IFC’s tagline may position the network as “slightly off,” but president and general manager Jennifer Caserta believes its approach to delivering quality, original comedy programming is exactly on target to reach its core adult audience.

As IFC parent company AMC Networks looks to extend the network’s comedy presence to the stage with the acquisition of Levity Live, which owns numerous upscale comedy clubs around the country, IFC hopes to further build its television and digital brand with original sketch and narrative comedy content, with hit shows such as Documentary Now! and Brockmire.

Brockmire, which stars Hank Azaria as a journeyman baseball broadcaster, in particular has been a standout. Its season-two premiere on April 25 drew nearly 3 million viewers on digital platforms including VOD, IFC.com, the IFC YouTube and Facebook pages and FunnyOrDie.com, while averaging 506,000 total TV viewers in Nielsen live-plus-3 ratings.

Caserta spoke with Multichannel News about the network’s brand and its original programming strategy, as well as the challenges cable networks face in an uncertain television marketplace.

MCN: How would you define IFC’s brand?

Jennifer Caserta: We take great pride in our off-center sensibility — the “slightly off ” which is in the tagline — and you will see more of that amplified, because we’re very proud of it. It’s consistent in everything that we do with regards to the way we approach marketing and promotion on every platform. There will be a little refresh because we think that it’s right to keep things fresh, but the slightly off remains true and at our core.

MCN: Will that refresh be reflected in the content that the network is delivering?

JC: No, it’s more in the brand. Like I said, we take the brand very seriously with a lot of intent, so it’s more about amplifying the slightly off. We’re finding it existing in a lot of places in the world around us — the comedy sensibility that we have is smart and intellectual. It’s imperfect, and we love that, so you’ll probably see it more in how it’s presented.

As for our original content, we do all scripted right now. Portlandia is now off the channel, so we’re looking for our sketch replacements. Documentary Now! coming back is a big win for us not only in terms of sensibility but because of the critical acclaim it has generated.

MCN: With your adding shows like Brockmire and Stan Against Evil, will the network look to move more into narrative-based shows and place less emphasis on sketch shows?

JC: It’s really a focus on both. Portlandia was on the air for eight seasons, and we feel that continuing to develop programming in the sketch format is important to us. Documentary Now! is a longer-form parody within sketch comedy that you didn’t see a lot of before but see more of today. Sherman’s Showcase, for example, ties into a sketch format that’s unique, but also a format that speaks to African-American culture, variety and music. As for narrative, there’s so much flexibility with what comedy narrative is today. Brockmire, for example, is a wonderfully complex story line that gets really dark at times, so you’ll see more of that develop over time because its really important to us.

MCN: What are some of the challenges facing networks like IFC in a very crowded and evolving television environment?

JC: In a time where everything is about disruption, I think it’s always hard for people to remain focused because it’s all happening around us. Yet focusing on what we do well and how we move into the future and how we realize and adjust to how people watch our shows. You have to follow the audience, and that’s a big part of what it is that we do in making people really attracted to your brand and to your network in the way that you present your viewing options.

Up TV specializes in positive content in an era that can feel pretty negative. “We Get Family,” goes its tagline, and Amy Winter, executive vice president and general manager, believes families will still watch together, if the content is right, at a time when kids increasingly disappear to their rooms, iPad in hand, to watch their own stuff.

Up TV, part of InterMedia Partners, is a true independent. Its shows are a mix of unscripted homegrown series, such as Bringing Up Bates and Expecting, and scripted off-network stuff, such as Parenthood and Gilmore Girls.

Winter came on board at Up TV in 2015 after a long run at TLC. She spoke with Multichannel News about the challenge of being independent in the age of scale, and why America is seeking out more positive television right now. An edited transcript follows.

MCN: You reached 100 episodes for Bringing Up Bates. Why is the Bates family attractive to viewers?
Amy Winter: They check so many boxes for TV entertainment in general and then specifically our brand. It’s 19 kids — there are kids of all ages going through a lot of different stages of life. We’ve got the older ones starting relationships, starting their own families. The younger ones are there for entertainment. That has been really the heart of the entertainment factor but I think what people keep coming back for is, they’re just a good family. They’re very funny and they give each other a hard time. In their hearts, in the way they live their lives, they’re people you can feel good for watching.

