Despite trying times in the industry, Great American Media CEO Bill Abbott believes his faith in building a cable network is being rewarded.

Last year, total-viewer ratings for Abbott’s Great American Family rose 76%, one of the biggest reported jumps for any network. In the first quarter, revenue rose 21% from Q1 2023, per the network, indicating demand for the family-friendly formula that the former Hallmark Channel head has brought to his new business. 

Abbott is hoping for more of the same as this year’s upfront unfolds.

In conversations with advertisers, key talking points will be the quality of Great American Media’s content, the audience the channel is bringing in, the familiar talent on screen and the channel’s growth story.

Great American Family will put 50% more original content on the channel, including about 20 movies, Abbott said.

Also Read: Great American Family Sets New Christmas Movie With Rhiannon Fish

“I think we’re delivering on what we set out to do when we started this. It seems like a long time ago, but it really isn’t. In linear, we’re competing with networks and beating networks that have been around for 20, 30 years,” Abbott said. "It’s fulfilling to see such support from the advertising community.”

The channel could use more support from the measurement business.

“We believe VideoAmp and their methodology is far superior than what Nielsen’s done,” Abbott said. Even Nielsen’s big-data methodology underweights some of the distributors that carry Great American Family in smaller counties, he said. “We’re having conversations around currency and how we approach the upfront.”

Great American Family has been delivering its pitch in one-on-one meetings with media buyers and clients. Its sizzle reel shows off the network’s talent, including newcomer Mario Lopez. Lopez introducing the network to buyers gives it added credibility. 

“We’ve got a really strong stable of actors who are behind us and committed to what we're doing,” Abbott said.

Signing talent like Lopez and Carlos and Alexa PenaVega have helped Great American Media bring more diversity to its programming. 

Lopez and his wife, Courtney Lopez, will appear in My Grown-Up Christmas Wish, which will be part of Great American Christmas 2024. The PenaVegas will star in the Great American Pure Flix movie Mr. Manhattan, which debuts May 24.

“Brand safety is important to advertisers, and our length of tune and C3 numbers are very, very strong,” said Kristen Roberts, chief revenue officer and executive VP of programming at Great American Media. “Our franchises like Great American Christmas are really big.”

Great American Family will be running its third Great American Rescue Bowl opposite the Super Bowl.

“Viewers love it and our advertisers love it,” Roberts said.

Last year, the Rescue Bowl resulted in more than 4,000 animals being adopted. “One of the most viewed pieces of content on PureFlix was a 2½-minute segment of the Great American Rescue Bowl that we broke out separately," Abbott said. “We want to lean into that more and more.” 

Abbott started up Great American Media in 2021 amid the pandemic and was launching a cable network at a time when cord-cutting was eroding pay-TV viewers and making streaming more attractive to advertisers.

“There have been easier environments to navigate, but all told we’re doing exceptionally well,” Abbott said.

Building a cable network was the right strategy, he said. “It’s hard to grow a brand and ratings and an appetite for your platforms in a world that is extremely crowded and where content creators are prolific,” he said. “This has certainly not been for the faint of heart, but we are in a good place and we’re getting to a better place.” 

Despite the erosion, Great American Family said it still has close to 70 million homes. “The linear model is a great way to build a brand and enter the mind of the viewer in a way we couldn’t do if we didn’t have a linear network,” Abbott said.

Demand for Family-Friendly Fare

He’s also sure there’s still an underserved demand for family-oriented content. 

“There will always be a segment of the population that just wants to be able to not have to fast forward through something or feel uncomfortable when they’re watching with their kids,” he said. “That segment has been a steadfast rock to build around for many years and I don’t think that’s changing.”

Some of the pressure on the company was relieved when Great American Family merged with Sony’s Pure Flix, in a deal that gave Sony Pictures Television a 49% stake in the business.

"That was a game-changer,” Abbott said.

Sony is a solid source of content and Pure Flix gives Great American Media a foothold in the streaming business and helps it clarify the sometimes tricky line between being family-friendly and presenting religious programming.

“The streaming business allows us to present so much more variety and to be in a number of areas that are more faith-focused, while on the linear side, we’re more focused on creating an experience that isn’t at all uncomfortable,” Abbott said.

“Great American Family is Great American Family for a reason, and Pure Flix, with its heritage in the faith-based space, has a little bit of a different audience and different take on faith and family,” he said. “But at the end of the day, certainly we want to represent faith in a positive light on all services. It’s just a question of degrees and how to attract the broadcast possible audience in linear.”

It's the holiday season, and few cable executives are more focused on spreading holiday cheer on the small screen as Great American Media president and CEO Bill Abbott. 

With Great American Media’s Great American Family network amid its third annual “Great American Christmas” slate of holiday-themed original programming, Abbott, a former CEO of Hallmark Channel, has the family-friendly programming-focused network on a roll. Great American Family says it posted a 136% increase in total viewers from the year-ago period.  

Abbott recently spoke to B+C Multichannel News senior content producer, programming R. Thomas Umstead about the network’s momentum, the rationale behind its June merger with Sony Entertainment’s Pure Flix streaming service and his thoughts on the business heading into the new year.  

To what do you attribute the network’s increased growth in viewership over the past year? I think consistency wins, and we’re in a lane that is certainly underserved. When you’re able to be consistent in an area that has a need, you have the ability to be very successful. I think so much of entertainment is filling voids in the market, and I think that’s been the biggest piece of our success. 

Why did you pursue a deal for the Pure Flix streaming service and how does it enhance Great American Family’s brand?  We’re thrilled that Sony felt strong enough about what we were doing and recognized that Pure Flix would be a great addition to the Great American Family. Pure Flix is a service that was started before streaming was cool, and the founders of it showed great vision in identifying this space and identifying this opportunity. Now it’s our privilege to build on that and broaden it, and make it even more of that destination for faith and family content. 

Much as you did at Hallmark, why have you put a major emphasis on holiday programming at GAF? I think holiday programming really exemplifies what is so much a part of families — celebrations, special moments and the positivity and gathering together. It’s kind of that ultimate viewing time of the year when people are celebrating together and very much thinking about family. Christmas programming is central to being the leading provider in faith-and-family content and a very important part of what we do. 

GAF’s programming has been criticized for not featuring enough diverse characters and storylines. What do you say to the network’s detractors regarding diversity?  I think that as our company is evolving, we are becoming much more diverse. We have some terrific projects in 2024 that we are extremely excited about that feature a pool of [diverse] talent, from Karen Abercrombie to Percy Bell and Stacey Patino, who we believe are going to be big stars. They’re in an original series called County Rescue. I believe as people learn about our programming offerings moving forward in 2024, a lot of that criticism will go away. We are very focused on it, and we’re proud of what we have coming up. 

How do you see the business evolving in 2024? I think we’re going to see bundling become a big piece of how the streaming model becomes profitable, along with more consolidation. I think streaming is very challenged in terms of churn and other dynamics that exist that make it very hard to be profitable. I also think the AVOD piece will become much bigger. What’s old is new, and the old model of the cable bundle with advertising is in all likelihood going to rule the day because that’s the most profitable model, and we have to pay for content to get produced. Quality content will always have a home, and viewers will always pay for quality content, so it’s just figuring out how to best package and position things for success. 

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott is renaming his constellation of family-oriented brands, with flagship GAC Family becoming Great American Family next month.

Abbott, CEO of GAC Media, also said cable channel GAC Living will become Great American Living. The company also has the free ad-supported streaming TV channel known as Great American Adventures and the upcoming direct-to-consumer app Great American Community.

The four outlets will be part of GAC Media’s new Great American Media master brand. GAC Media will remain the company’s legal name.

Also: Bill Abbott’s GAC Media Unwraps Holiday Plans in Upfront Pitch

Abbott launched GAC Media by buying the cable channels Great American Country — known as GAC — and Ride TV last year. He rebranded them as GAC Family and GAC Living, respectively and, following the playbook, programmed GAC Family with wholesome series and Christmas-holiday themed original movies, many starring actors familiar to Hallmark Channel viewers.

“As the company expands across different media verticals, renaming our linear networks Great American Family and Great American Living better reflects our vision for each brand and firmly aligns the company under our new Great American Media umbrella,” Abbott said. “Fans can expect more of the same quality, family-friendly programming they have come to love from our channels, and we look forward to rolling out the new names this summer in time for the return of our original movie premieres.” 

The name change will take place on August 20, the same day as the start of a new season of movie premieres. The network’s big Great American Christmas programming event begins October 28.

GAC Media said it plans to promote the name change across all platforms and media in coordination with its business and distribution partners. ■

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott’s GAC Media launched its first free ad-supported streaming television channel, Great American Adventures, on Comcast’s Xumo platform.

The channel focuses on Americana, with 500 hours of scripted and unscripted programming highlighting subjects including Southern cooking and do-it-yourself projects.

Series on the channel include Southern Fried Skinnyfied with Paige Duke and Patti LaBelle’s Place.

Also: Bill Abbott’s GAC Plans DTC App With Original Content, Social Functions

Abbott launched GAC Media by buying two cable networks and rebranding them as GAC Family and GAC Living in 2021. GAC Family follows the Hallmark playbook, featuring original holiday movies and family-friendly series. The new streaming network gets GAC Media into the fast-growing connected TV space, which is attracting viewers and advertisers.

“The launch of Great American Adventures is a new growth milestone for GAC Media as the company expands into the FAST TV sector,” Erin McIlvain, chief officer, distribution and content strategy at GAC Media, said. “This new partnership with Xumo will broaden the viewing ecosystem for our content allowing us to reach a new audience while further serving our existing fans with entertaining programming that celebrates Americana.”

Xumo was acquired by Comcast in 2020 and features 250 channels of free premium programming.

“Great American Adventures is a perfect fit as a FAST channel on Xumo,” senior VP of programming and partnerships Stefan Van Engen said. “It’s always the right time to enjoy and celebrate the kind of everyday American traditions we all know and love. Great American Adventures delivers the high-caliber content that allows us to engage millions of viewers across our network.”

