ABC Family's Curious Origins and Bright Future

Up-and-coming network ABC Family has been quietly building a slate of original programming and acquired family favorites ranging from their inaugural series Wildfire to reruns of fan favorite Gilmore Girls. Much like teen-focused net The CW (formerly the WB and UPN), the net targets an increasingly savvy viewership of young adults for whom the traditional concept of “family entertainment” may not connect.

With this focus on today's more forward-thinking kids (and their families) has come a shift in terms of the content that the network has been producing, and with this shift gay-inclusive storylines and series have emerged. But what does it mean for a so-named “family channel” to feature gay characters, sexually frank dialogue, and storylines that deal with underage drinking, drug use and teen sex — particularly when the channel has a curiously conservative past?

As ABC Family's groundbreaking new teen college series Greek brings to life the net's first gay regular character, AfterElton.com takes the opportunity to look at the network's fascinating history and to talk with the people behind the channel's progressive views, including ABC Family President Paul Lee.

Redefining “family”

ABC Family's current slogan — “A New Kind of Family” — indicates that the network seeks to set itself apart from traditional family entertainment. And indeed, the net's target audience is the 14-28 range, which skews slightly older than other family networks such as The Disney Channel or Nickelodeon, and places it more in line with The CW, MTV or The N in terms of its viewer profile.

In an interview with AfterElton.com, Paul Lee, President of ABC Family since 2004, notes that redefining “family” was a key initiative when the channel began the shift toward its current incarnation.

“When we came in, one of the key things we wanted to achieve [was] to reclaim that word “family” for what it really means in real families across America. And when you talk to 14-28-year-olds, one of my shocking realizations early on — unlike my generation, who were not talking to their parents at all — this is a generation that is really interested in and passionate about families. But they define families in a very, very different way."

Lee continued, "It is not Ozzie and Harriet "two parents, two and a half kids living in a farmhouse" family. It really is family in its chaotic, wonderful, dysfunctional, loving, passionate, American, modern self. And that's how we came to "A New Kind of Family" as a push, because if you ask a 17-year-old, ‘What are you passionate about your family; what is your family?' they're as likely to say, you know, ‘It's my stepmom, and it's my friend Julie and it's my dog, and it's my best friend.' The modern American family is a very fluid, very important, very passionate unit, defined in a very different way.”

ABC Family's first original scripted drama, Wildfire, tackled preconceptions of family head-on in its story, which followed an 18-year-old girl fresh from juvenile detention as she sought to redeem herself at the family-run Ritter horse ranch. The idea of a scrappy outsider trying to establish a new home base would become a theme to which the network would return repeatedly as it expanded its programming slate.

Breakout hit Kyle XY, for example, is about a teenager who is essentially a newborn child, with no memory of who he is and no preconceptions about things like social interaction and love (and no belly button, for good measure). And in a recent episode, we learned that Kyle's innocence extended to sexuality as well: In an episode titled “Free to Be You and Me,” some of Kyle's friends stage an alternative school dance when they learn that same-sex couples are discriminated against.

Kyle's reaction to the news is to not understand what is wrong with two people of the same sex loving one another, and his family is quick to point out that there is nothing wrong with it and to support the alternative dance. It is also learned that one of the friends has lesbian mothers, and two straight girls stage a fake lesbian kiss in order to spite one of their ex-boyfriends.

Unsurprisingly to gay viewers, the episode and its gay-inclusive sentiment attracted its fair share of negative feedback from viewers who felt that legitimizing gay relationships was inappropriate for a family-oriented show. AfterElton.com spoke with Kyle XY producer Julie Plec shortly after the episode aired and learned that the response was more surprising to those behind the scenes. Plec noted:

“There was a surprising reaction to what was considered an amoral presentation of the gay agenda, like pushing the gay agenda. … You know, the angry kind of response … it's what you would expect, but I was really surprised and disappointed … because I thought it was such an innocent, positive portrayal, deliberately not heavy-handed and deliberately not guest star of the week-based. Just a nice story about Kyle who is a person without judgment, without bias, who innocently wouldn't even think anything would be any different than anybody else. I was surprised.”

Matt Dallas, the young actor who plays Kyle, echoed Plec's thoughts in a recent interview that ran on MSN. He noted:

“A lot of times, we'd get into scripts and I'd be like, ‘Wow, they're letting us go there.' ... I think a lot of us we saw with the episode ‘Free to Be You and Me' that dealt with the gay community. Why is it that same-sex couples are not OK, when straight couples are? It was really cool. Even though it ended up causing a little bit of controversy and they had people talking, it was cool that the network stood behind the producers and the writers and said, ‘We're going to talk about this because this is what's out there and what's going on in the world.'”