ABC Family's Curious Origins and Bright Future

ABC Family's other original programming not only maintains this focus on finding one's own place, but also places a solid emphasis on diversity. The original series Lincoln Heights boasts a nearly all-black central cast, and its main love story in the upcoming season is between an interracial teen couple.

But the network's most progressive and envelope-pushing effort to date comes in the form of college dramedy Greek, which follows the exploits of a group of students in the fraternities and sororities of an Ohio university. The show has drawn a good deal of attention due to its front-and-center dealing with underage drinking, premarital sex and homosexuality, but a look beneath the surface reveals that the principles consistent with the network's other offerings are firmly in place.

Greek is about family in two respects. First, the “brotherhoods” and “sisterhoods” of the Greek system are literally meant to be families away from home for college kids. And at its center, the show is about a brother and a sister, Rusty and Casey, who cautiously get to know one another as siblings and friends despite belonging to different Greek houses and having different friends who often clash with one another.

But when the posters show the attractive young cast swimming in a giant plastic cup of beer, the underlying family themes could easily be overlooked by those quickly offended by the frank discussion of sex, drinking and other adult topics. Lee emphasizes that they are simply telling things the way they are, and doing so responsibly.

“We did make it very clear who the target audience is. And we were very careful to be sure that this show goes out at nine o'clock and we put promos that make it quite clear what the content is going to be. We sort of go the extra mile to be sure that our audiences know what we're doing. It's worth keeping in mind, though — it's actually a very optimistic network. Even though we believe that we definitely deal with the issues that our audience deals with — and like Gilmore Girls, Greek will deal with difficult issues like alcohol and drugs and divorce and whatever — we will deal with it in a responsible way, and not only that, we will give it an optimistic outcome. Because something about ABC is deeply optimistic, and people will come to us because it is a family network. Even though we definitely will face issues, we'll face them with responsibility and with optimism.”

So it seems that this youthful net has made a commitment to diversity — including different sexualities — and has thus far lived up to its promise. Doing so is something new in and of itself for a “family” network, to be sure, but it is infinitely more fascinating when you look at the history of the channel and its unexpectedly conservative origins.

Humble — if not downright holy — beginnings

Folks tuning into ABC Family for the first time to watch Greek may find their jaws on the floor when they notice that Evangelical Christian monolith The 700 Club follows just an hour behind the sex-and-beer-happy show. But the network as it now stands has a fascinating history in terms of origin and evolution.

The network currently known as ABC Family has changed hands more times than a pair of boxing gloves at a public gymnasium. Its current incarnation dates back to 2001, when ABC (owned by Disney) purchased cable channel Fox Family and the Fox Kids Network. Originally the intent was to transform the family network into a channel targeted toward young women and college-aged young adults that would go by the name XYZ (a play off of ABC).

But Disney had learned that a legacy stipulation from the channel's original owners made this change impossible. To understand why, it's necessary to look back over the network's history.

Before being rechristened ABC Family, the channel that in its previous incarnation was called Fox Family actually came into being as an extension of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), a conservative religious broadcasting and production company founded by Pat Robertson in 1961.

In 1977, CBN created CBN Cable as a means of getting religious programming like Christian World News and The 700 Club out to a broader, basic cable audience. By 1981 the network, which aired religious and syndicated family-oriented shows, reached nearly 10 million homes. The channel was renamed the CBN Family Channel in 1988, and it continued to grow, running mostly old game shows, old movies and cartoons.

By 1990 the network actually become too profitable for CBN, and in fact threatened its status as a nonprofit. To get around this problem, the basic cable operations were sold to International Family Entertainment, Inc. (which traded as IFE on the NYSE and happened to be run by Robertson's son, Tim), and the network was rebranded The Family Channel.

In 1997 the Family Channel was purchased by Fox and Haim Saban, who changed the channel's name to Fox Family and over the course of the next few years struggled with issues in terms of defining a core audience (which seemed to skew older at some points, toward children at others), and its performance sagged as a result. In 2001 Fox Family was sold to ABC. Throughout, CBN continued to operate as a production company.