17 Facts About ABC Family

Consequently, The ABC Family Channel became the official name for the channel on September 15,1990, dropping all remaining references to the "CBN" moniker.

The ABC Family Channel began airing more recent scripted series – among them Big Brother Jake, The Adventures of the Black Stallion, Bordertown, Rin Tin Tin: K-9 Cop, Maniac Mansion and The New Zorro, as well as the family-friendly music video series Videosyncrasy – many of which aired as part of "The Positive Place", a weekly block on Sunday early-evenings that ran from 1991 to 1994.

On September 11,1989, The CBN ABC Family Channel launched "Fun Town, " a daily children's program block featuring content from DIC Enterprises.

International ABC Family Entertainment launched another cable channel, the Cable Health Club, on October 4,1993, which was made available to cable providers without a carriage fee; the lineage of that network – which was later renamed FitTV – is traceable to the current-day Discovery Communications-owned network Discovery Life.

The ABC Family Channel ventured further into original programming in May 1996, with the premiere of its first original made-for-TV movie, Night of the Twisters.

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Fox ABC Family added more animated series to the lineup, many of which came from the Fox Kids program library.

Fox ABC Family aired a wide array of Saban Entertainment-produced movies as well as many direct-to-video films from 20th Century Fox.

In October 1998, Fox ABC Family introduced one of its most successful programming concepts, "The 13 Days of Halloween, " a two-week-long block beginning each year on October 19, leading into Halloween on October 31.

Two years before the launch of its Halloween programming lineup, in 1996, what was then The ABC Family Channel launched the "25 Days of Christmas", a four-week holiday-themed program block running annually during the month of December, formally starting on December 1 and continuing until Christmas Day on December 25.

The "25 Days of Christmas" continued to air on the rebranded ABC Family following the sale to Disney in 2001, and expanded into include a sub-block that runs during late November, "Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas", beginning in 2007.

On September 1,2000, Fox ABC Family adopted a new visual style, as part of an attempt to refocus its programming to attract an older audience.

However, the idea was unsuccessful, as a year later, Fox ABC Family was sold to The Walt Disney Company, and State of Grace was only renewed for one more season before it was cancelled.

Under the control of Murdoch and Saban, Fox ABC 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 Saban Entertainment founder and CEO Haim Saban, who eventually opted to exercise an option given by News Corporation to have the company buy out his 49.

In trying to change the programming focus of ABC Family, Disney canceled several original series that originated on the channel under its former identity as Fox Family, and reduced the output of made-for-cable movies that were produced for the channel, which were among the few programs that Fox Family was doing well with.

However, ABC Family would move to distance itself from The 700 Club out of concern over potential viewer blowback following a series of controversial remarks made by Robertson on the program in the years following the channel's purchase by Disney about the regime of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, as well as those regarding homosexuals, feminists, Muslims, abortion and many other social issues.

Shift towards a more teen and young adult focus became more clear when Variety reported in a December 3,2014 article, that ABC Family executives were proposing to relaunch the network as early as 2015, with options being considered including the expansion of programming appealing more toward young adults between the ages of 14 and 34 as opposed to families or teenagers, as well as adopting new branding.

The move, which took effect on January 12,2016, was motivated by audience testing that revealed that survey participants who watched ABC Family infrequently perceived it as being more family-oriented, in contrast to regular viewers who understood its focus towards the actual above-mentioned target demographic.