The ABC Family network is ditching the family from its name beginning in January 2016. ABC Family has used the moniker for 30 years but now the Disney-owned cable network has decided it will be known as “Freeform.”
The new name was chosen as the network wanted to exemplify a network that could be watched on multiple platforms and shared on various social media sites.
“We wanted an emotional response to a name that made people happy,” ABC Family president Tom Ascheim told Entertainment Weekly. “We got an overwhelmingly positive response. Freeform sounds like fun.”
The new title is aimed at bringing the target audience of youths between the ages of 14 and 34.
“For us, this doesn’t feel like a radical depature, this is an evolution. For the last 10 to 12 years, we’ve been targeting young people, Millennials, and then something happened. Millennials started getting older. The oldest ones are nearly 40. So do we follow Millennials or stay with the ‘life stage’ that got us here?”
Freeform hopes to capture the important “firsts” in your life through their shows while keeping the entertainment that fans already love. New programming will feature “first car, first apartment, first job, first love, first heartbreak—all the firsts that exist between who they are and who they want to become.”
Reasons for the name change was more than just targeting a new audience. The target demo viewers who did not watch the network were put-off by the word “Family,” which seemed to suggest “family-friendly” and “wholesome,” Ascheim told Entertainment Weekly.
Ascheim goes on to say that “Like any growing business, we want to keep our core customers satisfied, but also add new ones—and they had a cliched sense of who we are.”
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