Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (2024)

Jingle Binge

By Brett White@brettwhite

Published Dec. 13, 2022, 8:30 a.m. ET

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Christmas is a joyous time of peace and togetherness — but there’s a pop culture clash underway on the most unlikely battleground of all: holiday TV movies. They’re cozy, they’re formulaic, and they’re in a no-holds-barred death match for all of America’s attention!

Holiday hyperbole aside, the conversation around the 2022 Christmas movie season has been dominated by one almighty feud: Hallmark vs. Great American Family. In one corner we have Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas, a battalion of holiday movies that’s been delighting families and 20-somethings watching ironically since 2009. And in the other corner is the rookie network Great American Family, a.k.a. GAC (Great American Country), presumably a.k.a. GAF, part of Great American Media and home of the Great American Christmas lineup (yeah, a second GAC) since 2021. There can be only one Christmas victor — !

The history behind this beef is too complicated to get into in great detail here, but it essentially boils down to one man: Bill Abbott. Abbott was the head of Hallmark until a controversial decision in 2019 to ban a commercial featuring a same-sex couple led to a lot of bad publicity. Abbott parted ways with Hallmark shortly after the 2019 holiday movie season, and Hallmark began including same-sex couples in supporting and lead roles in their films in 2020. Abbott is now the head of Great American Family and he’s been poaching Hallmark stars since the network’s launch in 2021. Add all of this to ex-Hallmark mainstay Candace Cameron Bure’s comments about GAC only focusing on “traditional marriage” and a genre of TV movie that was once relegated to background noise while you decorate your tree is suddenly at the epicenter of a very serious culture war.

So, with all the talk about GAF posing a threat to Hallmark, we had to ask: which network is really winning the Christmas ratings war? Is it even close? Was it wise of Candace Cameron Bure to vacate her Hallmark throne? Here are the answers, at least according to the ratings.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (1)

Which network is winning the ratings war?

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (2)

Hallmark. Period. Is this surprising? It could be to some, considering that the coverage around Great American Family feels a bit both sides-y, always presenting the network as an actual rival of Hallmark’s and rarely ever reporting on the networks’ barely measurable ratings. Just look at the graph above, which charts all of the times that a Hallmark movie went head-to-head with a Great American Family movie this season. Of the 14 Christmas movies aired on GAF through December 8, four of them — Catering Christmas, A Royal Christmas on Ice, Christmas at Pine Valley, and I’m Glad it’s Christmas — didn’t even place in the top 150 cable programs of the nightwhen measuring viewers 18-49.

By comparison, on the nights that seemingly no one was watching Great American Family, Hallmark’s Jolly Good Christmas ranked at #8; Lights, Camera, Christmas ranked at #12; Three Wise Men and a Baby ranked at #6; and Haul Out the Holly ranked at #11. In every single instance, these Hallmark movies were the #1 scripted programs of the night.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (3)

And just to throw more numbers out there — of the holiday movies that aired between the season’s kickoff on October 21 through December 8, Hallmark’s holiday movies averaged 2M viewers each; Hallmark Movies & Mysteries movies averaged 877K viewers each; Lifetime’s movies averaged 428K viewers each; and Great American Family’s movies — the ones that charted — averaged 282K viewers each. Without factoring in the four films that didn’t chart, Great American Family is pulling in better ratings than the original holiday movies airing on some networks — networks like ION, UPtv, and BET. Like GAF, the majority of the holiday movies aired on those networks fail to make the daily ratings charts.

If Hallmark has any competition, it’s CBS. The two movies aired on CBS during the range in question (pre-December 8) averaged 3.34M viewers. But remember: CBS is a major network and Hallmark is a cable network, so CBS’ audience is naturally larger. And even if CBS beats Hallmark in ratings, they only offer a tenth of the original movies that Hallmark does.

Which network is generating more conversation?

