Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas versus GAF’s Great American Christmas

Christmas is in full swing on all the streaming and cable platforms. With over 150 new holiday movies you can watch this season, last weekend kicked off the 2022 new season of original movies on both the Hallmark Channel network and Great American Media network. If you have yet to hear of Great American Media with its anchor channel Great American Family, then you will want to read through this article for sure. If you have, then you will understand why I am writing this blog to compare Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas to Great American Family’s Great American Christmas.

In two very popular blogs from 2019, I explained why people WATCH Hallmark and why others REFUSE TO WATCH Hallmark movies. In 2019, Hallmark celebrated the 10th anniversary of Countdown to Christmas. Last year I mentioned Hallmark during a quick reflection on an afternoon outing with the boys where we had a fun conversation comparing the classic White Christmas with the modern Hallmark Countdown to Christmas brand. However, my opinion has changed, and for the sake of what I have written in the past, today I update you on why it has.

The Backstory

In Hallmark’s 10th Anniversary Countdown to Christmas programming, Hallmark aired an advertising campaign from Zola which featured two women kissing and getting married. As Hallmark was the go-to place for family-friendly content, since it was fairly free of progressive politics and maintained a very traditional view of relationships, conservatives spoke up against the inclusion of the ad campaign. Specifically, the online group One Million Moms launched a campaign against the ads. Therefore, Hallmark pulled the ad campaign – momentarily.

The left-wing media and many left-leaning groups immediately attacked Hallmark for pulling the campaign. As a result, Hallmark apologized and reinstated the ads while promising to make all Hallmark networks LGBTQ-friendly. Last Christmas season (2021), Hallmark and Lifetime networks both débuted their first movies featuring a homosexual couple as the main romance storyline. Further, they began including homosexual themes and couples in secondary roles throughout their new programming.

Read Hallmark’s new CEO Wonya Lucas’ remarks regarding the change.

“Before I arrived, we had begun to expand our brand inclusiveness in front of and behind the camera. I’m proud of the progress this team is making to expand diversity in our programming and it is nothing short of seismic. The significant achievements made in the D&I space in 2020 laid the groundwork for us to branch out in our storytelling to approach the complexity of what it means to love and be a family in a more authentic, varied, and inclusive way. We will continue to strive to defy common stereotypes and give our characters more depth and dimension; in short, to more broadly represent the human condition. And what a difference a year makes. But believe me; we know there is so much more good work yet to be done.”

“It was a big priority not only for us to show diversity but to show different kinds of diversity, so we were really pleased to have interracial couples. I would say probably 25% of our movies had diversity in them, and that wasn’t a number we were trying to reach. It was just how do we find the best casting and the best actors for each of these roles, and I think the development team and our casting senior vice president, Penny Perry, did an amazing job.”

“What I see, moving forward–and I can speak for myself — is that we’re gonna continue to lean into that and you’re gonna see more of that.” (emphasis added for the blog)[1]

In other words, Hallmark went all-in on the transition to a line of programming that features LGBTQ+ main characters, secondary characters, and storylines. As a company, they exercised their right to determine what they wanted to do in terms of its future. In America, we get to do that.

Enter Great American Family’s Great American Christmas

One month after the disastrous meltdown at Hallmark over the advertising in 2019, Hallmark Channel’s CEO Bill Abbott (who had served 11 years as the CEO) resigned. He bought the GAC channel, formerly known as Great American Country.

Since this 2020 shift, GAC has become Great American Media under Bill Abbott’s leadership. The company now consists of two specific channels including Great American Family and Great American Living, as well as an app for most platforms, Great American Community.

Read Bill Abbott’s explanation of the philosophy of these two new networks:

“We want to be relentlessly family friendly, we want to be consistent, and we want to be high quality. And if we do those three things, I think we’ll deliver on the promise and will be the leader in the space, and the same will hold true in the lifestyle area.”

“There’s so much need for family content and the market in this space. It’s pretty scary, quite frankly, the amount of content that’s out there, the vast majority of content is salacious and is not appropriate for any member of the family, really.”

The channel’s goal is to present programming that features traditional American culture, heritage and lifestyle.

Basically, the creator of the Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas brand is doing the same thing over at Great American Family. He recently told John Contratti that GAC has partnered with MPCA, a production company that was Hallmark’s leading producer for the last eight years, producing Hallmark’s highest quality content. Further, he has contracted Hallmark stars like Candace Cameron Bure, Danica McKellar, Jen Lilley, Daniel Lissing, and Jessica Lowndes, among others. Abbott also said GAC Media is looking to bring its television and movie production to the U.S. from Canada.

The channel Great American Living features new programming as well as reruns of other programming like: “I Dream of Jeannie,” “Bewitched,” “Hazel,” “Father Knows Best” and “Who’s the Boss.” Abbott describes it this way:

“Those shows are funny. They are very well-written. They are well-cast. And while they are retro in many ways, people really do long for nostalgia and long for that type of content that they spent a lot of time with growing up. And so, we focused on those that were family-friendly.”

In other words, both channels have resisted the storylines of progressive, woke culture which highlights themes that are less than family friendly.

The Great Switch

The switch is on. Thousands are moving from the Hallmark channels for Christmas programming to Great American Family’s Great American Christmas for even better family-friendly Christmas programming. If you enjoyed Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas pre-2021, then you will especially enjoy the stars, storylines, and feels of Great American Christmas.

 

 

List of References

Here are a number of articles and other resources you can read for yourself that describe what I have summarized above:

Great American Family

Great American Living

Great American Community

Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas

Hallmark Channel vs GAC Family: Which Is Better?!?

Interview between Bill Abbott and John Contratti

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6