusing on each gender; both networks went off the air a year later due to lack of demand and the controversy that developed over the gender-segregated channels. To a point, Disney is attempting to relaunch the concept somewhat in February 2009 with the conversion of Toon Disney into the tween boy-targeting Disney XD, while Disney Channel has shifted towards featuring programming appealing to girls (though not necessarily in the same gender-exclusionary manner as the Boyz/Girlz Channel concept).

Under Fox's ownership, Fox Family saw its ranking slide from 10th to 17th place as a result of an increasingly competitive race for younger viewers and the bickering over ownership between News Corp. and Haim Saban. Some observers believe that it chased away some of the older viewers and never really replaced the core audience. As a result, primetime ratings declined 35% in the past three years. It is also suggested that Fox hired more employees than needed, and when Disney took over, as many as 500 were laid off (this came at a time when Disney itself was downsizing, with 400 others laid off from its failed Go Network online service), but Fox Family also used many freelancers for certain aspects of the channel, such as their short-lived "block jocks" and most of the monikers for the network were created by freelance artists. However, the Disney acquisition took the channel into a deeper decline in its early years.

Fox Family Worldwide Inc was sold to The Walt Disney Company, for $2.9 billion on October 24, 2001. The sale to The Walt Disney Company included Saban Entertainment. The Walt Disney Company bought Capital Cities/ABC in February 1996, and changed the corporate name to ABC, and the network was officially renamed ABC Family on November 10, 2001.

The sale to Disney was considered one of the largest mistakes or problems occurring during the tenure of Michael Eisner. The failure was primarily due to the acquisition being done by the strategic planning department of Disney, without consulting anyone at ABC. The original plan was to use the channel to essentially show re-runs of ABC programming, but this plan was completely impossible since ABC had no syndication rights to the majority of their own programs. During this time, the network did air same-season repeats of Alias, Less Than Perfect, Life with Bonnie, and The Bachelor, almost all of which were Touchstone Television productions (The Bachelor is distributed by Time Warner's Telepictures). But in trying to change the focus of the channel, Disney also canceled several Fox Family series, like State of Grace, and cut back on the network's TV movies, which were among the few programs Fox Family was doing well with. The ratings tumbled further as the network became dependent on syndicated reruns and no original programs (save for original wrap-around segments around Bachelor repeats, and children's programming).

The next major plan was to reposition the channel to market it to college students, young women, or to a more hip audience under the name XYZ, a reverse reference to ABC. Disney soon found that the channel could never be renamed as such. The original sale from CBN to Fox/Saban contained a stipulation that the channel contain the word "Family" in the name forever, no matter who owns the network. To create XYZ, the Family Channel would have had to cease to exist—terminating all existing cable TV contracts—and XYZ would have to be created as a new network. Cable companies would not be obligated to put XYZ in the spot vacated by the Family Channel. ABC scrapped the idea after discovering this clause.

The name was revisited at one point in 2003, serving as a program block entitled "The XYZ.", showing programs and movies aimed at the above groups. The network was also used as a buffer to burn off failed ABC series, such as All American Girl, which featured Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.