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Bill Abbott Wants GAC Family to Be a Place Safe From ‘Dark Situations, Violence, Sexual Situations’

Photo courtesy of Bill Abbott via Twitter

Bill Abbott Wants GAC Family to Be a Place Safe From ‘Dark Situations, Violence, Sexual Situations’

By Movieguide® Staff

In a recent interview with Family Savvy, GAC Media CEO Bill Abbott discussed the future of the Great American Family network and a new option for family-friendly social media, GAC Community.

In 2021, Abbott left Hallmark and Crown Media to pursue a “relentlessly family-friendly” option, GAC Media, to help families come together and enjoy uplifting, appropriate entertainment.

In just one year, GAC Media boasts talent such as Candace Cameron Bure, Danica McKellar, Trevor Donavan, and Jen Lilley, who value the family-friendly model that Abbott is after.

Abbott noted that even in the 90s when he worked in cable television, culture wanted to indulge in the “dark, violent sexual presentation of edgy content.”

However, Abbott wants Great American Family to provide a space that promotes faith, family, and country.

“It’s a combination, too, I think of being comfortable in the room and then it’s being comfortable even with your own self,” he told Family Savvy. “I got so many letters at Hallmark about people who would say they’d get home from work and they’d have a difficult day and they’d be able to turn the Hallmark Channel on and just have two hours where they didn’t have to think about dark situations, violence, sexual situations, things that create anxiety.

Abbott added that he picks talent based on their faith and charity work so that they can be real role models to the children and families watching at home.

“We want our talent to be role models and represent us well and overall reinforce really the positive sides and that are life affirming,” he explained. “There’s so many people who are role models who we all know shouldn’t be role models.”

Abbott also announced the upcoming launch of their community-based app, GAC Community, featuring talent talking about their faith, habits, skills, and more.

“It’s a very unique concept because in the world that we live in, unfortunately, social media well—it can be a wonderful vehicle for a lot of different things and a lot of different learning experiences—it also has now become subjected to the sewer that is the entertainment business,” he explained. It’s very challenging, aside from even the just the overall cultural issues, just the things that you see are not family-friendly.

“We have some unique assets that a lot of organizations that are much bigger than we are don’t and it starts really with a great family of talent who are very much committed to our mission and to promoting us and to reinforcing what we stand for,” he continued. “So talent like Danica, like Lilley, like Trevor they are going to be on that.”

The launch of GAC Community is set for Sept. 26, with its primary goal to make families more intentional about the essential things in their lives.

“There’ll be a planning calendar because part of our mission is to help people live life intentionally and life goes by so quickly and there’s so many things about family and about faith and about just overall life experience that get washed away in just the busyness of day to day,” Abbott said.

“We think that planning for family events, for holidays, for occasions, for really celebrating life in general is something really important; so we’re providing what will be a planning calendar that we hope will be very useful to people and give them things to think about.”

Abbott gave the example of Christmas traditions, noting that the holiday often sneaks up on us all amid our busy schedules.

“At Christmas time they’ll be the day you pick out your tree, you can put that in your planner, and then the day that perhaps you will think about advent and the real meaning of the season. Over that period of time, the four weeks leading up to Christmas, you [can] celebrate that intentionally and all of those things that we hope will be utilized to just make people’s lives more fulfilling.

“The primary focus for us is serving our audience and getting to know our audience and reacting to our audience and satisfying our audience and making them happy,” he concluded. “We will work hard to do that and we want the feedback for not doing that. We really want to know if we’re missing the mark and we will work to fix it.”

Read More: Bill Abbott to Rebrand GAC Family to Great American Family Come August

Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.

What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.

You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.

Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.


Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.

What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.

You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.

Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.