A city girl moves to a country town, wanting to get away from it all. There, drowning in the depths of her crisis, she is saved by an unlikely hero: a humble yet extremely successful baker (or handyman, or musician, or carpenter) who charms her in a way no one else can. They spend most of their time together, bonding over their different — yet thematically similar — struggles. They almost kiss, but are interrupted by something silly. The town has a baking competition. They win. They kiss this time. A scenic shot of an unrelated mountain is shown, and they all live happily ever after.
In 2022, this formula generated the Hallmark Channel an estimated 350 million dollars.
“Hallmark” is a name synonymous with Christmas, grandmothers and comfort. A well-earned reward, given that the company assumed its long-standing reign over the holidays well over 20 years ago in 2000. The story of how this company came to dominate the made-for-TV holiday scene is nothing short of fascinating.
“The Christmas Secret,” sometimes inexplicably called “The Flight of The Reindeer,” premiered Dec. 17, 2000, and is considered the first ever Hallmark Christmas movie. “The Christmas Secret” follows a respected zoologist on his quest to scientifically prove reindeer can fly. While this film looks extremely different from the more tame formula that viewers have come to expect today, it still stands as an important moment in the company’s history. In fact, at this point, the channel was still operating under its original (and lesser known) branding of Odyssey Television Network. Odyssey, in the late ‘90s to early 2000s, maintained a more religious angle, airing programs such as “A Biblical Portrait of Marriage,” a 12-episode television show led by preacher Bruce Wilkinson, who sought to educate the masses on the way he believed God would want a marriage to function.
By March 2001, however, these sorts of programs became less frequent as the channel underwent a severe reconstruction. Spearheaded by new vice-chairman Margaret Loesch, Odyssey began cutting down on the amount of religious programming it was putting out in an attempt to become a more viewer-accessible channel. In August of that same year, Odyssey would take on the name “Hallmark Channel,” taking advantage of the recognizable name “Hallmark Cards,” which already held a significant portion of the company’s stock at that point.
Each December, Hallmark would continue to produce and put out Christmas movies, but its first real success would not arrive until Dec. 2, 2006. “The Christmas Card,” a heartwarming love story about a soldier and a woman from a small town, is one of the most popular Christmas movies put out by Hallmark. It continues to air every single season, despite higher-grossing films having been released in the 17 years since. Emily St. James, a senior correspondent for Vox, considers it the movie that “first helped Hallmark realize it could go all-in on Christmas in November.” From then on, Hallmark began leaning more heavily into made-for-television holiday movies, introducing the iconic “Countdown to Christmas,” in which both old and new seasonal specials are aired every day in the weeks leading up to Dec. 25. These movies would steadily become more and more similar over time, resulting in the “Hallmark Christmas Movie” formula that fans have come to expect today.
Despite their success, however, the Hallmark channel is not without its controversies. In December 2019, Hallmark aired an ad for Zola, an online wedding registry. The ad featured a same-sex wedding between two women, causing outrage among some of the channel’s longtime fans, namely a conservative parents’ group called One Million Moms.
In response, Hallmark pulled the ad — but this only generated more backlash. Hallmark later apologized for their actions, reinstating the now-infamous ad, but the damage had already been done. Big companies such as Netflix and Freeform posted tweets openly mocking Hallmark, causing some fans to call for a boycott of all Hallmark products.
In April 2022, one of the channel’s longtime actresses, Candace Cameron Bure, announced she was leaving Hallmark to work for a similar media company called Great American Family. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, she reported this change was due to religious reasons. “My heart wants to tell stories that have more meaning and purpose and depth behind them,” Bure said. “I knew that the people behind Great American Family were Christians that love the Lord and wanted to promote faith programming and good family entertainment.” While it is not entirely clear if this decision was influenced by the Zola ad controversy, it did mark the start of a decline in Hallmark movies’ viewership, especially after a new CEO, Wonya Lucas, was hired.
None of this is to say, however, that the Hallmark Channel is nearing irrelevance.
During the beginning of the 2023 “Countdown to Christmas,” Hallmark, according to Futon Critic, “earned the #1 entertainment cable network spot in Weekend Total Day and Weekend Prime among key demographics, along with being named the #1 entertainment cable network of the week in Total Day.”
It seems reasonably safe to say that the holiday giant won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. It’s undeniable that the channel has had an incredible influence on the Christmas movie market, and continues to greatly entertain fans every year. The Hallmark Channel has, over many years, seemingly done the impossible. It has crafted an almost untouchable universe, filled to the brim with cozy Christmas lights and gently fallen snow. A world that delights thousands — where every story ends with a happily ever after.