When watching the ABC Family's Harry Potter Weekend a few weeks ago, I noticed every other commercial was notifying viewers that ABC Family would soon be changing its name to Freeform. Initially launching over 25 years ago, ABC Family had grown to be one of the most popular television channels available. The president of the network, Tom Ascheim justified this change as a desire to title the channel as something that the audience could more easily identify with. Ascheim terms the general group that Freeform caters to as, "becomers" and describes them as the demographic "between your first kiss and your first kid." Freeform itself can be defined as, "not conforming to a formal structure," which supposedly is named to mirror it's intended audience. The network president also adds, "For our young audience, it is important almost always for them to feel like they've discovered something on their own. It is the essential quality of being young." Being a part of this "young audience" myself, and growing up with ABC Family, I believe that this shift in their name is absolutely pointless.
First of all, Freeform has the same exact shows as ABC Family. The network's title change was advertised with the slogan, "same stuff you love". Popular shows such as Pretty Little Liars and Switched at Birth are still continuing. Freeform does not impact the content of the network what so ever, it only was generated to allow for a wider range of people to identify with it. With that being said, it is highly unlikely that this new demographic will emerge purely because of a name change, if the content remains entirely the same.
Secondly, Freeform has the exact same audience as before, even with the name change. ABC Family's average viewer was 27.4 years old. This seems to be the older audience that Freeform wanted to capture. So why change? Although the majority of the shows on this channel may not be "family friendly," the new names will in no means deter children from watching television shows with more mature content. In addition, the changing of the name will not attract any new viewers due to its lack of new content. Similarly, those who regularly watch ABC Family will continue to watch Freeform due to the same variety of shows. Therefore, changing the name to Freeform really does not serve a beneficial purpose.
To say that our generation feels the need to, "discover something on our own" in relation to the reasoning behind the title change, makes us sound foolish. Millennials are certainly capable of realizing that Freeform is just a marketing ploy to try and collect more viewers. However with no new content and the target audience already being covered by ABC Family, the title change was useless. Sometimes it is better just to leave well enough alone.