Xumo will become part of the joint venture Comcast and Charter Communications are starting to create a new streaming platform. ■

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott, whose family-friendly GAC Media has started to build an ardent following, plans to launch a direct-to-consumer app called Great American Community that will give fans original short-form content and a social-media forum to interact with GAC’s talent.

The new app will help GAC Media get into the over-the-top space, augmenting its cable networks GAC Family and GAC Living and enabling Abbott, who started out as an ad sales exec, to offer sponsors cross-platform packages in the fall holiday season after Great American Community debuts in September.

Abbott told Broadcasting+Cable that GAC is spending about $1 million to develop the app. 

It will feature about 200 hours of content that will be exclusive to the app. Initial contributors will include Debbie Matenopoulos, Cameron Mathison, Shirley Bovshow, Kym Douglas, Maria Provenzano, Larissa Wohl, Lawrence Zarian, Toya Boudy, Amber Kemp-Gerstel, Emily Hutchinson, Mahaila McKellar, Jamie Tarence, Jen Lilley, Jill Wagner, Danica McKellar and Trevor Donovan. More are expected to join in.

At launch Great American Community will probably be free to consumers, but GAC is considering creating additional content and features that might appear on a premium tier.

“We're hopeful that we'd have a million people over the course of the quarter that would interact with the site and sign up and be part of it,” Abbott said. “It's amazing how  these fans are so passionate about the movie content and the talent. If we can provide ways in which they can interact and watch them it will be really well received.”

Great American Community will also be home to GAC Giving and Caring, a new digital series that focuses on the many ways that GAC Family talent gives back. GAC Giving and Caring will raise awareness for important causes supported by GAC stars, such as bullying prevention and pet adoption, and will encourage fans to get involved to make a difference in their communities.

Abbott started GAC Media last year, buying the cable networks Great American Country and Ride TV and converting them into family-friendly GAC Family and GAC Living. Following the Hallmark playbook, he packed GAC Family with original holiday movies featuring many stars popular with viewers of Hallmark movies and series.

Also: Former Hallmark Head Bill Abbott Unwraps GAC’s Holiday Expectations

The app will be a different business from the channels featuring different, short-form content, some of it from the networks’ familiar faces.

“Fans are interacting with content in different ways and we think this is the perfect time for this type of app to enter the scene,” Abbott said. “I don’t think it’s ever been done in this way. We can pull this together because of our talent relationship, a really unique group that will be creating a lot of content for us.”

GAC will promote the app on its channels, and the app will help promote the channels, their movies and other programming.

“In a world, where awareness is very hard to gain, having a platform like this does a lot of good things for the brand and organizationally for us that we need right now,” Abbott said.

The app is expected to be available in all of the major mobile app stores and on connected TV devices.

USER EXPERIENCE

Abbott said that users will sign on with a user name and password. They’ll be asked for a very limited amount of personal information.

One they’ve signed they’ll have a choice of watching a FAST-channel like feed of the app’s original channel or taking a more on demand approach to what they want to see and do.

Users will be able to search for content by talent or by categories such as cooking or decorating. There will also be seconds dedicated to seasons, holidays and the networks’ theme weeks, such as pumpkin picking in October or picking out a Christmas tree in December.

Other content on the app might include a book club, master classes and podcasts.

“We want to provide as many different entry points as we can into people's passion and interests,” Abbott said.

Programming on the app will be run by Tracy Verna, who was executive producer of Hallmark’s Home & Family daytime show under Abbott.

SOCIAL STATS

GAC fans are already active on social media. GAC Family has more than 1 million followers on Facebook, almost 300,000 followers on Twitter and 73,600 followers on Instagram. Abbott’s own handle has 12,400 followers on Twitter. Candace Cameron Bure, who signed an extensive content deal with GAC, has 5.5 million followers on Instagram and 3.6 million followers on Facebook.

The app will tap into that with a social area where fans can talk to each other and to GAC’s on-screen talent.

“That's why we call it community,” Abbott said. “We want it to be relentlessly positive. We want to take the negativity and the polarization out of the social element.”

Abbott said he’s aware of the pitfalls that can happen on a social platform and is prepared to moderate comments on the app. He said GAC has hosted movie pre-parties and after parties, and in that limited sample, there was been a minimum of negative commentary. “Unfortunately that’s the way of the world,” he said. “If you’re really looking to be negative there are other places you can go,” he said.

UPFRONT INTERACTION

Abbott has included Great American Community in GAC’s upfront pitch to advertisers. The app creates additional ways for sponsors to align or integrate with holiday-themed content. Abbott envisions the app featuring shopping tips from Debbie Matenopoolis or Christmas decorating tips from Cameron Mathison.

“If you integrate into that, and then you add the linear platform and potential sponsorship of a movie, an advertiser can really put together a cohesive strategy around getting a message with a family-friendly brand and tap into that equity for their brand,” Abbott said. “The reaction has just been universally positive from the advertising side.”

Abbott has been working out deals with GAC talent to provide content for the app. Most will be producing two short-form videos a week.

GIVING AND CARING

The app will give GAC and its talent more opportunities to promote causes through Giving And Caring.

“This is going to allow us to work with our talent to spotlight their initiatives and to educate people on things like Trevor Donovan's anti-bullying campaign,” Abbott said.

The linear model restricts how many initiatives a channel can support at one time, he said.

“At Hallmark, we had our pet rescue initiative but there were many others that we wanted to do, from autism to breast cancer, and yet, your promotional ability is really limited,” Abbot said. “In digital, it's unlimited what you can do and Giving and Caring gives us an opportunity to give back in a way that is a big part of our corporate culture. Ultimately, we have a plan to donate a certain amount of our profit back to different charities. We think that we can do a lot of good in that way.”

GAC Media is working with tech firm Yupp to build the app.

“It’s a beast to manage because you're dealing with a lot of short form content that you're rolling out consistently. It's going to be critical that we keep this content fresh and that there are new elements every day. That's a heavy lift,” Abbott said.

Yupp has been” really terrific on the tech side and how we make all of that work,” he said. ■

It hurt GAC Media CEO Bill Abbott to have missed last year’s upfront and he is looking forward to this one like a kid waiting for Santa.

Abbot has a bigger second-year slate of holiday programming to sell, including a Thanksgiving programming event that will be hosted by Candace Cameron Bure, Small Town Christmas specials, The Great American Rescue Bowl running opposite the Super Bowl and a new ad-supported streaming television channel called Great American Adventure, wrapped up like gifts for media buyers and their clients.

Abbott, who was in charge of advertising sales for Hallmark Channel before becoming CEO of its parent company Crown Media Family Network, started GAC Media last June.

GAC bought the cable channels Great American Country and Ride TV and relaunched them as GAC Family and GAC Live on October 15. It started airing original holiday content October 23.

Also: Former Hallmark Head Bill Abbott Unwraps GAC’s Holiday Expectations

”That was a very tough transition and that led to results that we didn’t love at the start,” Abbott told Broadcasting+Cable.

The timetable left little time for promotion, so not as many viewers found the channel at first.

And by that time, most advertisers had already committed most of their marketing budgets for the year, making it particularly tough to get ad dollars in the fourth quarter when GAC aired original Christmas-themed movies that normally attract spending from retailers and other seasonal advertisers.

“We paid the price all of this year for that,” Abbott said. “Last year’s market was so strong, you fear you probably missed it by a year. No matter how well you tell your story, you still might not have the same market conditions, although I think this year’s market seems like it will be pretty strong.”

GAC will be going into this year’s meetings with media buyers and advertisers with more than promises. There’s a track record demonstrating the quality of the holiday programming it will air and that those shows will have the stars that people who like holiday movies will tune in to see.

Abbott is working from the successful formula he used at Hallmark Channel.

“We’re certainly selling family-friendly content and quality original movies with talent that people love and resonate with viewers,” he said. “We’ve had a lot more time to prepare and market and do all the things necessary to drive a much bigger audience. We feel really good about where we will be in the fourth quarter.”

Added Kristen Roberts, another former Crown Media exec, who as chief revenue officer and executive VP programming is in charge of not only ad pricing, planning and inventory, but with matching up ad clients with programming they can sponsor: “If you look at the library that we built up last year with all of that original content, it just make it a much stronger offering and make us feel a lot better about where the numbers will be this fourth quarter.” 

GAC sees advertisers with a need to reach viewers around the holidays and is looking to meet those needs.

“There are so many advertisers that are really focused on certain times of the year than ever before and we are a good solution in the linear landscape,” he said. "With all of the original content it airs, there are plenty of integration and sponsored-by opportunities available."

“A lot of channels have migrated their content over to their SVOD And AVOD services,” Abbott added. “We are still primarily a linear play and that gives up the ability to create on-air experiences through focus and through talent that is different and unique.”

Linear channels are still available to advertisers because they deliver at scale, Abbott said. He expects GAC Family to be in 60 million homes by the fourth quarter. (GAC Living doesn’t have enough homes for the upfront market this year, Abbott said).

GAC Family will be kicking off its holiday season programming with a Thanksgiving programming event hosted by Candace Cameron Bure, one of many stars familiar to Hallmark fans now appearing in GAC Family films. After the specials, GAC will bracket retail holidays Black Friday and Cyber Monday with original movies Friday, Saturday and Sunday. “We kind of turned the corner last Thanksgiving,” Abbott said.

The network has no scripted series yet, but it planning to start a series of Small Town Christmas events starting in Kentucky. It will feature feel-good content shot in a small town where GAC talent will visit, help out in hospitals and shelters and put on a show for the community.

After New Year’s on Super Sunday (another important American holiday) GAC will air The Great American Rescue Bowl, which starts up after Hallmark Channel stopped running its Kitten Bowl, a staple under Abbott. The Rescue Bowl will be hosted by former Kitten Bowl host Beth Stern.

Getting Into the FAST Game

Advertisers these days also need some digital assets and GAC will be launching a free, ad-supported linear TV channel called Great American Adventures. Abbott said the channel will be programmed with content it acquired when it bought Great American Country from Discovery. “We want to be in the game,” he said.

