• by Wayne Friedman , March 6, 2008

Completing its third major distribution deal since November, Crown Media Holdings, which owns Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel, has made a multi-year deal with satellite operator DirecTV.

DirecTV distributes Hallmark Channel to nearly 15 million homes. As part of the deal, DirecTV has the right to distribute the Hallmark Movie Channel in standard-definition and high-definition formats.

In late February, Crown Media made a deal with second-largest cable operator Time Warner Cable to distribute Hallmark in Time Warner's 12 million homes. In November, Crown Media made a deal with the Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable operator, which has 22 million subscribers.

Terms of the DirecTV deal were not disclosed.

At the time of the Time Warner and Comcast deals, analysts estimated that for both deals, Hallmark would be getting around four cents per subscriber month fee in the first year, rising a penny a year and topping off at eight cents in the final year of the agreement.

For some time now, Hallmark has been looking for a substantial hike beyond the average fee of 3 cents to 4 cents a sub per month it charges cable operators--specifically because of its high-rating performance versus other cable networks that get higher monthly fee deals.