Early history Family Channel was licensed as a
premium television service by the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on December 1, 1987; it was originally operated as a
joint venture between Allarcom Pay Television Limited and First Choice Canadian Communications Corporation (owners of the premium services
Superchannel and
First Choice respectively), with both companies owning a 50% stake in the service. The channel's founding president was
Susan Rubes, the founder of Young People's Theatre, who used the 1988 Toronto International Film Festival to promote it. 60% of its launch programming was sourced from Disney Channel. Other content included Canadian series (25% of the content) such as
The Care Bears Adventures in Wonderland,
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and
The Backstreet Six. The remaining 15% consisted of classic Hollywood movies and European imports. Broadcasts started on September 1, 1988. Four months after launch, the channel had 200,000 subscribers. In 1993,
Astral Media acquired a controlling stake in First Choice. In October 1999, as part of the split of
Western International Communications (which had acquired Allarcom), its stake in Family Channel was sold to
Corus Entertainment. In March 2001, in response to concerns from the CRTC over Corus' near-monopoly position in children's specialty channels (accounting for its stakes in
YTV,
Treehouse, and
Teletoon), Corus traded its stake in Family Channel to
Astral Media in exchange for its stake in
The Comedy Network for $126.9 million, giving them full ownership. On January 11, 2011, Family launched a
high-definition simulcast, and concurrently introduced an updated logo and on-air presentation.
Sale to DHX Media (2013–2014) In March 2013, following the
Competition Bureau's approval of
Bell Media's acquisition of Astral Media, Bell announced that it would divest Family and its sister networks, among other assets, in order to reduce the market share it would hold in the English-language television market following the completion of the sale. The CRTC approved the sale on June 27, 2013, with Family Channel and its related networks concurrently placed in a
blind trust held by businessman and former
Montreal Canadiens president
Pierre Boivin, pending their sale to a third-party. As of March 2013, Family Channel was available to approximately six million pay television households in Canada. On November 28, 2013, DHX Media (now
WildBrain) announced that it would acquire Family and its sister networks for $170 million. While the company already distributed and produced a large library of children's television series (particularly through its 2012 acquisition of the
Cookie Jar Entertainment, which gave it ownership of the program libraries of
Cinar and
DIC Entertainment), the purchase marked DHX's first foray into broadcasting. DHX indicated that it would leverage its resources and library to add more original, Canadian-produced programming to Family under its ownership. The acquisition of Family Channel and its sister networks by DHX was approved by the CRTC on July 24, 2014. As a condition of the sale, the CRTC imposed licensing conditions requiring that at least 60% of the Canadian programming broadcast by the network on an annual basis be produced by companies other than DHX. The acquisition was finalized on July 31, 2014, with Family and its sister networks becoming part of a newly formed division of the company known as DHX Television.
Removal of Disney Channel programming rights and programming changes (2015–2025) On April 16, 2015, it was announced that
Corus Entertainment had acquired Canadian rights to Disney Channel's programming library, and that it would launch a
Canadian version of Disney Channel on September 1, 2015. DHX's programming agreement with Disney expired in January 2016. As a result of these changes, Disney programming was removed from Family Channel's lineup throughout the remainder of 2015, and its sister Disney Junior and Disney XD-branded networks were rebranded as
Family Jr.,
Télémagino on September 18, and Family Chrgd (now
WildBrainTV) on October 9. Corus would also launch new
Disney Junior and
Disney XD channels on December 1, 2015, and they closed on September 1, 2025. On June 9, 2015, it was announced that a new incarnation of the
Degrassi franchise,
Degrassi: Next Class, would premiere on Family in 2016. The show is produced by
Epitome Pictures, a studio where DHX acquired in 2014.
Next Class premiered on January 4, 2016 as part of a new primetime block known as "F2N". The F2N block was positioned towards an older teenage audience than the "
tween" audience that Family has typically targeted; DHX Television senior vice-president Joe Tedesco explained that the company had original series in development for Family in case its rights deal with Disney had expired, and that these decisions were based on a goal to build a "strong lineup" of programs, and was not financially motivated. Tedesco went on to explain that the F2N block was meant to create a "meaningful destination" for teens and (in the case of
Degrassi, a series that has historically dealt with teen issues) encourage family viewing. As part of the CRTC's "Let's Talk TV" initiative, DHX Media expressed concern that the
elimination of genre protection for Category A specialty channels would put services licensed as premium services at an unfair disadvantage, especially due to their inability to air advertising. On November 2, 2016, the CRTC approved the implementation of new categories for licensed television services, replacing the separate specialty and pay television categories with a single
Discretionary service category using standardized conditions of license, and ruled that current premium services may operate under these deregulated policies effective immediately. This decision allowed Family Channel to begin operating under an advertising-supported format. Tedesco commended the CRTC for the decision, stating that it "represents the next logical step in the implementation of the Let's Talk TV decision, when genre protection was eliminated, and it ensures that pay and specialty channels will now be on a level field."
Closure On December 18, 2024, WildBrain announced that it would sell a two-thirds majority stake of its television operations (including Family Channel) to IoM Media Ventures, a Halifax-based company founded by former WildBrain CEO Dana Landry. In April 2025, WildBrain stated that it would be renegotiating aspects of the agreement, citing factors such as a decision by
Bell Canada to not renew its carriage agreements for WildBrain's channels, pulling them from their lineup on May 20. On August 25, 2025, WildBrain announced that it was unable to renew its carriage agreements with
Rogers Cable, and announced plans to close all of its specialty channels (including Family) in the near future, stating that the decline of its carriage agreements meant the channels no longer had most of their value and were "no longer commercially viable". Television providers later reported that the closure would take effect at the end of the broadcast day of October 22, 2025. The last show to air on this channel was the
Radio Free Roscoe episode "Rah, Rah, Revenge". On October 31, 2025, the CRTC confirmed it had revoked Family's licence at the request of WildBrain. == Programming ==