Abbot said Great American Adventure will launch later this month. It has a distribution deal with Xumo and he expects it to be also carried on Roku, Samsung and most of the other key FAST platforms.

GAC has also been working to create a sort of interactive fan portal for the network that will enable viewers and the network’s talent to form more of a community.

GAC has been having upfront conversations with advertisers since February. Those have mostly taken place over soon.

“We talk about an event, but with so many people working remotely, we’ve been pretty much doing Zooms, with maybe little in-person side meetings or lunches and breakfasts where we can,” Roberts said.

“On some levels, that’s disappointing and unfortunate,“ Abbott added. ”It’s great connecting with people. But it’s allowed us to cover a lot more ground quickly without having to travel to Detroit or Chicago and all the other places around the country.” 

GAC is also fortunate because while the company is new, its sales force, some of them Hallmark veterans, have strong ties with buyers.

“The feedback has been nothing but supportive,” Roberts said. “I think because of what Bill has done and built in the past, there’s an immediate understanding and recognition of what we’re doing. We’re having great meetings and we’re excited to get underway and start the upfront in earnest.” ■

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott has signed a deal with Candace Cameron Bure, who starred in numerous Hallmark projects, to produce and star in programming for his new family-friendly cable channels, GAC Family and GAC Living. 

She will also have an executive role at the company, helping to oversee and curate its content, GAC said.

Abbott has been following his old Hallmark playbook since starting GAC Media last year. He loaded his networks with holiday programming starring many faces familiar to viewers of his old channel.

Before signing Bure, Abbott reached an exclusive four-picture deal with Danica McKellar to appear and executive-produce original films for cable network GAC Family, and its sister channel GAC Living.  

Others faces familiar to Hallmark viewers who have appeared in GAC programming include Trevor Donovan, Nick Bateman, Rukiya Bernard, Sara Canning, Dillon Casey, Torrance Coombs, Trevor Donovan, Brendan Fehr, Jennie Garth, Maggie Lawson, Jen Lilley, Sarah Lind, Daniel Lissing, Jessica Lowndes, Matthew MacCaull, Chad Michael Murray, Sam Page, Merritt Patterson, Becca Tobin, Jill Wagner and Dewshane Williams.

Several former Hallmark executives also followed Abbott to GAC. 

Bure’s new agreement with GAC calls for her to develop produce and star in movies and television projects for GAC Family and GAC Living. She will also take on an executive role at the company to oversee and curate programming for the networks as a whole.  

She has also agreed to develop and produce through her Candy Rock Entertainment production company to oversee and curate programming from GAC and create year-round seasonal celebration content.

“Candace is adored by generations of fans as one of family entertainment’s most cherished and relatable stars,” said Abbott, president & CEO of GAC Media. “She has helped build this genre into the mainstream success it is today, and I look forward to working together at GAC Media as we further establish our brands as leaders in quality family programming. I am truly honored that she has chosen to be a part of and help curate her special brand of family entertainment here at Great American Channels.” 

Bure was one of the kids in the long-running ABC sitcom Full House and appeared in the follow-up, Fuller House, on Netflix. Working with Abbott, she appeared in dozens of movies for Hallmark and starred in the Aurora Teagarden mystery movie series for Hallmark Movies and Mysteries. 

“I’m very excited to develop heartwarming family and faith-filled programming and make the kind of stories my family and I love to watch,” Bure said. “I am constantly looking for ways that I can inspire people to live life with purpose. GAC fits my brand perfectly; we share a vision of creating compelling wholesome content for an audience who wants to watch programming for and with the whole family. Great, quality entertainment with a positive message is what my partnership with GAC is all about!” ■

After losing several familiar faces to its former head, Crown Media Family Networks said it signed actress Lacey Chabert to an exclusive overall deal to star in, develop and produce content for the Hallmark channels over the next two years.

Chabert has proved to be a fan favorite for Crown Media, starring in many movies on Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Most recently, she developed, executive produced, and starred in the Wedding Veil trilogy, a new movie series for Hallmark Channel.

 “Lacey’s warmth, talent, relatability, and creative sensibilities have endeared her to millions of Hallmark viewers for more than ten years, making her one of our most in-demand stars,” remarked Lisa Hamilton Daly, executive VP, programming at Crown Media Family Networks. “In addition to shining on screen, Lacey is a prolific behind-the-scenes creative partner, developing and executive producing many of our highest-quality, most-beloved projects. She inherently understands and embodies what our networks are all about – the transformational power of love and making people feel good – and we look forward to continuing our work with her to create heartfelt, compelling stories that will entertain, inspire, and touch our audience.” 

Signing Chabert appears to be at least partly a response to competition from Bill Abbott, who after running the Hallmark Channel for years, in 2021 formed GAC Media as a family-friendly rival to Hallmark Channel, complete with a calendar full of holiday movies starring faces familiar to Hallmark viewers.

Also: Ho Ho Ho! Holiday Programming Paid Off for Hallmark, NBC, Freeform 

“My experience at Hallmark, a home to me for over ten years now, has been wonderful and it’s beyond rewarding to create characters and develop stories that resonate so strongly with viewers,” Chabert said. “I’m also incredibly grateful to Crown’s programming team for supporting me as a producer and empowering me to develop and star in projects that bring my passion and creative vision to life. I am so excited for what’s next and to continue connecting with Hallmark’s audience.”

Abbott in October signed an exclusive four-picture deal with Danica McKellar to appear and executive produce original films for cable network GAC Family and its sister channel GAC Living. Her first GAC film, The Winter Place had its premiere in January. For Hallmark, McKellar starred in made for TV movies including You, Me and the Christmas Tree.

Also: Former Hallmark Head Bill Abbott Unwraps GAC’s Holiday Expectations

Trevor Donovan, who starred in a dozen Hallmark movies, also signed with GAC in October. He appeared in GAC’s Jingle Bell Christmas in December.

In January, Jen Lilley, who did a number of holiday movies for Hallmark, signed a deal to do four GAC films.

GAC Family kicked off its first holiday season with Welcome to Great American Christmas, headlined by Cameron Mathison and Debbie Matenopoulos, who had been the hosts of Home & Family, the daily daytime show that was canceled by Hallmark.

GAC also grabbed season two of When Hope Calls. Season one of the series appeared on Hallmark Channel. GAC also announced that Hallmark Channel favorite Lori Loughlin — now notorious because of the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal — would be a guest star on the series, playing her character from Hallmark’s When Calls the Heart.

Other Hallmark stars appearing in GAC films include Nick Bateman, Rukiya Bernard, Cindy Busby, Sara Canning, Dillon Casey, Torrance Coombs, Trevor Donovan, Brendan Fehr, Jennie Garth, Maggie Lawson, Jen Lilley, Sarah Lind, Daniel Lissing, Jessica Lowndes, Matthew MacCaull, Chad Michael Murray, Sam Page, Merritt Patterson, Christopher Russell, Becca Tobin, Jill Wagner and Dewshane Williams.

Several key Crown Media executives have also jumped to Abbott’s team at GAC. ■

Santa Claus was very good to Hallmark Channel, NBC, Freeform and others who aired holiday programming during the Christmas season.

While linear television overall found coal in its stocking — except for football, of course — ad revenues for holiday programming rose 2% to $531 million, according to an analysis by Standard Media Index. Revenues were up 3% compared to 2019.

More networks jumped into Christmas-movie mode — notably GAC Family, run by former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott — putting visions of sugar plums in the eyes and wallets of media buyers.

“Holiday programming remains a touchpoint that advertisers want to be a part of,” SMI advertising insights director Nicole McCurnin said. “During the 2020 holiday season, folks were even more cooped up than they were this past year. Running in these nostalgic type programs does build goodwill for brands.”

Also: Retailers Were Big Advertisers Over Holiday Season: Samba TV

McCurnin noted that overall, the fourth quarter is an important time of year for ad spending, but total linear ad spending was down 3% in December. “You can obviously say that the holiday-specific programming outperformed,” she said.

SMI’s data covers linear national advertising. While ad-supported streaming services also ran a significant amount of holiday programming, SMI gets its spending data from ad agency traffic computers and ad buyers do not get complete information about the shows from streaming and digital video outlets where specific ads appear. So, good data on streaming ad revenue isn’t available.

Crown Media’s Hallmark Channel, which has been pursuing a holiday-oriented programming strategy for years, was tops in generating ad revenue from Christmas movies and other holiday programming.

Hallmark Channel holiday programming revenue was $147.8 million for November and December, up by 1% to a three-year peak. It has a 28% share of holiday programming revenue, even with last year. Top titles were Next Stop, Christmas, which brought in $4.4 million in ad spending; and Open by Christmas and A Christmas Treasure, each garnering $3.2 million.

Hallmark also generates incremental revenue with its “Christmas in July” stunt, McCurnin noted. That’s something other networks don’t and probably couldn’t pull it off. “Hallmark is really tapping into that brand equity and owning the holiday year-round,” she said.

Crown Media’s Hallmark Movies & Mysteries had the fifth-most ad revenue from holiday programming with $48.9 million, up 11%.

Viewers Loved a Parade

NBC had the biggest single holiday telecast with its broadcast of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which raked in $54 million. Thirty-second commercials during the parade sold for an average of $540,000, up from $475,000 in 2020.

Overall, NBC generated $89.4 million in holiday programming ad revenue, up 19% from 2020. Its annual Christmas in Rockefeller Center special drew $11 million and the holiday staple It’s a Wonderful Life brought in $4.7 million.

The Walt Disney Co’.s Freeform was third with $76.9 million in revenue in holiday programming, up 4%.

Freeform runs its annual “25 Days of Christmas” stunt, but not every program that appeared as part of 25 Days was counted as holiday programming by SMI. SMI didn’t include Toy Story revenue in its calculations. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Home Alone were Freeform’s top performers. (While many consider Die Hard a Christmas movie, SMI said it didn't appear on ad-supported linear TV in November or December.)