MCN: Any new shows that might battle Bringing Up Bates for ratings primacy?
AW: I’m very excited about the new night of content that we’re rolling out on Fridays. We’re calling it Life’s Biggest Moments. We’re starting with our baby shows — Expecting started [April 6] — we had a very encouraging start to the series. That follows the journey to parenthood. It is all self-shot [cast members do their own camera work], so it is remarkably intimate. We’ll move on to weddings in June, which we’re very excited about.

MCN: Is Up’s positive message a good thing right now in this country?
AW: It’s absolutely what sets us apart from the television landscape. Up’s positivity and uplifting content is being sought after specifically by the audience we’re talking to. We just completed the fourth phase of a study where we have identified an audience called Family in Mind. The No. 1 driver of what they want to see on television and what they’re not seeing enough of are shows they can share with family. What they want to share is positivity. What they want to do is collect everybody and sit down and watch together. I think we’re seeing proof of our promise to viewers. We’re always in the top 10 most co-viewed networks.

MCN: Do families still want to watch TV together?
AW: I believe so. The content mix that we do, we’re trying to entertain adults first. We hold our shows to that standard. We want to have you and your partner come to the set and watch together. But we’re also putting out shows that you can feel good about watching as an entire family. We are definitely seeing that happen as we engage with viewers.

MCN: Up does not have its own scripted series?
AW: There are no scripted shows currently planned but we do scripted movies. We focus most of them during the holiday time frame. Christmas is a big season for us — we’ll have seven original movies during that time.

MCN: Tell me about Up’s new streaming service.
AW: Up Faith & Family is our streaming service. It’s available on a number of different providers. Amazon has something like 200 channels and Up Faith & Family has cracked the top five on that service. We’re also rolling out direct-to-consumer and a number of other places as well.

MCN: What is it like as an independent network these days? Is it challenging?
AW: It’s challenging as an independent but it also energizes our team to be smarter and scrappier than anybody else. We find that we can go out and make relationships with some of the other independents out there. It really just energizes us to think a little bit differently than everybody else who’s in the portfolio game.

Actor Hank Azaria will take to the broadcast booth again as baseball announcer Jim Brockmire in the sophomore campaign of IFC’s comedy series Brockmire, premiering April 25. Azaria will again portray the flawed-but-lovable Brockmire as the series shifts to New Orleans and a new job opportunity for him to once again rebuild his reputation after suffering a notorious public breakdown surrounding his wife’s infidelity.

With IFC already greenlighting a third and fourth season of Brockmire, Azaria sat down with Multichannel News senior content producer R. Thomas Umstead to talk about the success of the series — season one drew more than 8.6 million total viewers in Nielsen live-plus-7 ratings — as well as the show’s full embrace of the sport of baseball, and the series’s uncanny ability to break through the comedy clutter — and thrive.

MCN: What should viewers expect from the second season of Brockmire?
Hank Azaria:Brockmire continues to get very dark: Darker than season one, if you can believe that, because I couldn’t. Season two makes season one look like Saved by the Bell. They say that alcoholism and drug addiction — which are two problems that Jim Brockmire has — can be seen as fun with problems or just problems. I would say season two is solving fun with problems.

MCN: What’s been behind the success of the series?
HA: It’s funny — that’s the most important thing to me — it’s comedy that’s actually funny. I know it sounds like I’m being simplistic or facetious, but that’s it. Bring on the drama and darkness, as long as it’s funny. It’s also really important to find a great writer, and we trust him to write the series. It also has a strong narrative; it’s a story that you can follow that’s not episodic; and we love the characters.

MCN: You’ve also successfully wove a scripted series around the subject of baseball. How important is the game to the overall identity of the series?
HA: It’s very important for this show, but I think you have to approach it the right way. It was very organic to who this guy is, and he’s kind of what baseball is: an old-school, Americana, old-fashioned thing who has a difficulty transposing himself into modern society — kids, for example, don’t have the attention span for it. But you don’t have to be a baseball fan to love this show.

MCN: Obviously you’re keeping busy with Brockmire, but is there anything else you’re working on?
HA: I’m always doing The Simpsons; I have for 30 years and that never stops. But Brockmire keeps me busy with producing and acting in the series.

