In January, one of the biggest rebrandings in US television in recent years is carried out. After a long period of research and market research, those responsible at Disney have decided to rename their channel ABC Family to Freeform as of January 2016. According to those responsible, the background is an adaptation of the name to the programme shown on the channel.
For a long time, this has been aimed at young adults between the ages of 14 and 34, and thus no longer specifically at “families”, i.e. parents on the one hand and their children on the other. Accordingly, station president Tom Ascheim describes the renaming as something that has been in development for ten to twelve years.
Because at that time the station began to have success with the claim “A new kind of family”, with its programs with the young, and above all the young female viewers. One reason for the new name is therefore that these long-time viewers – the Millennials (who were teenagers at the turn of the millennium) – want to continue to be preserved, even if they are gradually beginning to outgrow the previous target group and have the 40 in mind.
In addition, one would like to discard the “Family”, because for many potential viewers it conveys a rather value-conservative image. An understanding that the fans of the network wouldn’t have got from the station. The new name is intended to help non-viewers to get a more appropriate picture of the station – and perhaps give it a chance. Ascheim speaks of a “perception gap”, i.e. a gap between the perception of his station and the reality of the programme.
The station we know today as ABC Family was founded in 1977 by Pat Robertson – a media mogul known in the USA as a Christian conservative. This was followed in 1988 by a renaming to CBN Family Channel (CBN: Christian Broadcast Network), which for the first time made reference to families as a target group.
In 1990, the station was spun off from the CBN family and given the name The Family Channel. At the end of the 1990s, the station was sold to FOX and renamed Fox Family Channel. In 2001 it was sold to Disney. In 2006, the current slogan “A new kind of family” was established, which was an adaptation of the programme and an offensive. With “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” a great success will be landed, other successful formats of the channel such as “Greek”, “Make It Or Break It”, “Pretty Little Liars”,
“Switched at Birth” are running or were running successfully in this country as well.
ABC Family starts to push the rebranding from now on. The final name change will take place in January.
Besides the rebranding of the SciFi channel to Syfy, from Fox Soccer to FXX and the merger of The WB and UPN to The CW, this is one of the biggest rebrandings of the last ten years.