Among other networks generating significant revenue from holiday programming were Lifetime, with $55.6 million in ad revenues, down 19% from 2020; ABC, with $41.8 million, down 1%. AMC m with $31.4 million, down 32%, CBS (which reentered the original holiday movie fray with A Christmas Proposal) at $19.2 million, up 55% and TBS, home of the A Christmas Story marathon, with $14.2 million, up 84%.

Newcomer GAC Family generated $2.2 million in ad revenue from its holiday programming. Worth noting: GAC announced its holiday programming plans after the upfront, missing a lot of potential ad dollars. ■ 

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott is taking another page from his old network’s playbook by planning a Great American Rescue Bowl opposite next year’s Super Bowl on his new network GAC Family.

Hallmark Channel has run a Kitten Bowl since 2014 but canceled it this year. Responding to a viewer asking about the Kitten Bowl on Facebook, the network said, “We are not currently developing original animal-centric programming.” 

Abbott and GAC jumped in to fill the void.

“The plight of animal homelessness continues to be pervasive throughout the country, so being able to televise a proven difference maker in helping pets find their forever homes was an easy decision,” said Abbott. “We’re incredibly proud to welcome Great American Rescue Bowl to GAC Family and are excited about this massive, fan-favorite event being an annual anchor to the network’s pet-centric programming.”

Since buying Great American Country and turning it into GAC Family, Abbott has mirrored the programming on Hallmark, loading the Christmas season with holiday movies, many featuring familiar Hallmark Channel faces.

The Great American Rescue Bowl will be hosted by another familiar face, former Kitten Bowl host Beth Stern, wife of radio star Howard Stern and an animal rights activist. 

“I couldn’t be more excited that Great American Rescue Bowl is coming to GAC Family,” said Beth Stern, national spokesperson, North Shore Animal League America.  “Hundreds of shelters across the country have participated throughout the years and tens of thousands of animals have been adopted as a result of these special events. I look forward to continuing the rich tradition of representing our kitten players and saving lives.”

The Kitten Bowl is credited with facilitating more than 75,000 shelter pet adoptions. The Great American Rescue Bowl will be presented in association with North Shore Animal League America.

“We are thrilled that Great American Rescue Bowl and bowl watch parties will be returning in 2023,” said Joanne Yohannan, senior VP, operations, North Shore Animal League America.  “Sharing stories of our lifesaving work and highlighting the beautiful, homeless animals available for adoption in shelters across the country is such a meaningful way to save lives and helps us continue our mission to rescue, nurture, adopt and educate.”   ■ 

Streaming TV service Philo said it reached an agreement with GAC Media to carry GAC Family and GAC Living.

Launched by former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott, GAC Media acquired cable networks Great American Country and Ride TV and in September turned them into GAC Family and GAC Living featuring Hallmark-style family friendly programming and a slate of original holiday movies.

Also: Former Hallmark Head Bill Abbott Unwraps GAC’s Holiday Expectations

Philo had been carrying GAC Family under a previous agreement with Discovery, which sold Great American Country to GAC Media.

“Philo viewers have already been enjoying the great programming from GAC Family, and now we are thrilled to be adding GAC Living to our lineup,” said Adam Salmons, VP of content and distribution for Philo. “GAC’s original content is certain to delight all of those who subscribe to Philo for family-friendly entertainment this holiday season and beyond.”

Also: Bill Abbott’s GAC Family, GAC Living Find a Family-Friendly Home on Frndly TV for the Holidays

Philo is expected to launch GAC Living in early December.

“We are excited to be joining the popular Philo service at the perfect time as we head into the holiday season,” said Erin McIlvain, chief officer, distribution and content strategy for GAC Media. “We look forward to entertaining the Philo audience with GAC’s family-friendly original movies, specials and unscripted series, as well as our acclaimed ‘Great American Christmas’ programming lineup.”

Great American Christmas is GAC Family’s franchise featuring original holiday-themed movies premiering each Saturday night until Christmas. After premiering holiday films on three consecutive nights over the Thanksgiving weekend, GAC will air new original Christmas programming each Saturday and Sunday through the end of December.

Holiday programming titles include A Kindhearted Christmas, starring Cameron Mathison and Jennie Garth; Royally Wrapped for Christmas, starring Jen Lilley and Brendan Fehr; and season two of the series When Hope Calls, with guest star Lori Loughlin. 

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott is trying not to let his holiday hopes get too high as the first of a dozen Christmas movies appears this weekend on his new network, GAC Family.

Since acquiring Great American Country and Ride TV in June and converting them into the family friendly channels GAC Family and GAC Living, Abbott has been moving quickly and adding staff, some from Hallmark, to produce a dozen holiday movies, some starring familiar faces from Hallmark, add distribution and sell advertising.

The launch of GAC Family has already prompted some social media excitement among fans of family friendly programming. But starting a new cable channel isn’t easy. 

“We have to manage our expectations because we just rolled out,” Abbott told Broadcasting+Cable in his first interview as CEO of GAC Media. 

He’s hoping two distribution deals that make GAC Family available to all Comcast and DirecTV subscribers, putting it in about 50 million homes, will add the channel to Nielsen’s universe for November. “That will be a big change and a difference-maker,” he said. 

More recently, GAC Family was added by Frndly TV, a low-priced streaming TV service focused on wholesome fare.

Starting a cable channel might be hard, but Abbott thought it was a better bet than trying to build a streaming service despite the cord-cutting that is diluting the pay TV audience.

“I totally understand where the puck is headed and we’ll be focused on that, ultimately,” Abbott said. “But building a brand is first and foremost in our minds and it would be more difficult to start a streaming business without a strong brand behind you. Linear TV, while it certainly has huge headwinds against it, still has 80 million subscribers and a scale and scope that’s like none other.”

Cable Adds Advertiser Appeal

Cable is also more attractive to advertisers. GAC’s networks get very little in subscriber fees from distributors, so they’re very dependent on ad revenue. Unfortunately for Abbott, an ad sales guy before becoming CEO at Hallmark Channel parent company Crown Media Family Networks, GAC Media started up too late to take advantage of one of the hottest upfronts on record. “We missed a big market,” he said. “The timing wasn’t great.” 

When it still owned Great American Country, Discovery handled upfront sales for the network. “They did a good job laying in a base of upfront advertisers, but we didn’t have the ability to position the original content and all the things we were doing to get sponsorships,” Abbott said.

Now, Abbott said, he’s trying to generate sales in a scatter market that is “not exactly robust” for maximizing revenue during the fourth quarter — an important one for a network that’s focused on the holidays. “These eight weeks are the hard eight,” he said, using the term marketers use to describe the weeks leading up to Christmas. He said he’s managed to get some advertising business from the financial services and insurance categories, but he’s still looking for retailers to sign up.

“It makes sense for GAC to try to mimic some of the success of Hallmark,” said one media buyer. Hallmark delivers broadcast-level ratings from some of its holiday movies, the buyer noted. “GAC would be a more efficient alternative, but also has much smaller reach still at this point.”

Abbott concedes that Hallmark already takes up a lot of the family friendly space. And dozens of other networks and streamers offer holiday-themed programming. 

Still, Abbott thinks there’s demand for more wholesome programming and that his team is uniquely able to fill it.

“Not all Christmas movies are created equal,” he said. “We believe that we understand better than anybody, quite frankly, how to produce a quality Christmas movie and that ultimately, quality content wins and viewers find it.”

Abbott is still largely following the same playbook he used when he was at Hallmark, he said, “but clearly there’s been a lot of changes over there, so I can’t really speak to what is happening with their format and their focus.”

Abbott started conversations about producing holiday movies with producer Brad Krevoy, chairman and CEO of Motion Picture Corp. of America,  at the same time he was closing the deal to buy the channels they would run on.

“Once we closed the deal, we were ready to go into production on the movies,” he said. “Having Brad Krevoy as a partner at MPCA is a huge win for us because he produced the highest-rated content the last eight years in the genre, and is a master at it. And he has the ability to get up and running with production, very quickly, in three or four different locations.”

Having original movies could jump-start GAC Family. “I think that that's a big point of difference for us,” Abbott said. “We just didn't go out and buy 12 movies off the shelf that have never been seen in the U.S. We created these based on our knowledge of the market and what the audience is looking for in a Christmas movie, and that includes everything from locations to music in the movie to casting to wardrobe.”

Starting this weekend with Much Ado About Christmas, GAC Family will air a dozen original holiday movies, mostly on Saturday nights.

The stars of many of the telefilms are faces familiar from Hallmark’s holiday movies, including Cameron Mathison, Jennie Garth, Chad Michael Murray, Jessica Lowndes, Daniel Lissing, Sarah Lind, Dillon Casey, Jen Lilley, Brendan Fehr and Becca Tobin.
GAC Media this week signed a multi-picture deal with Danica McKellar. Her first project for GAC will be executive producing and starring in The Winter Palace, which will premiere in January.

GAC will also be airing season two of When Hope Calls. Season one of the series appeared on Hallmark Channel. GAC also announced that Hallmark Channel favorite Lori Loughlin — now notorious because of the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal — will be a guest star on the series, playing her character from Hallmark’s When Calls the Heart.

Similarly, Abbott’s executive team includes a growing number of executives he worked with at Hallmark, starting with Kristen Roberts, who as both chief revenue officer and executive VP of programming of GAC Media will ensure programming is attractive to advertisers.

 Another former Hallmark exec who joined Abbott early was Erin McIlvain who heads up distribution as Chief Officer, Distribution and Content Strategy for GAC Media. 

More recently, GAC Media named Crown Media alums Mary Dzabic as chief financial officer and Sara Murphy as VP, ad sales and marketing partnerships.

“I had a number of people who I've worked with for a long time who expressed an interest to come over and build something new and be involved on the ground floor,” Abbott said. “I obviously felt really good about that and it's always good to be with people you have experience with.” 

Abbott and his staff have been burning the midnight oil to get the movies on the air.