After cutting its teeth on the Roku platform, Float Left, a privately held company founded in 2009 that specializes in developing and deploying TV apps, has extended a bridge to several other major streaming platforms. The list included Apple TV, mobile, smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV and Vewd (formerly known as Opera TV).

In addition to developing custom apps for major brands such as Crackle, NBC Sports and AMC, Float Left has also created a white-label TV apps product called Flicast that can help mid-tier brands and smaller players extend onto a growing ecosystem.

While the process of hitting all of those platforms has gotten easier, video publishers are still faced with a fragmented platform market that makes it a challenge to bring a high-performance “native” experience to all (or most) of them.

Related > TV Apps: The Last Mile

Multichannel News technology editor Jeff Baumgartner recently caught up with Float Left CEO Tom Schaeffer to discuss how those challenges are being overcome along with other trends that are affecting the multiscreen video sector. An edited transcript follows.

MCN: Let’s start with the name. What does Float Left refer to in the context of TV apps and your business?
Tom Schaeffer: Unfortunately, it really doesn’t. [Laughs.] When I founded the company, for a very brief time we were a web applications business. We were building web apps. Float Left is a reference to an HTML styling paradigm. It’s a way to lay out items on a web page. We were just sitting around and it was the least terrible name we could think of.

MCN: You develop on a bunch of platforms. Fragmentation has always been seen as a long pole in the tent. Is that still the case when it comes to the biggest tech or operational challenges faced by the industry today?
TS: For companies that are doing this what I’d argue is the right way, which is pure, native development for all of these different platforms, yes, [fragmentation] still presents a huge challenge. You do make up some ground with the smart TV ecosystem, where everything is based in HTML5. But for the platforms that are driving a lot of the ROI for the brand — Apple TV and Roku and [Amazon] Fire TV — those are absolutely independent platforms and require different code and different skill sets.

Part of the strategy we’ve put forth is we want to invest in native. Yes, it’s going to take longer, and yes, it’s going to be more of a technical challenge, but we know the end product and the result that the publishers get when they get that complete suite of apps. It’s an overall better experience. It’s easier for [the publishers] to manage, and it’s easier for us to manage on behalf of them.

We thought with the Smart TV Alliance that this was the first step in a unification of code to make the TV experience better, but really everyone is going in their own direction. And we don’t see that getting better, at least with respect to the platforms that matter to publishers today.

That’s what Flicast is … underneath that is a technology that helps to make this process manageable for us and for the publishers.

MCN: So we’re not yet at a point where it’s code once, deploy everywhere, because there are still enough nuances between these platforms?
TS: If you’re doing one code and you’re deploying everywhere, you’re not truly going native. That does impact performance at the end of the day. From our perspective, it’s still very fragmented. We’re not at a place now, and I don’t think we’ll ever be at a place, where you hit a button and it kind of goes everywhere. It’s more managed in frameworks and tools that we’re developing underneath the surface.

MCN: What platform is the most grueling to develop for in terms of certification? Do they all represent a degree of pain?
TS: They all definitely have their own degree of pain at certain times. Roku certainly has been a challenge. You’d sometimes have a brand that was developed on Apple TV with a rich experience here, but they also love Roku. We would have to build our own screens and make it do things that it wasn’t initially designed to do.

That was back then. Today, it’s become more difficult in just the sheer number of platforms that are required. When you get an app certified on Roku, it’s being tested against dozens of different models and versions. When we develop an app, we go through our own process of quality assurance before we even submit to Roku’s app store.

Just by the nature of those things, that’s still the most challenging platform, but it’s also the most worthwhile, we believe, and the publishers should still be leading with that platform.

MCN: Is there any platform that’s making some recent gains in terms of gravity and interest?
TS: We’re seeing a lot of that with Amazon Fire TV. We think that that’s becoming a platform that publishers [are using] to go direct to consumer. [Amazon has] a wonderful development relationship team that supports the development community, so it’s become a lot better for companies to deploy there. From a publisher’s perspective, Amazon is definitely up there now, whereas a year or two ago they were unsure how it was going to play out.

Apple TV is such a powerful platform. I think the concern there is that the channels, unless you’re a big brand, are just getting lost. And that’s a concern across the board. As far as deploying, and deploying on that platform, tvOS has become one where you can do anything you want nowadays. When we’re talking to folks about where you should distribute, I think that’s a big factor.

