ABC Family

World Screen Weekly, December 06, 2007

COUNTRY: U.S.

LAUNCH DATE: Founded in 1995 under the name Fox Family Worldwide, the channel was acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 2001 and was rebranded as ABC Family.

NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS: Approximately 95 million.

DESCRIPTION: As its tagline “A New Kind of Family” states, ABC Family offers children and family entertainment, aiming to be reflective of families’ diversity, dysfunction, humor and passion. It features original series and movies, acquired hits and special holiday events.

PRESIDENT: Paul Lee

SENIOR VP, PROGRAM ACQUISITIONS

& SCHEDULING: Tom Zappala

SENIOR VP, ORIGINAL SERIES PROGRAMMING

& DEVELOPMENT: Kate Juergens

PROGRAMMING STRATEGY: Original series like Kyle XY, Wildfire, Lincoln Heights and, more recently, Greek, are the core offerings of ABC Family. They have helped define the network and are very popular among the channel’s target demographic. “We took up the mantle from The WB [the broadcast network that last year merged with UPN to form The CW] of a younger 18-34 cool network,” explains Tom Zappala, ABC Family’s senior VP of program acquisitions and scheduling. “The originals have been the key to that. They are all incredibly embraced by the 18-34 demo and people have really responded to them. Greek and Lincoln Heights have been great additions for us. Season two of Lincoln Heights was a big success, it actually out-performed season one and we were thrilled with that.”

ABC Family also programs 10 to 12 original movies each year, several of which are scheduled during the channel’s big holiday stunt, 25 Days Of Christmas. It runs from December 1 through Christmas and features more than 200 hours of holiday-themed entertainment for the whole family. In addition to classic holiday favorites like Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, Frosty’s Winter Wonderland and Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town, this year’s holiday event will also feature the original movie premieres of Holiday In Handcuffs starring Mario Lopez, Melissa Joan Hart and June Lockhart and Snow Globe starring Christina Milian, Josh Cooke and Matthew Keesler. ABC Family will also feature the basic cable premiere of The Incredibles.

The 2006 edition of 25 Days of Christmas was the highest rated in the event’s nine-year history in key demos, including households, total viewers, adults 18-34, women 18-34, adults 18-49, women 18-49, men 18-49, teens and female teens.

Also in 2006, ABC Family was the most-watched basic cable network in the 25 Days of Christmas time period (Monday-Sunday 7-10 p.m.), averaging over 2.5 million viewers.

In fact, the 2006-2007 season was ABC Family’s best ever, both in prime time, up 16 percent among adults 18-34 and up 23 percent among women 18-34, and in total day ratings, up 7 percent among adults 18-34 and 12 percent among women 18-34.

Aside from original series and movies, ABC Family draws a loyal audience with a range of acquired series from Full House and 7th Heaven to Gilmore Girls and 8 Simple Rules.

WHAT’S NEW: Building on the success the channel has already achieved, ABC Family will have new episodes of Kyle XY and Wildfire in January and a new season of Greek in March.

The channel has begun casting for a reality-competition show called America’s Prom Queen. In the series’ six one-hour episodes, executive produced by Patty Ivins and Julie Pizzi, high school-aged girls will move into a storybook worthy mansion where they will face a series of challenges that will test their prom queen mettle. Each week, upon completion of the challenges, the girls will have to face the Prom Committee for weekly eliminations. At the end of the fifth week, the Prom Committee will have selected a Prom Court of finalists, who will then be voted on to be “America’s Prom Queen” by the ABC Family viewing audience. The finale will be an ABC Family-hosted prom, which will be attended by the entire cast and their dates, during which the finalists will find out who America has chosen as “America’s Prom Queen.”

ABC Family has also completely redone its website. “It’s been completely revamped and updated, we really think it’s the best one among the basic cable networks,” says Zappala. “We are offering a lot more streaming content than we once did. All of our original shows are on the website and we have a lot of our acquired shows up there too: 7th Heaven and Grounded for Life. We have movies, we have original programming on the website—a show that is a spin-off of Greek, called Rush’d—and we just keep building the website. There is a community and social networking that we’ve begun and every show has a microsite where people can interact and I’m sure you heard about the viewing party for Wildfire, which was incredibly successful. We’re really pleased with it and with that core demographic we feel it’s something that is necessary to focus on.”

WEBSITE: abcfamily.go.com

—By Anna Carugati