Hallmark’s been making some main modifications over the previous a number of years and lots of these might be attributed to a change in management. Longtime ship captain Invoice Abbott left for GAF in 2020 and an entire slew of Hallmark stars adopted him to the brand new community. Taking his place was former Lifetime and Netflix head honcho Lisa Hamilton Daly, who broke various new floor with content material and added some new expertise, however who additionally made waves for placing some content material on Hallmark+ solely and was just lately sued by the previous SVP of Expertise and Casting Penny Perry. Now she’s out, too.
Stories point out the cabler is seeing one other main exit, however on this case, Lisa Hamilton Daly will completely not be going to GAF, a community identified for “conventional” household programming (as Candace Cameron Bure famously put it). The official assertion from Hallmark makes use of lots of enterprise buzzwords to clarify how the corporate will probably be “aligning” transferring ahead with out its EVP of programming.
Regardless, the gist is the community will probably be eliminating the place as an entire (through Deadline) and will probably be shifting in order that Darren Abbott would be the sole head of the community.
Hallmark is aligning its consumer-facing contact factors, together with content material, underneath a single chief, Chief Model Officer Darren Abbott, with a spotlight and experience within the expression of the Hallmark model to shoppers — from product to experiences and now content material, throughout a number of platforms. Darren has an innate understanding of the Hallmark model and paired together with his management and imaginative and prescient, will guarantee our content material aligns to the promise of our legacy model.
There’s little question that Lisa Hamilton Daly introduced her personal spin to Hallmark. The community has branched out each by way of style and various storytelling narratives, with comedies like Three Sensible Males and a Child and its sequel love tales together with homosexual storylines like The Christmas Home changing into staples for the community. Reveals like The Approach Dwelling have additionally created the next bar for the content material audiences have come to anticipate, however there’s been some unrest amidst followers too.
And the Chiefs Love Story film that includes a cameo from Travis Kelce’s mother blew up within the scores this winter.
However there have been some grumbles from followers as Hallmark+ took away some unique content material from cable subscribers, who nonetheless watch through conventional TV or streaming TV like YouTube TV. (As a facet be aware, some Hallmark films can be seen with a Peacock subscription and even with a Netflix subscription.) The extra $7.99 value for Hallmark+ has turned some individuals off, significantly those that are already paying for cable.
Hallmark+ was even going to tackle The Approach Dwelling Season 3 earlier than complaints led to a reversal. The present will now be airing on conventional TV.
Then, there’s that lawsuit, which made headlines as a result of it allegedly highlighted factors Lisa Hamilton Daly made in regards to the main women on the community, and reported the top honcho had even acknowledged “our main women are ageing out. We have to discover new expertise to take their place.” The reference in query reportedly referred to the community’s face, Lacey Chabert, in addition to longtime star Holly Robinson Peete.
The previous Imply Ladies star is 42 and mentioned on the time the information was breaking that various storytelling doesn’t simply should do with race or style, and that individuals of all ages deserve love tales, too. She famous followers ought to be capable of see Hallmark tales “by means of each part of life.”
We’ll have to attend and see if we be taught extra in regards to the exit and the place Lisa Hamilton Daly is headed subsequent, however the excellent news is Darren Abbott needs to be taking up fairly seamlessly as the one head of Hallmark, and that ought to imply manufacturing on upcoming Hallmark tasks is maintained fairly simply. It is a good factor, as a result of they gotta get began on the Christmas film schedule pretty quickly. Sure, actually.