The smart TVs are also making big strides. Samsung is doubling down with Tizen, [and] the LG webOS platform is still solid, and I think that’s going to start having a bigger impact next year.

MCN: For your company, where do you see the most growth coming from? Is it from virtual MVPDs, SVOD services or even TV everywhere?
TS: Maybe two years ago, anybody who had a VOD library was trying to get into the game. I think nowadays they’re becoming more savvy and more aware of the challenges. That group of folks is starting to subside. Now we’re starting to see a push by the virtual [multichannel video programming distributors] and operators, and they are now targets of ours. That’s not something we’ve traditionally been targeting, but we are going to be targeting that market now and in the future.

And you’re still seeing a lot of the pay TV programmers that are still trying to figure this out [with] TV everywhere. We’ve just deployed Ovation Now, which is the Ovation network’s direct-to-consumer offering for TV everywhere, and they are on our Flicast platform.

MCN: What sorts of features or enhancements are on the roadmap?
TS: Especially because we’re starting to target the MVPDs, I think [electronic program guides] are going to be something we’ll really start to focus on. We have a solid one that’s a base feature that we’ll start rolling out. We’re taking a lot of lessons learned from big brands.

For example, Crackle has a great feature...an always-on feature, which is basically live video playing in the background with the user interface basically hidden, or brought back into focus depending on if you want to navigate content.

It’s a pattern we’re seeing that [consumers] just want to sit down and watch something. Having to browse endlessly, I think, creates a little bit of friction. Now we’re showing video, and if they want to browse, they can browse, but there’s video playing with the always-on feature. That’s also something we’re integrating into Flicast.

In June, longtime BET executive Michael Armstrong was named to the newly created role of general manager for BET Networks, where he will be in charge of navigating the industry’s leading African-American targeted brand through a very competitive and often volatile media landscape. Armstrong recently spoke to Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about his vision for the 37-year-old network, which earlier this year was named one of the six brands that parent company Viacom will focus its resources on going forward. An edited transcript follows.

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MCN:How would you define the BET brand?
Michael Armstrong: The BET brand is a place where you can find innovative formats, content and programming for consumers of black culture worldwide. We’re now in well over 60 countries and more than 40 million households. We’ve got BET feeds around the world — Africa, France, U.K. and the U.S. — and we’re continuing to grow. So when you think about BET as a brand, we can’t just think of it as the U.S. brand — which is obviously our bread and butter — but about BET as a global brand, servicing viewers with a BET channel at almost every waking hour. When you think of BET as one of the flagship six brands here at Viacom, it’s because we’re a global brand that serves a global consumer.

Related > Viacom: When Less Means More

MCN:You mentioned BET as being named one of Viacom’s six flagship brands. Is that a comforting testament to the value of the BET brand, or does that put more pressure on BET to live up to lofty expectations?
MA: If you think about brands inside of today’s media world, the idea that you have to live up to expectations is a given. You’re constantly trying to make connections with your consumers. We are judged by how people are taking to the content that we’re offering them and how people are responding to the brand. We’re increasingly interacting with our consumers in digital and social, and responding in real time to what they’re saying.

MCN:Currently, there’s unprecedented media competition to reach the African-American viewer. Given that, how do you keep BET as a leading brand for its core African-American audience?
MA: I think the way that we win in that space is we just remain authentic to who we are, which is a platform that launches and incubates new stars. We’re doing that and will continue to do that with programming that we offer on a regular basis. There are always going to be hit shows [targeting African-American viewers] all across the dial — that’s just how this business works. But if we remain true to who we are on a consistent basis, we will continue to be the leading brand.

Related:Centric Becomes BET Her, Focuses Further on Women

MCN:What should viewers expect to see on BET going into 2018?
MA: We will continue to innovate in all areas of programming, including unscripted and biopics. We were very successful with the New Edition biopic and we are following that up with the Bobby Brown story. We also are excited about bringing back some of our favorites. The Quad was an innovative way to tell a story about a fictitious HBCU and all of the different things that happened on that campus, so we’re excited about seeing how that story continues to evolve. We also have a great new talent in Robin Thede coming for a late-night show; 50 Cent brought his comedic skills and identification of great talent to the network with 50 Central. So we have a platform that we use to continue to launch and incubate new talent, and we are super excited about what that’s going to mean for our future because people want fresh and new, not only content but also formats.

