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The American cable and satellite television network ABC Family has gone through several different owners (as well as six different name changes) during its history. This article details the network's existence from its founding by the Christian Broadcasting Network in April 1977 to its current ownership under The Walt Disney Company, which plans to rename ABC Family as Freeform in January 2016. ==CBN Satellite Service/Cable Network== The network was founded by Pat Robertson as the CBN Satellite Service, an arm of his television ministry, the Christian Broadcasting Network. When the channel launched on April 29, 1977, it became the first basic cable channel to be transmitted via satellite from its launch. Initially, the network offered only religious programs aimed at a Christian audience. The offerings on the CBN Satellite Service during its early years included CBN's flagship news/talk show, ''The 700 Club'' (which aired three times per day every Monday through Friday in the late-morning and at night), along with programs from many well known and lesser-known television evangelists. As a result, a few televangelists began to produce stripped programs to air on the network each weekday. The CBN Satellite Service grew its subscriber base to 10.9 million households by May 1981. On August 1, 1981, the channel was relaunched as CBN Cable Network. At that time of the name change, it was concurrently repositioned as an advertiser-supported "family-friendly" entertainment network, although the channel continued to offer religious programs that occupied about a third of its daily schedule. Entertainment programming that aired on the channel during this period included various classic television series (consisting of classic sitcoms from the 1950s and westerns such as ''My Little Margie'', ''Wagon Train'', ''The Virginian'' and ''Bachelor Father''), reruns of game shows, older movies, and some family-oriented drama series. CBN Cable also produced its first original series with the relaunch including a weekday morning talk show, ''US a.m.'' and the faith-based soap opera ''Another Life''. The network also aired – and, with a few shows, even produced – a handful of Christian or family-friendly animated series, including some anime – such as CBN's own co-productions with Japanese amimation studio Tatsunoko Production, ''Superbook'' and ''The Flying House''; the channel also carried English-dubbed versions of ''Honey, Honey'' and ''Leo the Lion''. Religious programming retained a sizeable portion of CBN Cable's schedule; in addition to continuing to run weekdaily airings of ''The 700 Club'', non-CBN produced ministry programs were relegated to Saturday and Sunday evenings, and Sunday mornings, encompassing only 22% of the network's programming lineup by 1990.〔 The channel's decision to mix secular and religious programs within its schedule mirrored the programming format used by the independent television stations that CBN had owned at the time of the rebrand. Additional programming that joined the CBN Cable lineup later in the decade included ''Hardcastle and McCormick'', ''The Adventures of Superman'', ''The Love Boat'' and ''F Troop'', and foreign acquisitions ''The Campbells'' and ''Butterfly Island''.〔 Under the new format, the national distribution of the CBN Cable Network had grown from 28 million households in May 1985, to 35.8 million in May 1987. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Television networks preceding ABC Family」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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