Fox Family

FOX Family Channel (commonly known as FOX Family) is an American family-oriented cable and satellite television channel available for stations' subchannels. Owned by the FOX Entertainment Group, FOX Family gets its name from the former cable channel that bared the same name when FOX bought The Family Channel from Christian Broadcasting Network. FOX Family lasted from 1998-2001 when the Walt Disney Company bought FOX Family and renamed it ABC Family. 13 years later, FOX Broadcasting Group once again restarted FOX Family: This time as a digital subchannel for all television stations. This time, however, since they're a stand-alone subchannel, they do not have to air The 700 Club, unlike ABC Family has to.

Acquisition and Relaunch
In 1997, International Family Entertainment put The Family Channel up for sale. News Corporation entered into discussions to purchase a stake in The Family Channel with International Family Entertainment as a partner, in order to use the channel to carry the library of children's programs that News Corporation had owned through television production company Saban Entertainment..The Family Channel was sold to Fox Kids Worldwide Inc., a joint venture of News Corporation and Saban, in July 1997; that subsidiary was renamed Fox Family Worldwide Inc. as a result of the acquisition. The Family Channel was renamed Fox Family Channel (though on-air promos typically referred to the channel as just "Fox Family") on August 15, 1998 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The MTM Enterprises library was subsequently purchased by News Corporation's 20th Century Fox Television division. With the change in ownership, Fox Family's operations were also migrated from Virginia Beach, Virginia (which serves as the headquarters of the Christian Broadcasting Network) and integrated with the operations of some of News Corporation's other cable channels in Los Angeles.

Early Programming
When Fox bought the channel, programmers sought to re-position it to target a dual audience – kids in daytime, families at night. Once the network became Fox Family, the new owners dropped nearly all of programming it aired under The Family Channel brand – which at that point included reruns such as Bonanza, The Carol Burnett Show, Hawaii Five-O, Rescue 911 and Diagnosis: Murder, as well as original game shows such as The New Shop 'til You Drop (which had previously run on the Lifetime network, then after the run on The Family Channel, the initially family friendly PAX TV (currently Ion Television)– and replaced them with shows that appealed to a more younger demographic. Network president/CEO Rich Croninsaid regarding the channel's audience refocusing, "our focus is on younger families, more suburban or urban, more plugged into pop culture". Fox Family was obligated to continue airing The 700 Club as part of the sale, but airings were scaled back to two times each day (though the sale agreement required the channel to air it three times daily, once each in the morning, late evening and overnight hours), with the evening broadcast being moved out of primetime, and pushed one hour later to 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time (from 10:00 p.m.). Weekly airings of Columbo were also moved from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Sundays.

Programming that appealed to children and teenagers was also greatly expanded on the channel. More cartoons were added to the lineup, many of which came from the Fox Kids program library. Following the relaunch, Fox Family was running about eight hours of cartoons a day. However, it also became a cornerstone for syndicating foreign television series (primarily those produced in English-speaking countries), such as the popular British S Club 7 television series, which became the flagship series for the channel until the new millennium. Fox Family also syndicated many Canadian television series, both animated and live action, including Angela Anaconda, Big Wolf on Campus, I Was a Sixth Grade Alien, Edgemont, Mega Babies, and briefly, The Zack Files. The channel even aired cartoons and anime based on video games, such as Donkey Kong Country, Megaman and Monster Rancher. Most of these shows were a part of the channel's morning lineup, which also included the original series Great Pretenders. Fox Family also aired reruns of some Fox Kids series such as Bobby's World, ''Eek! The Cat, and Life with Louie''. The channel added some recent family sitcoms as well, along with European shorts like Tom And Vicky, Animal Shelf and 64 Zoo Lane.

In 1999, Fox spun off two digital cable channels from Fox Family, the Boyz Channel and the Girlz Channel, which both contained programming content targeted at the respective genders; both channels ceased operations one year later due to a lack of demand by cable providers (Boyz Channel and Girlz Channel were each carried in some 100,000 homes in an era when digital cable television was in its infancy) and the controversy that developed over the gender-segregated channels.

FOX Family Films
Fox created a film division for the channel, Fox Family Films, which produced motion pictures targeted at different age groups, mainly towards children; these included Addams Family Reunion, which was shown in its inauguration of the channel, and Digimon: The Movie, which was compiled from several Japanese Digimon short films. For a more teenage audience, Fox Family Films created Ice Angel, a made-for-cable movie about a hockey player reborn as a female synchronized skater, as well as the thriller Don't Look Behind You. Fox Family also aired a wide array of Saban Entertainment-produced movies as well as many direct-to-video films from 20th Century Fox (including Richie Rich's Christmas Wish, Casper: A Spirited Beginning and Like Father, Like Santa).

In August 1999, the channel had the highest number of viewers at that point in its network history, with the made-for-TV movie Au Pair.

Declining Ratings
Under the control of Murdoch and Saban, Fox Family saw its overall viewership slide from 10th to 17th place in the Nielsen cable ratings as a result of an increasingly competitive race for younger viewers and the bickering over ownership between News Corporation and Haim Saban. Some observers believe that it chased away some of the channel's older viewers and never really replaced the core audience. As a result, prime time viewership declined by 35% over the course of Fox Family's three-year tenure under Murdoch/Saban ownership. On July 23, 2001, it was announced that Fox Family Worldwide Inc. would be sold to The Walt Disney Company for $2.9 billion (the unit would be renamed ABC Family Worldwide Inc. following the sale). And with that, FOX Family was gone

The Return of FOX Family
13 years later, FOX Broadcasting Group revisited the idea of a family-oriented channel to compete with The Hub (Now Discovery Family) and ABC Family. After witnessing the success of both FX (and their spinoff, FXX), FOX Broadcasting Group decided to give it another try, and on Oct. 13, 2014, just as The Hub changed their name to Discovery Family, FOX Family returned to the airways. Since the reincarnation of FOX Family is independent from their past with Christian Broadcasting Network, they do not have to air The 700 Club.