“It’s been an enormous amount of work,” he said. “We got four movies in this week that we’re working through and giving notes on and revising. We're right on deadline. It's a tribute to the team that we've been able to get to the point that we're at.”

The holidays won’t provide a respite. Abbott said GAC is in production on two movies for January and is looking at February as well.

As if that’s not enough, fans of family friendly programming are campaigning online for GAC to bring back the Hallmark series The Good Witch. Abbott isn’t saying no.

“That was certainly a great series and James Denton and Katherine Bell were terrific in it. We would certainly love to entertain that, but we're not at that point yet,” he said, noting that he wasn’t sure who currently has rights to the series. “If there’s any good content that's family friendly, we are open for business for sure.”

Taking the Pulse of Fans

Abbott wants GAC to be receptive to fans. GAC monitors social media and is looking to launch a digital site that will be partly subscription video-on-demand and partly interactive in order to build a community of viewers.

Having already bought cable networks, GAC Media’s next acquisitions in the family friendly space are likely to be in production. “The ability to produce our own content in-house would be something we’d want to do down the road,” Abbott said. “We’ve had a lot of success with that in the past and we know how to do that.”

And while GAC is now focused on its linear business now, owning its own content would prepare the company to enter the streaming sector. 

“Making sure you have the depth and breadth in a library that allows you to develop a representative streaming service takes time,” he said. “That won’t be overnight. But down the road, we're preparing ourselves to compete in streaming. 

“We believe producing great content ultimately wins and we’ll follow the consumer wherever they go, but we had to have the brand first, and that’s what the focus is,” he added.

Abbot’s time at Hallmark appeared to end suddenly, but he said it was a long time coming. His departure was announced by Hallmark Cards in January 2020, following a controversial decision to pull and and then restore commercials on the nework showing a same-sex wedding.

While the incident appeared to have triggered his exit, Abbott said there was no single issue that led to his departure. He said he couldn’t get into details, but looking at his 20 years at Hallmark Channel, “the first five years were more fun that the last five years. When you’re building your momentum and every win is special, it’s much more invigorating than trying to stay on top of the mountain.”

Staying on the sideline never entered his mind.

“You know, I'm very competitive and I love the business,” he said. “I immediately started thinking about what I wanted to do next and this, from the beginning, felt like a great opportunity. Getting here wasn’t very easy, but I spent a lot of time trying to get here and I’m really happy with the outcome.”

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott’s new company GAC Media has hired two executives who had previously been with Hallmark Channel parent company Crown Media Family Networks.

Mary Dzabic was named chief financial officer of GAC Media and Sarah Murphy joined the company as VP of advertising sales and marketing partnerships.

Since acquiring the Great American Country and Ride TV cable channels, Abbott has been following the Hallmark Channel playbook, turning the networks into family friendly GAC Family and GAC Living.

GAC Family this week announced that it would be airing a dozen original holiday movies under the Great American Christmas banner. Holiday programming is another Hallmark staple.

GAC is also poaching Hallmark talent including Cameron Mathison and Debbie Matenopoulos, who hosted a special on GAC Family and Lori Laughlin, who will appear in season two of When Hope Calls, which is moving to GAC from Hallmark.

Dzabic previously spent 20 years at Crown Media, most recently as senior VP of finance. In her new roles at GAC, she will report to Abbott and oversee financial planning, investment strategies and capital structure. 

Murphy had been director of advertising sales at Crown Media Family Networks. She began her sales career there as a sales assistant in 2010.

“Mary and Sarah are accomplished executives whose sharp analytical insights and wealth of experience make them valuable additions to the team,” said Abbott. “Having worked closely with each of them for over a decade, I have seen the results of their strong leadership first-hand, and I look forward to their immediate contributions as they deliver strategic solutions and new opportunities to grow our business.”  

GAC Family, one of the new family friendly cable networks run by former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott, announced three more Christmas-themed movies, completing its slate of 12 original films that will run this holiday season.

With the last three films — My Angel’s Christmas List, with Chad Michael Murray and Jessica Lowndes;  A Lot Like Christmas, starring Maggie Lawson and Christopher Russell; and Joy For Christmas, with Cindy Busby and Sam Page — GAC Family will be airing original movies starting Oct. 30 as part of what it’s billing as its “12 Movies of Christmas” celebration. 

Also Read: Bill Abbott’s GAC Family, GAC Living Find a Family-Friendly Home on Frndly TV for the Holidays

Since acquiring Great American Country and Ride TV, Abbott and his company GAC Media have been following the wholesome Hallmark Channel playbook, turning Great American Country into GAC Family and Ride TV into GAC Living.

GAC Family is leaning heavily into the holiday — a strategy that‘s been successful for Hallmark — with Great American Christmas holiday-themed programming and by bringing back some familiar Hallmark faces.

The movie slate was heralded in a special on Saturday and running again Oct. 24 hosted by Cameron Mathison and Debbie Matenopoulos, who, not coincidentally, hosted Hallmark Channel’s daytime show Home & Family when Abbott ran the network. 

The new network also made a splash announcing that it will have season two of When Hope Calls. Season one of the series appeared on Hallmark Channel. GAC also announced that Hallmark Channel favorite Lori Loughlin — now notorious because of the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal — will be a guest star in When Hope Calls, playing her character from Hallmark’s When Calls the Heart.

Here is the full slate of GAC Family holiday movies:

Saturday, October 30: Much Ado About Christmas 

Saturday, November 6: The Great Christmas Switch

Saturday, November 13: Christmas Time Is Here 

Saturday, November 20:  A Kindhearted Christmas 

Friday, November 26: My Angel’s Christmas List

Saturday, November 27: Royally Wrapped for Christmas 

Sunday, November 28:  Christmas Is You 

Saturday, December 4:  Jingle Bell Princess 

Sunday, December 5: A Lot Like Christmas

Saturday, December 11: A Christmas Miracle for Daisy

Sunday, December 12: A Christmas Star

Sunday, December 19: Joy for Christmas

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott’s new company GAC Media has reached a distribution deal with Frndly TV, giving cable channels GAC Family and GAC Living more than 400,000 additional streaming subscribers looking for wholesome programming just in time for the start of the all-important holiday season.

Frndly TV is a virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) that focuses on providing wholesome programming at a low price.

Adding GAC Family and GAC Living gives Frndly TV basic subscribers 23 channels, nine more than in February. The price for basic service remains at $5.99 a month. 

“After GAC Media acquired Great American Country and Ride TV, we immediately began discussions about adding these channels to our lineup,” said Michael McKenna, chief programming officer of Frndly TV. “They shared with us their vision of the two channels moving forward. With that vision in mind, we felt the newly branded GAC Family and GAC Living would be a nice fit to our offering. We are very pleased to have these two GAC Media channels become part of the Frndly TV family.”

Frndly subscribers on social media began asking for GAC Family and GAC Living shortly after their family friendly rebrands were announced.

Abbott, backed by Hicks Equity Partners, has been following the successful Hallmark Channel model since acquiring the cable channels in June. This new carriage agreement comes at a key time for GAC. It means that more people will be able to see the expansive slate of holiday movies the companies will present under its Great American Christmas banner. With its focus on yuletide programming, GAC, like Hallmark, will probably see its best ratings and strongest advertising revenues in the fourth quarter.

Also Read: Frndly TV Launching Hallmark Movies Now as Add-On Channel

GAC plans to premiere holiday films every Saturday night beginning Oct. 30 through Christmas. The slate will be heralded in a special premiering this Saturday and running again Oct. 24 hosted by Cameron Mathison and Debbie Matenopoulos, who, not coincidentally, hosted Hallmark Channel’s daytime show Home & Family when Abbott ran the network. 

The new network also made a splash announcing that it will have season two of When Hope Calls. Season one of the series appeared on Hallmark Channel. GAC also announced that Hallmark Channel favorite Lori Loughlin — now notorious because of the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal — will be a guest star in When Hope Calls, playing her character from Hallmark’s When Calls the Heart.

“GAC Family and GAC Living are the perfect fit for Frndly TV, who shares our passion for engaging and entertaining audiences nationwide with positive, family friendly programing,” said Erin McIlvain, chief officer, distribution and content strategy for GAC Media. “We’re thrilled to be launching on the popular service and look forward to providing GAC’s all-new movies, specials and unscripted programming to the Frndly audience.”

GAC Family and GAC Living launched on Sept. 27 as new brands with original programming slates. Under the tagline “Stories Well Told,” GAC Family features family-friendly, holiday-themed movies and series that celebrate American culture, lifestyle and heritage. GAC Living, tagged as “Life Well Lived,” is designed to complement GAC Family as an unscripted companion network celebrating Great American family friendly traditions. 

Upcoming programming on GAC Family already announced includes A Kindhearted Christmas starring Cameron Mathison and Jennie Garth, and Royally Wrapped for Christmas, starring Jen Lilley and Brendan Fehr.

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott announced that his new channel GAC Family will be bringing back Lori Loughlin and the series When Hope Calls, which previously appeared on Hallmark Channel.

Loughlin has been in the news for her involvement in the college admissions scandal. She was a regular on Hallmark Channel, most recently as the star of When Calls the Heart.

When Hope Calls is a spinoff of Hallmark's When Calls the Heart and will appear exclusively this season on GAC Family.

Loughlin will appear as her When Calls the Heart character in a two part season premiere with the kind of holiday spin Hallmark and GAC Family viewers enjoy. The premiere is titled When Hope Calls: A Country Christmas. It is scheduled to appear Dec. 18.

The When Hope Calls season one cable debut in February 2020 averaged a 2.0 household rating and 2 million total viewers. The show and Loughlin’s appearance will help drive viewership to the new channel, GAC expects.

Abbott led the acquisition of Great American Country and Ride TV for his new company GAC Media. The networks were officially rebranded this week as GAC Family and GAC Living, and will follow the Hallmark playbook of family friendly entertainment and holiday celebrations.

