Great American Country is an American multinational pay television network that is owned by Discovery, Inc. Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, the channel primarily broadcasts lifestyle programming pertaining to "country" settings, including the Heartland and south, some of which sourced from the libraries of its sibling channels. The channel was, previously, established primarily with a focus on country music-related content. As of February 2015, GAC is available to approximately 59.547 million television households in the United States.
History
The channel was launched on December 31, 1995, with the first music video to be broadcast on the channel, Garth Brooks' "The Thunder Rolls". The channel was originally owned by the Centennial, Colorado-based Jones Radio Network. Scripps Networks, which was spun off from the E. W. Scripps Company in July 2008, acquired Great American Country from Jones Radio Network on October 12, 2004. In late 2005, television industrytrade publicationBroadcasting & Cable named GAC as one of TV's "Breakout Networks" heading into 2006, saying of the channel: "The emerging GAC is a younger, hipper version that respects Nashville's country roads but widens the boulevards." Great American Country and ABC Radio Networks formed a partnership to produce a nightly radio show called GAC Nights: Live From Nashville hosted by Suzanne Alexander, and co-hosted by Storme Warren and Nan Kelley. It was broadcast from its studios at Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee. The show ran from 2007 to 2009, when it was canceled. AT&T U-verse dropped Great American Country, and sister networks Food Network, Cooking Channel, HGTV, and DIY Network on November 5, 2010, due to a carriage dispute over an increase in retransmission fees. Two days later, however, the dispute was resolved. On October 1, 2013, the network unveiled a new logo inspired by the U.S. flag, dropping the "GAC" acronym in favor of using the Great American Country name in full. The network stated that it wanted to emphasize its expansion from a country music-oriented channel to one with a larger emphasis on "country" as referring to a "sense of place" and lifestyles. With the channel's rebranding, the daily music video show Daily Countdown was renamed Great American Playlist. Top 20 Country Countdown continued to air, and the network still offered country music specials including Backstory, Introducing and Origins.
