Hallmark holiday flicks pluck heartstrings, pull pursestrings

Does it get more Christmassy than it does on Hallmark Channel in December?

It does not.

Every Saturday through the holidays, the family-friendly network majority owned by Hallmark Cards unveils a new made-for-TV movie. This weekend it's "The Christmas Choir," debuting 8 p.m. CT Saturday and starring Jason Gedrick as a workaholic who fills a hole in his soul by leading a local men's homeless shelter choir.

Note that I said Saturday night. Hallmark Channel has been doing this for years, putting new movies on the night that the rest of the television business considers a black hole. It's the night when people are either fleeing the house for social engagements or, if they're in front of the TV, are too busy catching up with shows they've Tivoed or rented on shiny discs to care what's actually, you know, on TV.

Not only does Hallmark get great numbers on Saturday -- AMC would love its Emmy-winning "Mad Men" to score the 2.5 Nielsen rating that the average Hallmark movie gets -- it then repeats Saturday's movie the following Friday, the second-worst night of the week for TV viewing, and does well there, too.

So for instance, if you missed last week's "Moonlight & Mistletoe," starring TV's Tom Arnold, it's re-airing at 8 p.m. Friday on Hallmark Channel. That's about a workaholic (played by Candace Cameron Bure) who fills a hole in her soul by rediscovering the joy of Christmas from her Yule-obsessed dad (Arnold).

And stick around for an encore of "A Grandpa for Christmas" at 10 p.m., in which ageless Ernest Borgnine has a hole in his soul filled when his estranged daughter is in a car wreck and he's asked to care for his perky, adorable granddaughter (Juliette Goglia).

"When the critics write reviews of our movies, and the words 'predictable' and 'Kleenex' show up in the first two sentences, I'm happy," said Henry Schleiff, the avuncular CEO of Hallmark Channel, when we got together during one of his recent trips to KC. Schleiff was in town to host a special screening at Hallmark HQ of "Moonlight & Mistletoe."

"People fundamentally are looking for well told stories," Schleiff told me, noting the drink in my hand. "I am not going to mess with the formula for Coke. That's something that works very well for us."

Schleiff doesn't control the recipe for my Diet Coke, of course; he's referring to a set-in-stone method of making a Hallmark Channel movie. It's the old Eyewitness News formula, essentially: Team up a "classic," i.e., mature celebrity with a younger actor who's starred or at least guest starred on TV sometime in the last 10 years or so.

"The Christmas Choir," for instance, stars durable TV hunk Gedrick ("Murder One," "Ally McBeal," "Boomtown") as a workaholic who unexpectedly is befriended by a homeless guy and winds up leading the shelter choir under the watchful eye of Sister Agatha (Rhea Perlman of "Cheers" fame).

Somewhere in there, get an appealing actress involved -- someone at the low end of the 25-to-54 age range -- in a part the audience can identify with: woman looking for love, career woman looking for meaning, etc. Hit the heartstrings early and often. Rinse and repeat.

On Dec. 13 Hallmark unwraps "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," starring Henry Winkler as an ex-NYPD cop who brings unexpected holiday joy to his stressed-out niece (Brooke Burns). And then on Dec. 20, Julie Warner and Steven Eckholdt play newlyweds with kids from earlier marriages who face the challenge of "Our First Christmas."

But wait, there's more! Faith Ford teams up with Dyan Cannon and Hal "Barney Miller" Linden for the holiday-themed "A Kiss at Midnight," Dec. 27. Hallmark Channel has built such a large library of movies like these that earlier this year it launched the Hallmark Movie Channel (it's on Time Warner's digital cable system) to showcase all the repeats.

To help fill out the two channels' schedules, Hallmark also recently acquired 99 classic family movies from Disney. So if you're looking for "Old Yeller," "Swiss Family Robinson" and, yes, "The Santa Clause" somewhere on cable, don't bother with Disney Channel, which is more interested in being in the Jonas Brothers business. (Wonder how those guys will repeat in five years. Or two years.)

Comments

i'm a bit of a grinch around this time of year, so i always end up watching the hallmark channel, lifetime and abc family on the weekends - schmaltz gets me in a more festive mood. can't beat it!

Posted by: kmb | December 04, 2008 at 02:30 PM