Hallmark+ will have a lot of originals, but Countdown to Christmas movies are staying on TV.
Hallmark recently announced that the company is making another push in the world of streaming, this time launching a more all-encompassing experience than it has before. The new service, Hallmark+, will launch in September and combine Hallmark’s extensive library with unique deals and merchandise opportunities from the Hallmark stores. There will also be a lot of original films and shows on the service, including a wide range of unscripted titles and several new holiday movies. Not to worry, though, the launch of Hallmark+ won’t in any way effect the ultra-popular Countdown to Christmas marathon, which releases new holiday films on the linear Hallmark Channel throughout the last couple months of the year.
Hallmark+ will have a lot of Hallmark Christmas movies available on the service, as well as some new additions, but the films part of the annual Countdown to Christmas event will still take place on linear TV. That means that the current streaming deal with Peacock will also continue, which sees the linear Hallmark Channel airing live on Peacock, and new Countdown to Christmas films being made available on the service the day after they air.
“Countdown to Christmas remains a linear experience,” Lisa Hamilton Daly, EVP of programming at Hallmark Media, told Variety in a recent interview. “The content on the app is going to be Holidazed, Mistletoe Murders, our unscripted shows and a couple of movie trilogies coming up that we haven’t announced yet. Three’s going to be a bunch of holiday content, but it’s going to be separate and different from what’s on linear.”
Daly went on to explain that there will still be a lot of films and shows made for the classic Hallmark Channel, as well as titles made exclusively for Hallmark+. There will just be a few differences when it comes to approaching the two brands.
“We think about our audiences and what they want and like from us, as to where it goes first. We’re thinking about diversity, the audience being younger and building it around. Our linear audience is who’s left watching linear, which tends to be older. We consider them our core viewers so we think about what makes them happy. It’s about thinking about the audience first in each place,” she says. “We’re also willing to have a little bit more conflict in our stories. In order to develop plots, you have to have some conflict – especially in our series, people fight with each other, but we know there’s the promise that they do really love each other, and they’ll come together at the end. You have to hold that out because it’s very important to our viewers to have that be the resolution. But in order to make a series work, you have to have a little bit more complex storylines.”
Hallmark+ is set to launch in September. A specific release date and price have yet to be announced.