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (4)

Hallmark’s dominance extends beyond ratings and into the larger cultural conversation. This is where it seems like Great American Family is making major headway, but the stats don’t back it up. Looking at Google search trends for the duration of the holiday movie season, Hallmark is consistently on top. Hallmark’s made headlines this holiday season too, primarily for the recordbreaking ratings of Three Wise Men and a Baby.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (5)

As for GAF, it’s very hard to track its imprint because the network was known as GAC (Great American Country) last year, Great American Family this year, is part of Great American Media, and has a lineup of movies called Great American Christmas. The branding is beyond confusing and that’s evidenced by the fact that more people google “GAC” than “Great American Family,” which is the actual name of the network. But even if you added all of the search volume for the different iterations, it barely touches Hallmark.

The truth is that people aren’t talking about Great American Family’s movies so much as they’re just talking about network star and CCO Candace Cameron Bure.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (6)

That spike in search for Bure correlates with the actor’s Wall Street Journal profile wherein she said that GAF’s holiday movies will focus on “traditional marriage” (which can be taken as coded, hom*ophobic language). This was a major news moment, one that received backlash from Hilarie Burton and JoJo Siwa, and led to frequent holiday movie actor Neal Bledsoe to cut ties with the network. This uproar definitely raised Bure’s profile, evidenced by related search interest settling down at a point higher than it was at prior to the WSJ piece, but has it helped out Great American Family’s ratings at all?

Defecting from Hallmark to Great American Family: Worth it?

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (7)

No, it has not been worth it — and that is potentially a major problem for GAF. The Wall Street Journal profile that earned the network so much attention focused on Bure’s defection from Hallmark to Great American Media in April 2022. Bure’s career change is part of an attention-grabbing holiday movie trend, one that started last holiday season with the departure of Danica McKellar from Hallmark. The conversation around Hallmark movies this year, at least for those who spend time seriously thinking about holiday movies, is centered around who is and who isn’t leaving which network.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (8)

Bure and McKellar are definitely the biggest names to leave Hallmark for Great American Family; McKellar starred in Hallmark holiday movies for seven consecutive seasons until her departure, and Bure starred in 10 Hallmark holiday movies since 2007. This is the first year since 2014 that Hallmark has not had both a Candace Cameron Bure movie and a Danica McKellar movie in their holiday lineup.

All that is to say, the move has not paid off for Bure, McKellar, or GAF.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (9)

Despite being the first major Hallmark star to pack up and move, McKellar’s Christmas at the Drive-In was watched by 482K people; by comparison, 1.98M people were watching Hallmark’s A Royal Corgi Christmas at that time. This is a major step down for McKellar, whose You, Me and the Christmas Trees was watched by 2.22M people on Hallmark last year. That’s a 361% decrease in McKellar’s audience, year over year.

The news is even worse for Bure, the undisputed former queen of Hallmark whose jump to GAF garnered the most attention that the network has ever seen. Her movie, Candace Cameron Bure Presents: A Christmas… Present, got a primo Thanksgiving weekend release in the wake of the kerfuffle around her big WSJ profile. A Christmas… Present was watched by 462K people. That’s 20,000 less than McKellar’s movie.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (10)

By comparison, 2.43M viewers tuned into A Holiday Spectacular on Hallmark during that time. This was a major step down for Bure, whose last Hallmark movie — 2021’s The Christmas Contest, which also aired the Sunday after Thanksgiving — was watched by 2.95M people. That’s a decrease in viewers of 539% year over year. Bure did not bring her Hallmark audience with her to GAF (and she only brought 8% of her 5.6M Instagram followers).

2023 and Beyond

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (11)

Before we can look at what’s ahead, let’s look at where we stand right now. As already mentioned, Hallmark holiday movies are still massively successful, generate tons of search interest, and are routinely the most-watched scripted program any and every night they air. All of that is true, even if total viewers are only nominally the same.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (12)

Comparing the first 32 Hallmark movies (including Hallmark Movies & Mysteries) of 2022 with the first 32 from 2021, ratings are — on average — down 130K. That’s not much considering cable’s natural attrition and whatever dent GAF has made (if any). This also doesn’t take into account that Hallmark struck an unprecedented deal with Peaco*ck to make their films available on the streaming service for a limited time following their network debut and allows Peaco*ck subscribers to watch a live stream of all three Hallmark networks — Hallmark, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, and Hallmark Drama — just as easily as if they were watching via cable or satellite. And don’t forget: Hallmark also scored its most-watched movie since 2019 in Three Wise Men and a Baby — which is also the most-watched TV movie of 2022 across all of cable.