GAC previously announced that Debbie Matenopoulos and Cameron Mathison, who had been stars of Hallmark's Home & Family daytime show when Abbott ran the network, would be hosting a special on GAC Family, Welcome to Great American Christmas on Oct. 24.

In the premiere of When Hope Calls: A Country Christmas, Part 1, "a Christmas festival worthy of Harper’s Bazaar happens in the town of Brookfield as the community is one of three contenders in the magazine’s search for America’s #1 Country Christmas Town. In the midst of the fuss, a stagecoach appears, and out steps Abigail Stanton, Loughlin’s character, and her son, Cody who have brought a troubled boy to the town’s orphanage."

Also Read: GAC Family Adds Three Movies to Great American Christmas Slate

Executive producers of When Hope Calls are Brad Krevoy, Brian Bird, Michael Landon, Jr., Alfonso H. Moreno, Kaitlyn Greenough, and David Anselmo. Producer is Kym Crepin. Supervising producers are W. Michael Beard and Michael Shepard. Director is Bradley Walsh. The spinoff series is created by Alfonso H. Moreno.

Taking another page from the family-friendly Hallmark playbook, GAC Media CEO Bill Abbott, the former head of the Hallmark Channel, is launching a new holiday franchise--and launching it early.

A special, Welcome to Great American Christmas, hosted by Debbie Matenopoulos and Cameron Mathison, will premiere Oct. 24 on the GAC Family channel, which will officially launch Sept. 27. Matenopoulos and Mathison were hosts of Hallmark Channel's Home & Family daytime show when Abbott ran the network.

The special will preview upcoming GAC Family holiday movies and celebrity guests will stop by to share Christmas craft and recipe ideas.

Among the Great American Christmas holiday movies is A Kindhearted Christmas, starring Mathison and Jennie Garth, which will have its debut on Nov. 20. More movies and specials will be announced at a later date, the company said.

Led by Abbott and backed by Hicks Equity Partners, GAC Media acquired the Great American Country and Ride TV cable channels. Abbott said GAC Media would focus on the kind of family-friendly programming that draws viewers and advertisers to Crown Media Family Networks' Hallmark Channel.

Last month, Abbott announced that the cable channels were being renamed effective Sept. 27, with Great American Country becoming GAC Family and Ride TV becoming GAC Living and would serve as the company’s flagship channels.

GAC Family will operate under the tagline “Stories Well Told.” GAC Living’s motto will be “Life Well Lived.”

In GAC Family’s movie A Kindhearted Christmas, Garth owns a sightseeing company in a small town in New York State. During the holiday, she decides to adopt her late husband’s habit of making gestures that make people happy during the holidays. Watching TV, she learns about a high school’s fundraising effort and makes a big anonymous donation. Her town catches the giving sprint, and the TV station’s anchorman, played by Mathison, drops in to report on the Secret Santa, eventually finding Garth.

A Kindhearted Christmas comes from Motion Picture Corp. of America. Executive Producers are Brad Krevoy, Amanda Phillips, Eric Jarboe, Tara Cowell-Plain, Jimmy Townsend, Cara J. Russell, Susie Belzberg Krevoy, Michael Shepherd and Doran Chandler. Producer is Mick McKay. Supervising Producer is Jonathan Shore. Associate Producer is Rob Grant. Directed by Alyssa Leite-Rogers. Story by Jennifer Barrow. Original teleplay by Jennifer Barrow and Amyn Kaderali.

Welcome to Great American Christmas is directed by Leon Knoles.

GAC Media, the new family friendly media company headed by former Hallmark Channel boss Bill Abbott has hired two senior ad sales executives as it gets ready to relaunch the cable channels it acquired earlier this year.

Paul Brennan, most recently senior VP of ad sales at Sony Pictures Entertainment, was named senior VP of ad sales. Earlier in his career, he was an account executive at Hallmark Channel.

Elizabeth Santos was named director of pricing and planning. She had been director of pricing and inventory for a4 Media and was with Ion Media and Univision before that.

GAC Media acquired Great American Country from Discovery and the privately owned Ride TV. On Sept. 27, the cable channels will be renamed GAC Family and GAC Living. 

The channels' family friendly focus should make them popular with media buyers. Prior to running Hallmark, Abbott was head of sales for Hallmark and before that for Fox Family.

The new ad sales execs will report to Kristen Roberts, one of the senior managers who followed Abbott from Hallmark Channel parent company Crown Family Media Networks. Roberts is now chief revenue officer and executive VP of programming for GAC Media. 

“Paul and Elizabeth are seasoned executives who have proven track records for adapting and driving results as the media industry continues to rapidly change,” said Roberts. “I look forward to their immediate impact on our business as they deliver innovative and impactful marketing solutions for our partners.”

Bill Abbott, who ran the squeaky-clean Hallmark Channel, is looking to turn cable networks recently acquired by his GAC Media into a new family friendly entertainment destination.

The Great American Country channel, acquired from Discovery for $90 million, is becoming GAC Family, effective Sept. 27. 

Ride TV, a privately held channel focused on equestrian sports, was also acquired by GAC Media. It will become GAC Living.

The channels were described as the new company's "flagships." The networks have deals in place that put them in about 50 million homes. The company said the networks would be launching across platforms, but didn’t disclose plans for distribution beyond cable. At Hallmark, Abbott launched the streaming subscription service Hallmark Movies Now.

After years of growing ratings and profits at Crown Media Family Networks, the media company owned by Hallmark Cards, Abbott left in January 2020 following a decision to pull a commercial featuring a gay marriage.

In June, GAC Media, formed by Abbott and Dallas-based Hicks Equity Partners LLC, said it had purchased Great American Country and Ride TV and planned to invest in family friendly programming and to look for other growth opportunities.

“At GAC, we’re focused on creating strong brands, compelling programming and a consistent family friendly viewing experience across multiple genres,” said Abbott. “The launch of GAC Family and GAC Living is the next phase in our strategy to bolster the company’s portfolio with networks that deliver on the promise of safe and entertaining storytelling that enriches lives.”

GAC Family’s tagline will be “Stories Well Told.” The channel's programming plan looks like a page from the Hallmark Channel playbook under Abbott. It will continue to run content that captures “American culture, lifestyle and heritage,” GAC Media said. Its schedule will evolve to include family friendly original movies and series that “celebrate relationships and the emotional connections related to holidays, seasons and occasions.

GAC Living will use the tagline “Life Well Lived.” It will be the unscripted companion to GAC Family, the company said. It will have more of a focus on southern and country living.

Specific programming plans will be announced in the future, the company said.

Former Hallmark Channel head Bill Abbott has formed a new company with Hicks Equity Partners that has acquired the Great American Country Network from Discovery.

The new company, GAC Media LLC., also acquired Ride TV, a network dedicated to equestrian sports.

GAC Media plans to focus on family-friendly programming. The company said Abbott will oversee a prompt review of “additional content opportunities while leading growth initiatives in advertising and distribution.”

Financial terms of the deals for GAC and Ride TV were not disclosed.

“Even as the entertainment ecosystem continues to rapidly evolve – both in terms of distribution platforms and underlying content – consumer interest in family friendly programming that enriches lives and offers safe entertainment options remains as strong as ever,” Abbott said. “GAC and Ride TV represent cornerstone assets in this respect, and we look forward to growing both channels even as we pursue the larger goal of establishing new, well-resourced and engaging family-friendly programming."

Abbott was pushed out of Hallmark’s parent company Crown Media Holdings amid a controversy over pulling an ad featuring a same-sex marriage.

Discovery acquired GAC when it bought Scripps Networks.

Crown Media Family Networks has named former TV One and the Weather Channel executive Wonya Lucas as its president and CEO.

Lucas will be responsible for the strategic direction, management and growth of Crown’s three linear networks Hallmark Channel, Hallmark Movie & Mysteries and Hallmark Drama, as well as the company’s Hallmark Movies Now subscription streaming service. Lucas will report to Hallmark Cards CEO Mike Perry.

“Wonya is a brand builder at her core who shares Hallmark’s beliefs and values. She has a deep understanding of the role our brand plays in fulfilling a bigger purpose in people’s lives,” Perry said in a statement. “After a thorough search process, we found a remarkable leader with proven general management skills, as well as a track record of success in driving business results and evolving the positioning and programming of a brand. I am absolutely thrilled to welcome Wonya to the Hallmark family.”

RELATED: Hallmark Channel Chief Bill Abbott Out at Crown Media

Lucas’ appointment comes six months after former Hallmark Channel president and CEO Bill Abbott left the company amid controversy over Hallmark Channel’s pulling of an ad for a wedding planning company which showed two women kissing during their wedding ceremony. The network eventually restored the commercial.

Lucas most recently served as president and CEO of Public Broadcasting Atlanta. Prior to that Lucas served as TV One CEO, and has also served as executive vice president and chief operating officer for Discovery Channel and Science Channel as well as the Weather Channel Networks general manager. She's also spent time at TBS, CNN and in brand management roles at Coke and Clorox.

“Hallmark has been central to my life since I can remember, starting with those Hallmark Hall of Fame movies that were as enriching as they were entertaining,” Lucas said in a statement. “In some ways, my entire career has led me to this incredible opportunity to use the breadth of my experience and skills to evolve an iconic and beloved brand, a culture and a business. I am honored to link arms with the multi-talented leaders and their teams at Crown to build toward an exciting future.”

Hallmark Channel will mark 10 years of its “Countdown to Christmas” holiday movie stunt with more than 40 originals airing on Hallmark and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries over the next three months, beginning Oct. 26. Crown Media Family Networks president and CEO Bill Abbott spoke with Multichannel News about the success of the programming franchise — last year’s edition drew a cumulative 70 million unique viewers — as well as some of the challenges facing Crown. Here’s an edited version of the interview.

MCN:Why has “Countdown to Christmas” resonated with viewers for the past 10 years?

Bill Abbott: The movies are very high quality. We’ve made a lot of progress in terms of the quality of our content. Also, we take great care in the commercial environment that we put our movies in. We don’t accept commercials that would make viewers uncomfortable. We also create interstitial content around our movies that makes people feel at home.

