August 5th, 2007 | 
Author: I was taking a break from working on the jeep this afternoon to grab some lunch. I was flipping through the channels and happened to stop on ABC’s Family Channel. They were airing a spot for their new series Slacker Cats. Now keep in mind… this is about 1:30p on a Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t paying complete attention to the spot, but the following line did catch my attention:
“I dreamed I was stuck in space with three females and we had to have SEX to survive!”
Er.. what? Yeah I know. Not a big deal but it just kind of surprised me coming from a network that uses ‘Family Channel’ as their tagline. Well actually ABC’s tagline for the network is ‘A New Kind of Family’ so who knows what the hell they mean by that.
In any case, its not like ABC has any real interest in keeping the network truely ‘family’ oriented. As detailed in the wikipedia entry for ABC Family, ABC tried to rebrand the network as XYZ but stumbled when they came across a ‘forgotten’ contract clause.
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 sale from CBN contained a stipulation from Robertson 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.
Whoops.
After seeing ads for their show Greek this was only slightly surprising. Its funny though, my wife and I wondered about the “new kind of family” line too.