ABC Family changing name to better serve audience it made up

Following through on its threat to turn its focus on a wholly imaginary audience of its own creation, ABC Family announced Tuesday its intention to rebrand the network as Freeform come January 2016, the better to chase the “Becomer” audience that is not actually a thing.

Becomers, according to Tuesday’s press release from the network that is most definitely not having a midlife crisis, aren’t anything so stodgy as a generational group, like millennials, but spans a life age, specifically individuals between the ages of 14 and 34. Becomers, the press release states, are 2 billion strong worldwide, with an estimated spending power in the trillions.

Of course, though it may have given them a snazzy new name, ABC Family didn’t invent the concept of going after a younger, hipper audience. Viewers 18-34 have long been the most coveted demographic when it comes to television audiences. Therefore, it’s not so much that ABC Family and parent company Disney are reinventing the wheel, but rather that they’ve taken the wheel, renamed it Rounder, and covered it in spangles.

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There is nothing wrong with courting a young, primarily female audience, particularly when in doing so ABC Family is catering to an often underserved segment of the populace. It’s even better that in catering to this same audience that ABC Family often finds great and diverse programming that wouldn’t fit anywhere else, like “The Fosters” and “Switched at Birth.”

However, rebranding as a network called Freeform, while operating under the auspices of the Disney Corp. is laughable, given that its parent company is not generally known for being particularly freewheeling. And despite the network’s renewed commitment to integration into every part of a Becomer’s life, be it online or through printed media, much more in keeping with the idea of being freeform in the traditional sense, this is still the network that will air Pat Robertson’s “The 700 Club” and is only now, after 15 years, being allowed to drop the “family” from its name.

ABC Family can call itself Freeform and it can call its coveted demo Becomers, but it’s just further proof that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Follow me on Twitter at @midwestspitfire.