• by Wayne Friedman , May 2, 2014

Crown Media Holdings -- the company of Hallmark Channel and the Hallmark Movie Channel -- posted modest gains in advertising and subscriber revenue for its first quarter.

Advertising revenue improved 6% to $69.4 million, while subscriber fees grew 4% to $21 million for the period. Overall revenue gained 6% to $90.7 million. Net income added on 21% to $14.5 million.

Hallmark Channel continues to move into original scripted programming. It recently started up a “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” in April. At the same time, “When Calls The Heart” completed its 12-episode run. Now, it will take one of its movie franchises, “The Good Witch,” and turn into a 10-episode series to debut in the first quarter of 2015.

From all this, in April, Hallmark Channel gained a sizable 24% in its prime-time ratings to average 639,000 total viewers, while in daytime it rose 14% to 442,000. For the entire first quarter, Hallmark Channel was up 13% in prime time to 690,000 and 2% higher in daytime viewership to 435,000.

Hallmark Movie Channel was down 13% in prime time to 251,000 total viewers and 12% off in daytime to 185,000 in April. For the first quarter, Hallmark Movie was up 30% higher to 322,000 in prime time and up 37% in daytime to 232,000.
The company says the movie channel will be getting a facelift -- a new name, tagline and logo. As part of this, it’s developing three “Original Mystery Wheel franchises” in 2015 featuring three-part two-hour mystery movie franchises.

Programming costs increased 27% during the period related to our original series When Calls the Heart and our special Kitten Bowl.

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