To create a new weekend program block for teens, Fox Family
Channel has acquired more than one-dozen award-winning shows from the ABC Afternoon
Specials and CBS School Break Specials series.
Fox Family plans to use those 16 shows as the base for a
two-hour block, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays, which will debut Nov. 7. The network will
also produce original specials for the Sunday block. Those new teen specials will start
airing next fall.
The new teen block will debut with two critically hailed
shows: Kids Killing Kids, a drama starring Malcolm-Jamal Warner that depicts the
tragic consequences when teens use guns to solve their problems; and Daddy's Girl,
which features Grammy Award winner Lauryn Hill in the story of a teen who plans a reunion
to bring the absent father who left 10 years ago back into her life.
Fox Family also intends to acquire additional shows from
the ABC and CBS series.
The new block will follow Fox Family's new original
series, S Club 7, which also debuts in November and airs at 1:30 p.m. Sundays.
For the most part, Fox Family said the specials it has
acquired have only aired twice, which means millions of youths haven't seen them. And
the network believes the shows will be welcomed by teens' parents because of recent
events such as the violence in Littleton, Colo.
"I remember growing up with these," Fox Family
senior vice president of kids' programming and development Joel Andryc said.
"But the networks really abandoned these shows. Maybe they couldn't get
clearances from broadcast stations. But this is the time when we need things like
this."
He added that Fox Family is trying to skew its weekend
daytime programming older -- to kids aged nine through 14 -- and these specials are meant
to help achieve that goal.
