January 2016 marks the end of an era. In early October, executives at ABC Family announced they would be changing their name to Freeform to better suit their targeted audience, but this isn’t the first time the popular television network has undergone a change. Freeform is one of many names that the channel has launched as over the past several decades.
In 1977, CBN Satellite Service was an extension of Pat Robertson’s Christian television ministry and relaunched eleven years later as The CBN Family Channel. Two years after that, in 1990, it was renamed again as The Family Channel before being sold to Fox Kids Worldwide Inc. in 1998 and renamed The Fox Family Channel. In 2001, The Fox Family Channel and Fox Family Worldwide were sold to The Walt Disney Company, where the channel was relaunched as ABC Family.
As ABC Family turns to Freeform, the network execs hope to gear towards a changing audience from traditional kids shows and family-viewing to a new generation of Becomers: a term coined by the network to describe viewers just younger than Millennials at a critical stage in their life, from ages 14 to 34.
So let me break it down for you. I’m assuming that the ABC Family/Freeform/whatever executives look at history like this:
Baby Boomers
Generation X
Generation Y
Millennials
"Becomers"
Okay, first of all: what? “Becomers?” Are you serious? It sounds ridiculous even just looking at it on paper. It’s pretty much already established that this generation kind of sucks (I’m not saying the people suck but: loss of verbal communication, reliance of technology, music, television, hookup culture - need I go on?) and giving us a shitty name is kind of the icing on the cake, isn’t it? Why couldn’t they just make it easier on everyone and save themselves the embarrassment by renaming the channel plain old ABC?
Aside from the sheer stupidity I feel when I’m even referring to the network as "Freeform" or the audience as "Becomers" (I mean, seriously, just look at that advertisement), let’s look at this logically: ABC Family hopes to increase viewership by appealing to a larger mass of people with a new name that doesn’t sound like its targeted audience is only children and parents. But let’s be realistic here - everyone will still refer to it as ABC Family for at least another year or two.
Within that time period, I sure hope the network realizes how utterly ridiculous this whole thing sounds and comes up with a new name that won’t make me cringe every time I hear it in a commercial or read it in a magazine.
