Any chance that my wishes come true and Pat Robertson & his ilk get booted off the network?
And yet, The 700 Club STILL manages to get air time on ABC Family.
LOL that is the most random show on that channel. Its been on there for ions.
Pat Robertson and his ilk are the reason that the Family Channel exists. They built it from the ground up, and when they sold it, they retained the right to air their few hours of programming. It is my understanding that the contract was fairly ironclad and would supercede subsequent sales. They essentially sold the programming rights to most of the channel, retaining those few hours to focus on their core programming.
I think a little history is in order:
Pat Robertson originally had religious programming on a local independent station (Channel 27) in Norfolk, VA. At some point he bought the station (may have come first). It had "The 700 Club" and mostly reruns of family shows like "The Brady Bunch," "The Andy Griffith Show," and "I Love Lucy" throughout the seventies and into the eighties.
As cable TV started expanding, Channel 27 saw the same opportunity to grew through cable that was seen by Atlanta's WTBS Channel 17 and Chicago's WGN Channel 9 and New York's WOR. All three were independent stations that had found a national audience on cable, showing primarily reruns and sports. Pat Robertson wisely saw the growing cable industry as a good place for his programming and his channel, and he saw his religious and family programming as a niche that could be filled. He had already had success in syndicating his station's flagship religious show, "The 700 Club," among a network of stations.
Eventually he rebranded his Channel 27, which already showed "The 700 Club," as the flagship of the Christian Broadcasting Network, and marketed it to cable providers as a religious channel with family content. It did well, especially with its family programming, especially sit-com reruns and family-friendly drama reruns. They built their headquarters and production facilities in Virginia Beach. They continued to produce "The 700 Club" and syndicate it throughout the world, and it helped fuel their growth in other areas (Regent University and Operation Blessing disaster relief programs, etc.).
Soon they rebranded it again as The Family Channel, focusing on its sitcoms and family-friendly programs, but also still showing the same "700 Club" that was syndicated, along with a few other CBN programs. They retained the CBN name for the religious programming, but called the rest of it The Family Channel programming.
The Family Channel found a following and soon had nearly 100% carriage rate among cable systems.
Over time they decided to focus on their core religious programming, but to sell the programming of the channel itself to another company. Their nearly 100% coverage rate allowed them to be very marketable to networks wanting a foothold without having to build from the ground up.
Fox bought it and rebranded it as Fox Family. It was a smooth transition that kept the family bent of the programming but changed it up a bit. Later Disney/ABC bought it, and seemed intent to move some of the family programming, such as Boy Meets World reruns, there from the Disney Channel as they started to aim The Disney Channel squarely at 'tweens only. They named it ABC Family. Still a "Family Channel," but perhaps having a little identity crisis as a sister network to the primary channel of the world's most prominent family-themed company. They did not seem to know how to market it, I think. Both Fox and ABC/Disney had bought it as a channel with complete coverage, so they could immediately have a good return on investment without having to build from the ground up. But that quick access has a cost.
All along the way, it seems that CBN has retained the rights to certain hours of the programming. I do not think that they ever sold it all. It may even be a long-term lease. It seemed to make sense as long as someone ran it as a family channel, but it will seem at odds to this new programming. But I still think that the religious programming is there to stay, and was never a part of the sale. They may actually lease the channel from CBN. I noticed some time ago that when they advertised for jobs, ABC family showed the location to be Virginia Beach. That was few years ago but was telling.
So, there appears to be a relatively iron-clad agreement that keeps the religious programming there. I sometimes wonder if folks at CBN, Robertson included, ever wish they had never sold the programming time. I know that there was an audience for the reruns, and might be again, as TV Land has come and gone with them, and other channels like Hallmark and MeTV and AntennaTV continue to show. Who knows? But it is true, from media reports, that ABC/Disney bought into with an understanding that CBN retain certain hours. It is also true that ABC/Disney knew that at the time, and considered the "cost" to them to gain immediate access to a channel already in so many homes.
In some ways it is in part because of Pat Roberston's vision in the beginning that we have this channel, whatever it becomes. Ironic in some ways also.
I do think that, even in the new demographic aim, that it can still be a variant of "Family" programming. Twenty-somethings might still be finding themselves, but they also care for people and develop families of their own. They are not all neurotic, self-centered, or slackers as millennials are sometimes characterized. They also tend to enjoy re-runs of sitcoms from their youth or before. Some are also no doubt religious.
It all kind of reminds me that the whole "market segmentation" approach to TV can have its limits. Not all teenagers fall out for Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber; some actually like classical or blugrass or blues music, or love spending time with their famllies, maybe even at a sprawling Disney resort in Florida marketed to families with young children. We'll see how it all turns out. But despite marketers' best intentions to segment everything by demographic, sometimes people get a share of other things, too, and sometimes build on what came before.