RELATED: Diversity Comes Home for the Holidays

MCN:Do you worry about an increase in competition surrounding holiday programming, and has the genre become diluted?

BA: Certainly it has around the margins. There’s no question that your business gets impacted with increased competition. But at the end of the day, Hallmark is so synonymous with holiday — and our content is done in a way that we think is at the highest level of quality — so I believe that we will be in a good position.

MCN: How have advertisers embraced ‘Countdown to Christmas’ over the years?

BA: We’re doing a lot more business with financial services, automotive and travel -- categories that you wouldn’t necessarily associate our brand. Also the typical retail, packaged goods, pharmaceutical categories have also stepped up in a big way. The marketplace has embraced the success. 

MCN: Have you benefited from expanding the “Countdown to Christmas’ brand outside of television? 

BA:We believe music is the key driver of emotions -- especially at Christmas -- so within the music space our deal with SiriusXM for a dedicated Hallmark Channel Radio [channel] in November and December has been successful. We have a publishing division that publishes Christmas books and is becoming more prolific in that area. Digitally, our Countdown To Christmas app is vibrant and very popular in terms of sending reminders about when our content is on. On the SVOD side, Hallmark Movies Now is prolific in terms of the [holiday] content that exists on that platform.

MCN:What are some of the overall challenges in this crowded TV environment?

BA: We’ve had great success on the [SVOD] side — we have over 700,000 subscribers. We’re not trying to compete with Netflix, but we’re in the space in a big way with differentiated content. That said, I think the $5.99-a-month math doesn’t necessarily add up the same way it does on the linear model. I think the whole entertainment business is challenged with making the SVOD model work, along with making more comparable the value of the SVOD subscriber versus the value of the subscriber on the linear side. Right now, there’s a big gap, and it’s a big challenge for everyone moving forward in the business.

Hallmark channel’s annual ‘‘Countdown to Christmas” holiday programming stunt is delivering gifts for parent Crown Media holdings in both ratings and advertising. Hallmark tied ESPN as the most-watched cable network in primetime from Nov. 26 to Dec. 2, its first weekly its first weekly ratings win of the year.

Since launching its block of 22 original, family-friendly holiday films in late October, Hallmark is averaging more than 2 million viewers in primetime, double its tally during the third quarter. The first 14 of those telefilms — including Road to Christmas and A Shoe Addict’s Christmas — have averaged 3.6 million viewers.

On the advertising front, Hallmark and sibling Hallmark Movies & Mysteries garnered double-digit increases in price and volume within the upfronts and scatter markets due to the ratings success of Countdown to Christmas, according to Ed Georger, Crown Media Family Networks executive vice president of advertising sales and digital media. New this season: a Hallmark-branded SiriusXM satellite radio channel featuring holiday music and behind-scenes content from upcoming holiday movies, and an official Hallmark Channels podcast that launched Dec. 14.

Crown Media Family Networks president and CEO Bill Abbott spoke with Multichannel News about the network’s successful holiday programming run.

MCN: What is the secret sauce behind Hallmark’s continued success with its holiday-themed, original movie lineup?
Bill Abbott: First and foremost, we have a brand that’s synonymous with the holidays, so we have a huge head start going into the holiday season. It’s hard to make that pivot to become a holiday content provider when you’ve been something very different all year long. Secondly, our content just gets better every year. We have worked, as you know, very hard on our story, scripts, casting, production value, music and all the different things that just make us more formidable every year and makes our library that much better every year. Thirdly, our marketing effort is reaching a new level this year with our partnership with Sirius. Our goal to be everywhere that the holiday/Christmas enthusiast is throughout the season is really at a new level. So those are three things that are very big advantages for us that are that are hard to compete with.

MCN: How has your holiday lineup performed in terms of advertising and sponsorship?
BA: We’re having a great scatter market. We’re seeing CPM [price] increases that are significant, and we’re seeing revenue increases that are far outpacing the industry quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year. We’re No. 1 in the vast majority of demographics with the exception of probably adults 18-49, where sports are so big. So demographically, how it translates out on a total-day basis — which is how cable really is purchased by the advertiser — makes us really dominant throughout this time of year, and that drops right to the bottom line.

So it’s a very strong business model and one that advertisers love. They love our environment, and we’ve worked hard to make our environment special throughout the holidays. That translates to higher pricing, a better mix of advertisers and a better overall story on the ad sales side.

MCN: How does success during the holiday season translate to boosting revenue and ratings fortunes the rest of the year?
BA: We’ve focused on holidays as a tentpole for our brand, which is all about celebration. So we have the tentpoles of Valentine’s Day, weddings and certainly Christmas and Thanksgiving. But we also have celebrations of the four seasons as well, so we’ve really expanded our content to create that feeling not dissimilar to when you walk into a Hallmark Gold Crown store. You would feel a lot of bright colors and a lot of different reflections of the season at retail that we chose to capture on air as well. That is something that advertisers really take into account, and it’s really helped us in terms of the marketplace. Nobody else can do that, because their brand isn’t synonymous with [the holiday season] the way ours is.

Even as pay TV operators mull removing channels from the traditional cable bundle, Crown Media Networks hopes Sunday’s (Oct. 1) launch of new linear channel Hallmark Drama shows there’s still life in the old bundle.

Hallmark Drama, like its sister networks Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, will offer a mix of acquired content and Hallmark-themed originals aimed at fans of the brand, according to Crown Media CEO Bill Abbott.

Related: Why Hallmark Is Betting It Can Create a New Cable Network

Abbott said Hallmark Drama will not feature any programming currently airing on Hallmark or Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, drawing instead on Crown Media’s library of original movies and series, including decades of “Hallmark Hall of Fame” films.

Distribution deals with several undisclosed pay TV providers will put Hallmark Drama in 5 million households at launch, the company said. Sister network Hallmark Movies & Mysteries deals do not include a license fee, according to industry sources, though Abbott and Crown officials would not discuss carriage terms, citing confidentiality.

“We still have quite a few deals that we have to complete and we will have significant distribution by first quarter 2018,” Abbott said.

Hallmark Drama follows another recent, sizable linear channel launch: NBCUniversal’s July debut of the Olympic Channel. Overall, though, channel launches run against the trend of distributors dropping networks where possible in an effort to offer cheaper, slimmed-down cable packages to consumers.

Abbott said there’s still appeal in the traditional cable bundle and is pitching Hallmark Drama as adding value to distributor packages.

“It’s our view that the ecosystem is still very strong and the big package of multiple cable networks is still a value and provides a great television option,” he said. “The skinny bundle is great if you’re maybe a single person or not that big a fan of TV, but if you’re in a household with more than one person and those people have a variety of interests, the skinny bundle doesn’t do it.”

Hallmark Channel has enjoyed strong ratings momentum, finishing among the top 15 cable networks in primetime during the third quarter of 2017, averaging 884,000 viewers, according to Nielsen. That was more than the 813,000 viewers posted during the second quarter, Nielsen said.

Hallmark will also step into the OTT arena Oct. 10 with the debut of the Hallmark Movies Now subscription streaming service. The offering, which will cost $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year, will also feature unduplicated content.

“For the passionate Hallmark fan who is engaged toward our content in a big way, we’re offering the service as an add-on that really punches up their engagement with Hallmark and [lets them] experience content they won’t see on the other three Hallmark services,” he said.

Christmas is less than a week away, but television viewers have been celebrating the holiday season since Halloween, watching holiday-themed programming that has delivered a ratings gift to networks.

Holiday movies and specials from cable networks like Hallmark Channel, UP TV and Freeform have benefited from viewers’ seeming desire to see uplifting, comfort programming after a difficult 2016 marked by an unnerving presidential campaign and troubling economic conditions in the country.

“This year the environment overall admittedly has helped us,” Crown Media Family Networks president and CEO Bill Abbott said. “People are looking for that safe destination that they can feel good when they get to it, and that’s played a big role in our success.”

Hallmark, which launched its lineup of 19 original holiday films before Halloween, has consistently finished among the top three most watched networks in primetime during the month of December. The network’s sixth annual "Countdown to Christmas" programming stunt is up by double digits among all key demos compared with last year’s edition, including a 22% jump among total viewers, according to Hallmark officials.

Sister service Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is also performing well with viewers. The network set a ratings record among adults 25-54 with its Dec. 11 original movie Sound Of Christmas.

UP’s “We Get Christmas” lineup has remained hot after launching over the first weekend of November with 5.5 million viewers, led by the premiere of its original holiday movie Married by Christmas, the network said.

Freeform’s annual “25 Days of Christmas,” which launched during the Thanksgiving weekend, has catapulted the network into the top five most watched cable networks over the past two weeks. The network is averaging 1.4 million viewers in primetime during the month, well above the 893,000 viewers the network averaged in November.

Holiday programming has always appealed to viewers during the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve: 85% of all U.S. TV households, or more than 217 million viewers, watched at least one minute of holiday content last year. But the turmoil and consternation revolving around the election and other events in 2016 has made holiday content even more relevant this season.

“We’ve had such a tumultuous year that folks are looking for upbeat, positive programming, and certainly the main thrust of holiday programming is positive, uplifting and fun,” Bill Carroll, senior vice president and director of content strategy for Katz Television Group, said. “We spent so much time over the last year on both sides dealing with the election that I think viewers are looking for that end-of-the-year push for a more positive mood.”

Tele Columbus, the German MSO with about 3.6 million cable-connected homes, has introduced “advanceTV,” a multiscreen pay TV offering that will integrate over-the-top video, support 4K video and rely on RDK-based boxes from Humax with Espial’s ‘G4” client.

Espial, which is also baking in its cloud-based Media Services Platform, also served as the master system integrator for the platform, which is also powered by products from Cisco Systems, Verimatrix, and Elemental Technologies (now part of Amazon Web Services).

Update: Also tied to the advanceTV project is Metrological, which is helping to deliver several apps at launch, including Vimeo, Flickr, DailyMotion, Google Maps, wetter.com, Wikipedia, Deezer, TuneIn, and Deutsche Welle, among others. 

