Owned by Rural Media Group Language English Founder Charles Stanley Motto "Come Home to FamilyNet!" Parent organization Rural Media Group, Inc. | Country United States Sister channel(s) RFD-TV Founded 25 October 2007 Replaced Rural TV | |
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Slogan "Come Home to FamilyNet!" Formerly called National Christian Network (1979-88) Headquarters Atlanta, Georgia, United States Profiles | ||
FamilyNet is an American family-friendly cable television network in over 25 million cable and satellite homes. The network was founded in 1979 as the National Christian Network, and took the name FamilyNet in 1988 under the ownership of Jerry Falwell. It is currently owned by Rural Media Group, which also owns RFD-TV.
Contents
History
The channel was acquired by InTouch Ministries in October 2007 from the Southern Baptist Convention. In December 2009, FamilyNet was acquired by Robert A. Schuller's ComStar Media Fund. In 2010, FamilyNet was spun out into its own company, with Robert A. Schuller as the chairman.
The organization also operated FamilyNet Radio 161, a full-time Christian talk channel on Sirius Satellite Radio, but was discontinued on November 30, 2010; FamilyTalk replaced it.
On October 24, 2012, Rural TV purchased FamilyNet, and the transaction took effect on January 1, 2013. At first the network was used to carry an all-trading day format of farm and market news, which eventually moved to a reduced timeslot on RFD-TV due to low interest and ratings. Rural Media, which had considered merging RFD-TV and FamilyNet together to gain over-the-air carriage, eventually decided to keep FamilyNet as a separate service, but with a refocus in programming towards classic television programming which was not picked up by competitors Me-TV, Antenna TV and Cozi TV. Rural Media also decided not to renew over-the-air contracts with stations in a slow process which will eventually see FamilyNet become a cable-only service.
On September 2014, FamilyNet was rebranded with classic television series and films from the Sony Pictures Entertainment libraries. Religious programming, which used to make up the vast majority of the schedule under SBC and Schuller's ownership, is now limited to Sunday mornings, though Rural Media also maintained FamilyNet's paid programming overnights despite their executives' traditional disdain for depending on those programs for revenue (RFD-TV has since begun also carrying overnight paid programming).