International Family Entertainment Inc.

ABC Family Worldwide, Inc. is a subsidiary of the Disney–ABC Television Group that is responsible for the operations of the U.S. cable network Freeform. The company was originally formed as International Family Entertainment, a spin-out of the Christian Broadcasting Network's cable network The Family Channel.

In 1993, IFE acquired the assets of defunct British ITV broadcaster Television South, whose holdings included the library of U.S. studio MTM Enterprises. In 1997, IFE was acquired by News Corporation; the MTM library was melded into 20th Century Fox Television's library, while the remainder was melded into Fox Kids Worldwide (a merger of its Fox Kids unit with Saban Entertainment), to form Fox Family Worldwide. Fox and Saban planned to leverage the popular Fox Kids lineup to turn The Family Channel—which was re-branded as the Fox Family Channel following the purchase—into a competitor to other children's-oriented cable channels such as Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. The subsidiary also established international Fox Kids networks in Europe and Latin America.

After facing struggling ratings and a failed attempt by Saban to buy out News Corp's stake in the venture, Fox Family Worldwide was later sold to its current owner, The Walt Disney Company, in 2001 for $5.3 billion. The purchase gave Disney ownership of the channel, then known as ABC Family, the international Fox Kids channels (which were later re-branded as Jetix, and then Disney XD), and rights to the Saban Entertainment library. The subsidiary has since been amalgamated into the Disney–ABC Television Group.