Now let’s look at Great American Family.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (13)

Considering that no GAF movie charted when the network was known as GAC, this year is an improvement over 2021. However, Great American Family is far from overtaking or even tying Hallmark in the ratings. It’s also hard to think of what GAF could possibly do to boost their ratings. They already poached the competition’s biggest star and it didn’t make a sizable difference in Hallmark’s nor GAF’s ratings.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (14)

In order to surpass Hallmark, GAF first has to overtake Lifetime’s slate of holiday movies, which regularly feature Mario Lopez and Melissa Joan Hart. This is a far more attainable goal: Lifetime’s 2022 holiday movie viewer average is 428K, which is down from 603K in 2021. Still, GAF will have to work hard to compete with Lifetime, a network that has decades of name recognition and a reputation as a holiday movie destination, even if it’s drawing less viewers this year.

Hallmark’s lead in the ratings is so significant that it would probably take Hallmark fumbling in a major way for any other network to catch up with them. And considering how ambitious Hallmark’s 2022 slate is, with films that vary in genre and plot and tone and cast more than ever, the future looks merrier and brighter for the network. And as for GAF, they’re going to have to try a lot harder — and probably wait a while longer — to become a holiday tradition like Hallmark.

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  • Haul Out the Holly
  • Jingle Binge

As a seasoned expert in the realm of holiday TV movies and the cultural dynamics surrounding them, my extensive knowledge allows me to provide a thorough analysis of the concepts mentioned in the article "Jingle Binge" by Brett White.

The article delves into the ongoing clash between two major players in the holiday TV movie landscape: Hallmark and Great American Family (GAF). The central figure in this clash is Bill Abbott, the former head of Hallmark, who, after a controversial decision in 2019, became the head of GAF. Abbott's move sparked a cultural war, with Hallmark adapting to include same-sex couples in response, while GAF began to poach stars from Hallmark.

Now, let's break down the key concepts explored in the article:

  1. Hallmark vs. Great American Family (GAF): The central conflict revolves around the battle for viewership between these two networks during the 2022 Christmas movie season. Hallmark has been a longstanding player in the genre, while GAF, a newer entrant, is positioning itself as a contender.

  2. Ratings War: The article presents a detailed analysis of the ratings battle between Hallmark and GAF. Despite the perception that GAF is a serious rival, the evidence suggests that Hallmark continues to dominate in terms of viewership, consistently ranking higher in the ratings.

  3. Cultural Conversation: The author examines the cultural impact of both networks, emphasizing that Hallmark maintains dominance not only in ratings but also in the larger cultural conversation. Google search trends and news coverage indicate that Hallmark is the more talked-about network during the holiday season.

  4. Star Power and Defections: The article discusses the significance of high-profile stars, such as Candace Cameron Bure, defecting from Hallmark to GAF. Despite the attention generated by such moves, the evidence suggests that it has not translated into success for GAF, with the defections resulting in lower viewership for the stars in their new network.

  5. Future Outlook: The analysis extends to the future prospects of both networks. Hallmark's continued success is attributed to its diverse and ambitious 2022 slate of holiday movies. On the other hand, GAF is seen as having a long way to go to establish itself as a holiday tradition comparable to Hallmark.

In conclusion, the evidence presented in the article overwhelmingly supports Hallmark's continued dominance in the holiday TV movie genre, despite the efforts of the newcomer, Great American Family. This analysis is rooted in a deep understanding of the historical context, ratings data, and cultural trends shaping the holiday TV movie landscape.

Hallmark vs. Great American Family: Who’s Winning the Holiday Movie War? (2024)
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