Crown Looks to Cut Last-Minute Hallmark Deals With Time Warner, DirecTV
Contracts Expire Dec. 31
By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 12/28/2007 9:05:00 AM
Crown Media Holdings, parent of the Hallmark Channel, is expected to be in deep negotiations with three of its largest distributors over the next few weeks, securing carriage deals that involve more than 30% of its total distribution.
Four of Crown’s biggest distributors – Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision Systems and DirecTV – representing about 60% of its total carriage, have deals that expire on Dec. 31, 2007. While Crown was able to reach a deal last month with Comcast – which represents 20.5 million Hallmark Channel subscribers – the Hallmark Channel parent had yet to secure deals with TWC, Cablevision, or DirecTV by Friday.
According to Crown’s 10-K annual report issued in March, TWC, Cablevision and DirecTV represented a total of 31.6 million Hallmark Channel subscribers, or about 37% of Hallmark’s 84.5 million subscribers.
DirecTV vice president of public relations Darris Gringeri said that the satellite TV giant continues to negotiate with Hallmark.
“The network is not going to go down on Jan. 1; it’s going to continue,” Gringeri said.
While it is likely that the network will continue to be aired on TWC and Cablevision systems through the negotiations, the lack of a deal appears to contradict Crown CEO Henry Schleiff’s prediction in early November that at least two deals would be done before the year was out.
Hallmark Channel senior vice president of corporate communications Nancy Carr declined to predict when the deals would be done, but said negotiations are ongoing.
“Negotiations are going well,” Carr said. “We are optimistic we will reach an agreement.”
Schleiff has been pushing for carriage fee increases with operators and satellite TV companies for months, claiming that healthy ratings for the Hallmark Channel (it consistently ranks in the Top 10 ad-supported cable networks in prime time) make it a valuable network for operators.
According to Oppenheimer & Co. cable and satellite analyst Tom Eagan, the Hallmark Channel was able to wrangle a carriage fee of between 4 cents and 8 cents per subscriber per month from Comcast, significantly above the negligible amount the cable operator was paying under its old agreement.