MCN:What do you see as the biggest challenges for BET going into the rest of the year and into 2018?
MA: The biggest challenges for any brand are really ratings and ultimately making sure that the programming that you’re creating is connecting with the viewer. So our challenge is to make sure that we’re creating innovative programming. We have a lot of faith in the upcoming slate for the network, as well as our returning favorites. So we’re going to just keep our foot on the gas and make sure that we’re listening to our consumers and giving them more of what they want.

When Brian Jones was officially named as Fox Business Network’s first-ever president in May, he inherited a channel on a major ratings roll. The financial news outlet posted a record second quarter in total viewers and increased its audience year-to-year in the quarter by 12%. More importantly, Fox Business has beaten its chief rival, CNBC, in total viewers across the business day (9:30 a.m.-5 p.m.) for a network-record three consecutive quarters, dating back to third-quarter 2016.

Jones, who was senior vice president of operations when Fox Business launched in 2007 and most recently served as the network’s executive VP, spoke to Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the network’s ratings fortunes, as well as the overall cable news business.

Related: 10 TV News Titans [subscription required]

MCN:You are taking over a network that’s on quite a ratings climb. How would you define the Fox Business brand?
Brian Jones: It’s an exciting time. We have a fantastic staff and to see them finally get the recognition that they deserve after 10 hard years of slogging through this is great. We have some fantastic young journalists, and some of the most experienced business journalists that have ever been put together [on a team]. We talk to people, not at people, and we try to put these very important economic concepts into relatable, approachable terms that people understand. We’re talking about health care, tax reform and jobs. You know, these are things that impact every American regardless of economic strata in this country. So we try to give them information that they can use to either keep more of the money that they have or make more money for their families.

MCN:What is it about this current environment that has allowed Fox Business to build its year-to-year ratings growth?
BJ: I think people found the network. We launched it [in 2007] right at the start of the financial crisis. Back during the internet boom, you couldn’t talk to anybody that wasn’t involved in the stock market, but that all went away. … At the same time, the whole media landscape was either changing or fragmenting. So then what happens is that people need actionable information to protect themselves and protect their families. Then, because of those two [Republican primary] debates [telecast by FBN], viewers found in us a network that they liked, and they saw that we have the deepest bench in economic business that’s ever been put together — Maria Bartiromo, Stuart Varney, Neil Cavuto and Lou Dobbs. The lineup is replete with experience in context and analysis so that people can make actionable decisions.

MCN:How do you view today’s cable news landscape?
BJ: I think it’s just an important time for news. I think newspapers — and especially the digital side of newspapers — are growing because people need information. This is a very volatile time, and important issues like health care, taxes, jobs and technology are affecting and will affect you and your kids and your family’s future, and you want the information to put that in context so that you can make the right decision.

MCN:Having said that, what challenges does Fox Business faces as it continues growing?
BJ: I think we’ll be able to solidify our business day because that’s where we do the best journalism and the best coverage of these important issues. Our next challenge, and it’s always been a challenge, is reaching younger viewers. I’ve got kids in their 20s, and they don’t watch business news. They don’t yet understand the importance of this. So it’s getting this information in the younger people’s hands so that they understand when they start getting married and buy houses and buy cars and start planning for their futures that there’s a home for them to go to get information to make those decisions.

MCN:So exactly how do you reach a millennial viewer that’s not necessarily depending on linear cable news networks for information?
BJ: From a business perspective, we’re making sure that our product is available on any platform. I want the person walking down the street with a smartphone or in a home with a tablet or on the [over-the-top] platforms that are emerging to be able to access our content. We are platform-neutral, and as the industry changes we have to make sure that people are aware it’s out there.

We want to make sure that the information on this network is something that helps the entire family. So we choose topics and then put that information in context so that a younger person who is trying to just get going in their first job or their first serious relationship knows what banking means and what the new laws mean to them and how it’s going to affect their first paycheck.

MCN:Recently the network suspended on-air host Charles Payne amid sexual harassment allegations. Where does the network stand with regard to Mr. Payne?
BJ: I can’t talk to employee situations. It is still under investigation and we’ll wait for the outcome of that investigation.

