Feel-good Hallmark Channel booming in the age of Trump
cable. Ratings are up another 9% so far this year, Nielsen said, and the Christmas movie marathon hasn’t even started yet.
It’s feel-good TV. There’s no sex or gore. Hallmark movies and series like When Calls the Heart and Chesapeake Shores have happy endings. The main characters do the right thing. The problems get worked out. The guy and girl, whatever their age or grumpiness level at the start, always end up together.
Ratings are growing fast among 18- to 49-year-old women, and a growing number of men are tuning in as well. Men account for some of the jump in the Nielsen ratings, and when the channel does focus groups, increasing numbers of men say they watch with their wives.
Crown Media, which owns Hallmark, said it has been spent a lot more on its movies and shows lately, but better acting alone doesn’t explain the big jump in viewership and advertising dollars.
Hallmark is the opposite of the divisiveness that so many families felt during the election and US President Donald Trump’s penchant for courting controversy.
Turn on the news and you see people who can’t get along, even in the same party. Turn on Hallmark and everyone ends the show smiling.
Hallmark’s ratings have been rising for several years, but it really started surging in late 2015, right about the time the election – and the Trump phenomenon – took off.
During the week of the election last year, the Hallmark Channel was the fourth-most watched channel on TV during prime time.
Hallmark’s tagline is “the heart of TV”. The happy formula is working. The Hallmark Channel and its sister station, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, are doing so well that Crown Media just announced it will launch a third channel, Hallmark Drama, on October 1.
The end of the year is Hallmark’s sweet spot, for viewers and advertising dollars. The channel will start running its Countdown to Christmas on October 27, with 21 original movies that all have a holiday theme. Viewers love it.
Hallmark is on track to surpass its stellar 2016, especially after the Christmas season. With autumn shaping up to be a contentious time for the US at home and overseas, Hallmark could be the big winner.