RELATED: Tele Columbus Takes RDK Route to Next-Gen Video

advanceTV, a service that will become available in January 2017, will be integrated with maxdome, one of Germany’s top SVOD-OTT services, and tie in Web apps. The service’s new UI provides integrated access across the MSO’s live TV and VOD services, DVR recordings, and maxdome library.

Tele Columbus, which acquired PrimaCom last year, introduced the new offering Monday (Dec. 5) at a media event in Berlin.

Tele Columbus’s plan is to migrate to the new platform by making advanceTV available to all new customers and introduce campaigns aimed at upgrading legacy video subs to the new platform.

Tele Columbus is also the third European MSO in Europe to implement the Reference Design Kit (RDK), the preintegrated software platform for video and broadband gateways being managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and Charter Communications (via its acquisition of Time Warner Cable).  In Europe, Liberty Global is also deploying RDK, as is NOS of Portugal, which is also working with Espial. Tele Columbus’s rollout will include full unicast support of DVB-C

RELATED: Espial Seals Deal For Arris’s Whole Home Solution Platform

Hallmark Channel heads into the 2015-16 upfront season on a ratings roll. The network’s family-friendly lineup of original scripted series, movies and acquired fare is up 17% in the primetime ratings in first-quarter 2015 compared to a year ago. Bill Abbott, president and CEO of Crown Media Family Networks, recently spoke to Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the upfront market and the network’s plans for the year. An edited transcript follows.

MCN:How will Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries follow up last year’s ratings performance with this year’s original programming lineup?

Bill Abbott: With Hallmark Channel, we’ll be back with 40-plus movies and four original primetime series, and all of our special events like Kitten Bowl. What I think is really beginning to differentiate us from everyone is our strategy around franchises and events. You’ve seen how well we’ve done with Christmas and the whole “Countdown to Christmas” campaign, but our brand is so conducive to other times of the year like Valentine’s Day, back-to-school and Mother’s Day — places where the Hallmark [Cards] brand has lived for 100 years. Our strategy is to lean into that as much as possible to develop those events and franchises that we take ownership of. It’s different that anything anybody else has on TV.

Then Hallmark Movies & Mysteries will have 20 plus original movies in 2015-16. These will be different from Hallmark Channel — where Hallmark Channel is more on the lighter side of entertainment, the mysteries will be more of the character-driven “mystery wheel” type of movies that are more in the vein of Columbo and Matlock then they are more-salacious storylines.

MCN:Will you look to add more scripted content to your lineup over the next year?

BA: We have our fourth scripted series in development launching in 2016 called Chesapeake Shores, which is based on a series of books [of the same name]. When Calls The Heart launches within weeks [April 25] and has been significantly enhanced. That show is under the radar and I think that it will be very successful. We’re currently airing The Good Witch, which is the highest-rated original series for us to date, and we’re thinking about bringing it back for a second year. Cedar Cove returns for season three this year and, given its track record, we anticipate that it will be back for 2016 as well.

MCN:Given the often-salacious nature of original shows on other networks, do advertisers remain receptive to Hallmark’s more family-friendly content?

BA: That’s always been an advantage for us. We can assure a buyer on the client side that, 24/7, you never have to screen our content or worry about getting a letter from an angry viewer — it’s always quality, family-friendly fare. I think moving forward, the fact that so much of our programming is original, differentiated and branded with Hallmark, like “Countdown To Christmas,” that our content is significantly more valuable.

MCN:What is your prediction going into the upfronts?

BA: I think the writing is on the wall to a degree that the upfront will be probably similar to last year in terms of volume. I’m not sure about price yet, but in our case, just like we’ve gone against the ratings trend, we’re pretty sure we’ll do well. We feel confident that both channels will be up double digits on the volume side and pricing will be a little bit above the marketplace, given the fact that we are so undervalued.

We offer such a great efficiency that on its own is a reason to move money to us, but then look at the great content that we have. We provide remarkable value to an advertiser. The marketplace will be what it is, but we’ll be in a different spot.

Hallmark Channel will flip the switch on its rebranded Hallmark Movies and Mysteries channel on Oct. 1 with the hopes that it will curry favor with viewers seeking family-friendly drama and mystery-themed movies and miniseries.

Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, a rebrand of the Hallmark Movie Channel, will feature originallyproduced content as well as programming from Hallmark’s library of movies, according to Bill Abbott, president and CEO of Crown Media Family Networks. Abbott added whatever content migrates from Hallmark to Hallmark Movies and Mysteries will air exclusively on the rebranded channel, providing a differentiation factor between the two networks.

“Once content is dedicated to one network it will not cross over and air on another network,” Abbott said. “That’s a big point of difference to the cable landscape because most networks and network groups are very liberal in shifting programming from one network to another, and we don’t want to create that type of confusion with our brand. We want to create something unique in the consumer’s mind and in the viewer’s mind about what they’re getting with Movies and Mysteries and the Hallmark Channel.”

Hallmark will not move any of its current original series to Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, but Abbott wouldn’t rule out some original scripted fare ending up on the network. “We are really trying to zero in on what the tone and manner will be for Hallmark Movies and Mysteries,” he said. “The strategy is that drama based in series and tone will move to Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, so in that process we’re constantly re-evaluating not only our library, but things that we haven’t developed to determine which network is appropriate.”

Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is one of several networks undergoing rebrands this fall. TVGN, formerly the TV Guide Channel, will rename itself Pop, while kids-targeted network The Hub will take on the Discovery moniker as Discovery Family.

Bill Carroll, vice president and director of programming for Katz Television Media Group, said that rebrands are difficult and often confusing for viewers, but the rebrand of Hallmark Channel to Hallmark Movies and Mysteries should not be as taxing for viewers.

“When you look at a cable or satellite listing at least you have some sense of what it is,” he said. “They have the potential to at least be clear on what they are, and going forward we’ll see if that has the positive impact they’re hoping for.”

For now, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is planning to air original movies on four consecutive Sundays beginning Oct. 5 with Jesse Stone: Innocence Lost, starring Tom Selleck. The block will also include Garage Sale Mystery: All That Glitters starring Lori Loughlin, the first installment in the network’s planned “Mystery Wheel” of recurring movies under one franchise. The network will produce several other Garage Sale Mystery movies in 2015.

“Bringing high-profile talent will be the strength of the network,” Michelle Vicary, executive vice president of programming for Hallmark Channel, said. “The idea is to create great stars, stories and mysteries for the network.”

During holiday season, Hallmark will move most of its dramatic-themed holiday content over to Movies and Mysteries, including some of the highest rated movies in Hallmark history such as The Christmas Card. Overall, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries will offer 1,300 Christmas-themed movies beginning Oct. 31, including two original films, Signed, Sealed and Delivered for Christmas and Christmas Secret.

Abbott said Hallmark Movies and Mysteries will target adults 25 to 54 with a sweet spot of women 25 to 54, which is also Hallmark Channel’s target audience. He said that he is not concerned about siphoning viewers from Hallmark Channel but instead expects Movies and Mysteries to build on its audience. Hallmark Movie Channel averaged 341,000 viewers in primetime this past summer, up 40% from last year.

“We’re not looking to go younger with one or go more male with one,” he said. “I do think Movies and Mysteries will be a strong ratings counterpart to the Hallmark Channel, and I think you’re going to see this holiday an evening out in ratings across both networks. I don’t think the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries takes a back seat to Hallmark or any other cable network.”

It's not exactly on the level of cable's siphoning of big-ticket sports, but premieres of Hallmark Hall of Fame specials are moving from broadcast to cable. The series of family-friendly films will leave ABC and debut on Hallmark Channel in 2014-15.

The series has been a broadcast TV staple for more than 60 years, starting with Amahl and the Night Visitors in 1951, and for kids proved something of a gilt-edged guarantee of being able to stay up late on a schoolnight.

The Hallmark Hall of Fame movies have aired on ABC for the past three years, but will now debut on Hallmark Channel along with multiple encores. The first movie in the new arrangement will be One Christmas Eve, starring Anne Heche. Hallmark Channel will air as many as four original Hallmark Hall Of Fame movies as year, and the network will have access to past movies from the HHOF library, Michelle Vicary, executive vice president of programming for Hallmark told Multichannel News.

“Over the past three years the Hallmark Hall of Fame has had higher total viewership via ABC and Hallmark Channel than in any three-year period in the past decade,” said Brad Moore, president of Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions in a statement. “We’ve enjoyed the success and our working relationships with both ABC and Hallmark Channel."

Bill Abbott, President and CEO, Crown Media Family Networks, added that, “Hallmark Hall of Fame is the longest running and most beloved drama franchise in television history. Adding these premieres to the network’s lineup brings great value to our viewers and further reinforces Crown Media’s position as the leader in high-quality original family entertainment.”

Crown Media Holdings, which runs the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel, reported higher earnings in the first quarter.

Net income rose 20% to $14.5 million or 4 cents per share, from $12 million, or 3 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 6% to $85.6 million.

Advertising revenue rose 6% to $69.4 million in the quarter. The company said the increase was the result of ratings growth at Hallmark Movie Channel and its forbear. Those gains were offset by lower demographic ratings at Hallmark Channel.

Subscriber revenue rose 4% to $21 million.

Programming costs were up 27% because of amortization of 100% of the cost of the original series When Calls the Heart and the Kitten Bowl special.

“Building on the success of our first original series Cedar Cove, we introduced our second original series When Calls the Heart in January 2014 to the delight of our loyal viewers. We snagged their hearts with the Kitten Bowl in February 2014,” Bill Abbott, president and CEO of Crown Media Family Networks, said in a statement. “With a slate of 15 original movie premieres in 2014, the return of "Countdown to Christmas" with 12 original movies and The Most Wonderful Movies of Christmas, and the realignment of the Hallmark Movie Channel’s brand with a new name, tagline and logo called Hallmark Movies & Mysteries; we have positioned ourselves to meet our strategic goals.”