• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, March 28, 2007

Hallmark Channel has often been viewed as a widow in today's media landscape that's dominated by conglomerates with multiple properties. But the network, the leading asset of publicly traded Crown Media, is making a move to offer multi-platform opportunities to advertisers in a vein similar to, say, an NBC Universal.

The headliner: Cross-company cooperation with Hallmark Cards. So advertisers increasingly interested in holistic, 360-degree solutions can devise a campaign that stretches beyond the channel soon to be in 80 million homes into 4,200 Hallmark stores and onto the pages of the card company's eponymous magazine with a 550,000 rate base. Added to the mix are Crown's Hallmark Movie Channel and re-launched HallmarkChannel.com.

At the core of a cross-platform campaign would be a family connections theme, executives said, as they cited a link between the touching moments engendered by the greeting cards and the inspiring family-friendly programming on the network.

From the day he took over Crown last fall, Henry Schleiff--who previously reoriented the Court TV brand from a drier legal news outlet to an entertainment hub--has made capitalizing on the 97-year-old equity in Hallmark cards a priority (the card company owns 67% of Crown).

"As opposed to building a brand, it was about shouting a brand that already existed and taking advantage of resources there that had not been completely tapped into," he said as the Hallmark Channel made some pre-upfront announcements.

Schleiff likened his efforts to the flow the Disney Channel creates within the broader Walt Disney Co. by helping sell merchandise and theme park tickets. In his company's case, he suggested synergies would exist where the channel could drive traffic to the card stores and its flower and gift businesses on Hallmark.com, and those locales could spring consumers back to the network.

"We're working across companies to provide the same opportunities that some companies have internally already," said Laura Masse, executive vice president-marketing.

Still, Crown's priority is to continue to build the viability of its flagship channel, which will cross the 80-million-home barrier in April and continues to see ad revenues rise. Executive Vice President-Ad Sales Bill Abbott welcomed the opportunity to craft integrated deals with point-of-sale and print assets now linked into a portfolio. "We'd be foolish if we didn't look at the corporate family," he said.

Abbott said, however, that while selected cross-platform deals would likely be made in this spring's upfront, the flagship channel--with a refreshed on-air look and new "Make Yourself At Home" tagline--would remain the engine. And in the midst of all the talk about viewer migration to new media alternatives, Abbott said: "At the end of the day, TV is still a remarkably healthy and robust business."

With ratings buoyant, Crown Media saw a 19% increase in ad revenue in 2006 to $174.2 million versus 2005, although the growth rate slowed from the 37% jump in 2005 over the year prior. One reason for the jumps is Abbott's efforts to maneuver around low CPM bases some advertisers had locked in from the days when the Hallmark Channel with its principal female 25-to-54 target was in 25 million homes.

On the programming front, Hallmark Channel plans 10 original movies in 2007, and will offer the basic cable premiere of "Phantom of the Opera" in June.

Though its stock price has been on a trajectory recently to close at $5.33 a share Tuesday, much of Crown Media's (and the Hallmark Channel's) success in the next year hinges on negotiations to renew carriage agreements with cable operators, something investors are keenly interested in. Schleiff says the network is under-compensated and has taken the position that the network's value to MSOs is heightened by cries in Washington for more multi-generational, wholesome programming fare.

In that vein, Hallmark Channel released a study Tuesday showing that 88% of Americans say TV shows with "sexual, violent, crude or obscene content" have escalated over the last half-decade.