WHEN DHX MEDIA ANNOUNCED in April it wouldn’t renew a licensing deal with The Walt Disney Co. leaving big holes in the Family Channel schedule, questions immediately arose over how the broadcaster would keep giving Canadian tweens and teens what they want when Phineas and Ferb and Jessie go for good.
The answer: Family Channel faces a radical rebranding that, from January 4, 2016, will include a Disney to Degrassi makeover in primetime.
The new look and feel will feature DHX's Studios' Degrassi: Next Class reboot anchoring a new teen programming block, F2N.
Joe Tedesco, senior vice-president and general manager at DHX Television (and the guy who ran Family under its former owners), told Cartt.ca the broadcaster always had a deep development pipeline in reserve should a new Disney deal for Family Channel not materialize. "When you're in the midst of a renewal with a long-term partner, you're always planning that things may not go as expected, so we had a strong lineup of originals," he recalled.
F2N will schedule Degrassi: Next Class, the latest iteration of the popular Canadian teen soap, nightly at 9 p.m.
Two other DHX originals, The Next Step and Gaming Show, also now air on Family Channel, but outside the F2N block. "Ownership of content just gives us more possibilities and we think, moving to the future, that's the model to be successful in the teen and tween entertainment space," Tedesco argued.
And with the former, pricey, Disney deal in the rear view mirror and now Corus Entertainment’s challenge to monetize, DHX has secured the financial wiggle room to pick up alternative shows for F2N from usual suspects like NBCUniversal, Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox.
What's more, DHX grabbed, in all, eight reality, dramatic and comedy series from the teen-focused multichannel network AwesomenessTV to air on F2N at 9:30 p.m. nightly. "They're (AwesomenessTV) having success in the multichannel universe, with a number of YouTube channels doing extremely well," Tedesco added. That’s a digital space into which DHX has also expanded with its own YouTube family channels.
"It's very much in line with what we're seeking out, and they're producing has a real relevancy to it in this environment," Tedesco explained.
"We wouldn't have embarked on this strategy if we didn't have the confidence that the content that we're going to commission is going to be strong, in fact we think it will be stronger." – Joe Tedesco, DHX Media
The main aim of the new show acquisitions wasn’t to save money versus the Disney deal as much as place big bets on original shows from the Halifax-based media player, he insists. "We wouldn't have embarked on this strategy if we didn't have the confidence that the content that we're going to commission is going to be strong, in fact we think it will be stronger, and time will tell.”
DHX has been rebranding elsewhere, too, transforming Disney XD to become Family XTRM, Disney Junior as Family Junior and Disney Junior French as Famille Junior.
But where Family Channel has traditionally targeted an 8-to-14 years’ tween demo, F2N extends that audience to an older teen audience. Tedesco said teens have always watched Family Channel, but increasingly they have a myriad of primetime entertainment offerings that DHX now has to contend with. "They're watching the network shows, they're watching cable shows. We thought it was worth a try to create a meaningful destination, because they (teens) also watch tween series from a nostalgia perspective," he said.
Whether F2N ultimately offers the quality and relevant content Tedesco needs to engage footloose millennials will 
depend in large part on the continuing appeal of the Degrassi teen TV franchise, now in its 35th year.
Degrassi co-creator Linda Schuyler told Cartt.ca that many Family Channel viewers weren't alive when her franchise's predecessor, Degrassi: New Generation, debuted in 2001 to run for 14 seasons – but that's allowed Family Channel to target a whole new audience.
In addition, Degrassi: Next Class, which will appear internationally outside of Canada on Netflix, will also live on a dedicated www.F2N.ca website, more connected to where young audiences are today.
"That's where the kids are," Schuyler said of Netflix and online.
She added the teen soap aims to help Family Channel secure more family co-viewing, where parents and kids can either watch the series together, or separately on their own devices. The result could be a cross-generation dialogue over persistent teen issues to be tackled in Degrassi: Next Class like substance abuse and the complications of dating in the social media age.
"You don't know how to bring a lot of these topics up when you're sitting around the dinner table. But if you got the common experience of seeing a show, there's comfort in talking about how those characters dealt with a situation. That takes it away from 'you're not using drugs?" or 'you're not using this?" Schuyler explained.
The roll-out of F2N ahead of the new year includes the launch today (November 30th) of an exclusive first peek at Degrassi: Next Class on www.F2N.ca, and a full-court marketing press online, including on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
DHX is also targeting young audiences at the local multiplex, where promos will appear ahead of popular teen tent-poles like The Hunger Games finale and Star Wars. "We have a very large social media component, so we'll be interacting with young audiences," Tedesco said.
