The Family Channel



The Family Channel was the name used between 1990 and 1998 by a television network, originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service in 1977, that premiered four TV movies derived from episodes intended for a third season of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles:


 * Young Indiana Jones and the Hollywood Follies, based on "Hollywood, Early August 1920" and "Newhall, Late August 1920," which first aired on October 15, 1994.
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye, based on "New Guinea, March 1919" and "Bombay, April 1919," which first aired on January 15, 1995.
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Attack of the Hawkmen, based on "Ravenelle, Early February 1917" and "Ahlhorn, Late February 1917," which first aired on October 8, 1995.
 * Young Indiana Jones: Travels with Father, based on "Russia, March 1909" and "Athens, July 1910," which first aired on June 16, 1996.

Principal photography for the movies took place between January and August 1994 in a variety of locations around the world (much like The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles beforehand), along with soundstage shooting at Barrandov Studios in Prague, Czech Republic, and Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, all budgeted at three million US dollars per movie. Although no bookend segments featuring George Hall as Old Indy were filmed, Sean Patrick Flanery fulfilled the equivalent role in Young Indiana Jones: Travels with Father to link the two episodic segments featuring Corey Carrier as Indy recalled those earlier adventures with his father on the latter's world lecture tour.

George Lucas was "diplomatic" about the newly-produced movies being broadcast on a network affiliated with a Christian evangelist, seeing his production role at Lucasfilm as unchanged and the distribution role to be a separate issue for Paramount Television to work out:


 * I'm a filmmaker, and I make my films and I have a distributor, Paramount, and their job is to distribute these films. And as long as nobody starts telling me how to make my movies, I'm not really that concerned about where they're shown. Because they're shown all over the place, in all kinds of venues and all kinds of outlets, and I can't really be too involved with the philosophies of the people that are showing my movies.

The Family Channel had initially acquired their option on the series from ABC after the latter network cancelled it, and they negotiated to air the episodes produced for ABC as well, but ultimately never aired any of them. In line with the educational goals of the series, however, the network's Cable in the Classroom Department made teachers' guides available at the time.

When The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones was devised for home video, the first three TV movies made for The Family Channel were left virtually unchanged but Young Indiana Jones: Travels with Father was re-edited to become Travels with Father, for which Flanery's bookends were dropped so they could be expanded upon with additional footage to form the "Princeton, June 1919" segment of Winds of Change.

Reruns of all four movies continued to air on the network in 1998 and 1999, after it was sold and renamed Fox Family Channel. The Walt Disney Company purchased that network in 2001, renaming it ABC Family later that year and then changing its name once more to Freeform in 2016.