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Hallmark, like various systems of artificial intelligence, is learning, and easing up on its compositional jargon. In \u201cA Merry Scottish Christmas,\u201d Chabert\u2019s character has a love interest, and in Hallmarkian (and Sirkian) tradition, he is hunky, sensitive and handy. Yet unlike so many Hallmark heroines, she is not leaving a high-powered career in the big city for an ostensibly more substantial small-town life. Chabert\u2019s character thinks she can stay in Scotland if she can run her own medical practice. And the \u201cParty of Five\u201d reunion overperformed. Taking into consideration all ad-supported cable, \u201cA Merry Scottish Christmas\u201d was the most-watched movie of 2023. The core viewers included women in key advertiser-prized categories, and the demographic details go broader than what many perceive to be Hallmark\u2019s viewership: crotchety and cane-shaking \u201cN.C.I.S.\u201d fans.<\/p>\n
What has become a cultural juggernaut began as a plan to market postcards. Joyce, Rollie and William Hall were born into Nebraska poverty in the late 19th century, and by 1911, they owned and operated a tiny venture called the Hall Book Store. There they sold, among other printed goods and gifts, \u201cChristmas letters.\u201d One advertisement from the time described the letters as \u201cneat dainty folders of beautiful Christmas sentiments and mottos.\u201d This snow-globe spirit is alive in Hallmark to this day. By the late 1940s, the company was sponsoring a Reader\u2019s Digest radio show on the CBS network, but it soon went into the entertainment business on its own. Its radio show \u201cHallmark Playhouse\u201d morphed into \u201cHallmark Hall of Fame,\u201d a series of television specials that began in 1951. <\/p>\n
In the early days, the Hallmark specials aired several times a year, and there was always one in December \u2014 Christmas-card season. Producing everything from George C. Scott doing Arthur Miller to Cicely Tyson in \u201cThe Marva Collins Story,\u201d the still-active \u201cHallmark Hall of Fame,\u201d with 78 Emmy nominations, is one of the most-awarded series in television history. In 2009 (eight years after taking full ownership of a religious network called Odyssey), the rechristened Hallmark Channel got serious about \u201cleaning into Christmas.\u201d <\/p>\n
And Valentine\u2019s Day. In 2015, the network announced five films ensconced in conventional Valentine visuals, traditions and melodrama. Fast-forward to Loveuary 2024, and the network is curating evermore high-concept Valentine\u2019s Day programming. It is airing five films, four of which give Jane Austen\u2019s themes Hallmark quirks. Featuring the network favorites Alison Sweeney (\u201cDays of Our Lives,\u201d \u201cThe Biggest Loser\u201d), Will Kemp (\u201cGirlfriends\u2019 Guide to Divorce\u201d) and Mallory Jansen (\u201cAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D.\u201d), Loveuary closes on Feb. 24 with a \u201cBridgerton\u201d-esque adaptation of \u201cSense and Sensibility,\u201d starring the Hallmark neophyte Deborah Ayorinde (\u201cThem,\u201d \u201cTrue Detective\u201d). There will be empire-waist gowns, a literary scholar in need of a new attitude and, in \u201cAn American in Austen,\u201d a woman exported to the times of \u201cPride and Prejudice.\u201d Stubbornness, love, truths universally acknowledged: totally on-brand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n