It has only taken a couple of days from Henry Schleiff's being named president and CEO of Crown Media Holdings (parent of Hallmark), to reveal what his strategy for Hallmark will be.
With the current Hallmark Channel audience median age is around 60, he says he want to lower it to more the boomer level between 25-54 years old.
And with experience in turning around the Court TV independent channel and then selling it to Time Warner (the half they didn't already own), analysts figure that this is going to be done the same way with Hallmark.
They had a similar demographic as Hallmark does now and its distribution channels shaky. It's expected, as he said, that he will lower the age of viewers and build up its ratings and then probably sell it to Time Warner, as he did with Court TV.
Robert Routh, a Jefferies & Co. analyst, wrote in a report, “We continue to think that the days of independent networks are over, and that Hallmark Channel belongs as part of a larger organization, to that end, we wouldn’t find it unreasonable for Mr. Schleiff to sell it to the same buyer that bought Court TV, namely Time Warner. We would expect him to have to fix things organizationally and financially first, though.”
Schleiff added that the reason he's targeting an older demographic is because they are the ones with the greatest buying power. They are more open to add-on sales and able to purchase them than any other 
age group.
The challenge won't be easy as Crown currently has around $1 billion in debt and 80% of its contract renewals to negotiate in the next two years.
» Hallmark Channel Continues its Growth under Henry Schleiff from BizofShowBiz
When Henry Schleiff took over as president and CEO of Crown Media Holdings, one of his goals was to show advertisers the tremendous value the market the company served had. Schleiff's other major goal when taking over Hallmark was to... [Read More]
Tracked on: April 6, 2008 9:49 PM | Permalink to Trackback