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A Hallmark Thought
May 19, 2008
NEW ORLEANS – On stage Sunday at the 2008 Cable Show here, Viacom CEO
Philippe Dauman said he was having “good conversations” with cable operators about carrying the as-yet unnamed premium entertainment channel and online service being put together by Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate Entertainment and MGM. On Monday morning, the venture named former Showtime executive
Mark Greenberg to lead it into competition with HBO, Showtime and Starz.
About the same time, Starz LLC chairman Robert Clasen was making an interesting comment over at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, where he is staying at the show. Starz (and presumably parent Liberty Media) would be interested in owning a basic cable channel.
A broadly distributed channel would give Starz a boost for its growing interests in movie and TV program production. Its Overture Films startup now has released three original theatrical movies, “Mad Money” with Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah, “Sleepwalking” with Charlize Theron and “The Visitor” which features no big name. Its Film Roman studio is best known for producing the animated TV shows “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill.” The pay television service also has agreements to use hundreds of titles from the film libraries of
MGM, Universal Pictures and Warner Brothers.
And which basic channel comes to mind first? Hallmark.
The Hallmark Channel is one of the 10 most-watched basic ad-supported channels on cable, he noted, sounding a bit like Hallmark chief Henry Schleiff in making that point. (Although now Hallmark is refining its argument to make the point that it is almost at the top in
retaining viewers through commercial breaks).
Clasen also notes that Starz’ parent, Liberty Media already owns about 15% of the Hallmark Channel.
The idea would not be to massively overhaul Hallmark, if this happened to come to pass. The idea would be to find primetime homes for appropriate family-oriented content from Starz’ holdings and output.
And this is most certainly not about creating another movie channel. Starz already operates
16 movie channels including the flagship Starz and Encore brands. (And Hallmark already operates one itself).
Those two flagships, though, reach approximately 16.3 million and 30.7 million subscribers, respectively. Hallmark Channel, by contrast, reaches about 85 million households.
It may be just a thought, at present. Just about every program network owner from Turner Broadcasting to NBC Universal you can pretty much bet has talked with Hallmark (and probably Schleiff) in the past three years about the worth of the independent channel. Usually, the low license fees that Hallmark has been able to command and sometimes the age of its audience are issues, when the subject of acquisition comes up.
But it was interesting Monday to hear Clasen float the idea of Starz being interested in a basic channel like Hallmark at breakfast and then see Clasen and Schleiff walking along the second floor of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center between the two morning sessions of the Cable Show and chatting amiably.
Probably nothing to it. “We are not for sale. We never talk about the purpose of meetings with investors or shareholders,” according to Hallmark Channel senior vice president of corporate communications Nancy Carr.
Schleiff, ever ready with a clever comeback, had a more basic response.
"We (Bob and I) were walking out of the general session this morning with the mutual interest of finding the men's room," he said.
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Posted by Tom Steinert-Threlkeld on May 19, 2008 | Comments (0)
