Part two of Good Trouble’s fifth and last season is presently airing on Freeform, adopted by Part two of grown-ish‘s sixth and last season within the spring . When it ends, so will the presence of unique scripted sequence on the Disney cable community.
Once a vacation spot for popular culture defining YA sequence similar to Pretty Little Liars, Freeform over the previous few years has scaled again its unique scripted fare, with no present reveals and no main initiatives within the pipeline.
There have been a whole lot of questions recently concerning the viability of unique scripted programming on ad-supported primary cable, with many networks pulling away from it attributable to excessive prices which might be arduous to maintain amid declining linear rankings and accelerated cord-cutting.
The prospect of Freeform sustaining an unique scripted slate confronted additional uncertainty when the community was dropped by main cable operator Charter in September and when its head of programming and improvement Jamila Hunter, a seasoned scripted govt, left a few months later and was not changed. (The community’s scripted operation had been already considerably downsized within the April 2023 layoffs.) The developments sparked rumors that Freeform was getting out of the unique scripted sequence enterprise.
Speaking at TCA Saturday, Craig Erwich, President of Disney Television Group, who oversees Freeform, sidestepped a query about the way forward for unique scripted reveals on the community — and primary cable channels normally.
“Freeform is very dedicated to the young female audience that it serves, and we know that they watch television a lot of different places,” Erwich mentioned, noting that many of the viewing of Freeform reveals occurs on Hulu.
He touted the community’s slate of principally unscripted fare, together with Chrissy & Dave Dine Out, which premiered a few weeks in the past, and the upcoming Royal Rules of Ohio and Sasha Reid & the Midnight Order.
“We just had some very successful launches, Good Trouble [S5B], Chrissy & Dave Dine Out. We have a show called Royal Rules of Ohio that I think our young adult audience is really going to enjoy,” he mentioned. “What’s interesting about Freeform is that it is not just original programming where they have their success, we have a really creative and inventive slate of movies that we promote a lot.”
Erwich singled out Freeform’s signature film occasions, 31 Nights of Halloween and 25 Days Christmas, noting that over half of the top-rated motion pictures on cable in December have been Freeform choices.
“We’re going to continue to serve that audience, just in a variety of methods,” he mentioned.