Carriage Deal for Hallmark Channel, Cablevision Systems

Hallmark Channel signed a renewal agreement with Cablevision Systems.

As with its other recent sign-ups, Cablevision also gets rights to the standard-definition and HD versions of Hallmark Movie Channel.

Cablevision's subscribers in New York were "particularly important" for the channel, president Henry Schlieff said.

Hallmark has been pitching itself as must-have family-friendly programming, armed with ratings data showing that it is a consistent top 10 network. According to the network, it is averaging 1.152 million viewers in April in primetime, its best-ever average.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.