MCN:Have the allegations and the investigation tainted the Fox Business brand at all?
BJ: No, I mean we are focusing on the mission that I just outlined.

WWE chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon has arguably replaced her entrepreneurial father Vince McMahon as the face of the brand.

She’s worked with key executives to help push WWE’s brand footprint outside the ring, fostering the move into reality series with E!’s Total Divas and spinoff series Total Bellas, as well as expanding into digital with the 2014 launch of WWE Network.

Related > Flying High: How Wrestling Is Fueling TV Ratings [subscription required]

Showing off its financial muscle, WWE reported a 10% increase in revenue during first-quarter 2017 compared to the prior year. Further, the company said it “continues to target record financial results for 2017, specifically adjusted operating income of $100 million.”

SVOD service WWE Nework now has nearly 1.5 million global subscribers, according to the company, up 16% from first-quarter 2016. USA Network’s weekly WWE Monday Night Raw remains one of the most-watched series on cable, averaging more than 3 million viewers so far this year, while the Tuesday-night series WWE SmackDown has posted strong rating gains since its move from Syfy last year.

Multichannel News programming editor. R. Thomas Umstead spoke with McMahon last week via phone from London — where she and WWE were preparing for live telecasts of the May 8 Monday Night Raw and May 9 SmackDown — to get an overview of the thriving business as well as the challenges and opportunities that WWE faces. Here’s an edited transcript of their conversation.

MCN:What has propelled WWE’s strong performance in 2016 and thus far in 2017?
Stephanie McMahon: First of all, we have, you know, one of the best executive teams that we have had in a very long time. When you consider the fact that the WWE has grown into a $729 million business, things are working for us.

Nearly 30% of that revenue came from our international business, so that means our international expansion is working. In 2010 nearly 30% of our business was direct-to-consumer, and today it’s more than 50 percent, so our direct-to-consumer strategy is certainly working. In 2010, 6% of our business was digital, and today it’s more than 30%, so again it’s our businesses itself and the people driving it. They are laser-focused on our different strategies for growth, whether that be content and our tiered ecosystem, or sales and sponsorship.

But ultimately the secret sauce is truly our fan base. Our fans cheer, they boo, they chant … they actually help influence what happens in the ring. A lot of what we do is improv, and that’s where the performance art aspect comes in. Without our fan base, we don’t have a show, and that’s one of the reasons why social media has been so strong for WWE. We have over 780 million social media followers, which means their engagement with us continues outside of the ring. From a business standpoint we’re able to utilize the data analytics that we get from the WWE Network, from social media, from live events and even from merchandise sales to help influence the direction of our content and super-serve our audience.

MCN:In which areas of the business do you see the most growth potential in 2017?
SM: We’re really focused on international and we’re focused on content because again we want to super-serve our fan base through localized content. I was in Dubai just last week, announcing our first ever Arabic local-language show. We’re here in the U.K., where we’re shooting Monday Night Raw and SmackDown live at the O2 in London, where we’re also shooting localized content that will ultimately drive viewership into our NXT Takeover [episode] featuring the U.K. championship. So it really is localized content super-serving our fanbase in as many ways possible, along with international growth.

MCN:Having said that, what are the greatest challenges facing the WWE going forward?
SM: Well, I think the opportunities are the same as the challenges. From a technology standpoint we want to be able to offer fans everything that they’re asking for, and the biggest frustration comes when the technology just isn’t there yet to do it. But we’re constantly driving and pushing our partners to help make sure that that happens. Again, serving the appetite of our audience is really our greatest opportunity as well as our greatest challenge, because the more we provide them the hungrier they get.

MCN:Are you concerned at all about competition within the wrestling category given the proliferation of pro-wrestling content in the marketplace?
SM: Well I think imitation is the truest form of flattery, but I don’t think the viewership with some of those other organizations at this point is competition for us. If anything I think it just drives more interest in the genre itself. When you look at reality shows like Total Divas or Total Bellas, and when you look at films like our partnership with MGM for [theatrical film] Fighting With My Family, the story of [WWE wrestler] Paige’s life, I think we’re really just scratching the surface of the deeper stories that these individuals, as well as their characters, have to tell.

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.