First quarter results for the Hallmark Channel show the company has strengthened itself over the last year, with sales for the quarter increasing by 20 percent to reach $46 million. The channel is now available in 82 million homes.
Since Hallmark parent Crown (CRWN) made Henry Schleiff CEO, he has said that one of his chief goals is to increase the networks' sub fees, and that has started to happen as they also increased by 20 percent in the quarter to surge to $7.5 million. That is expected to increase with the current carriage agreements with some of the major companies expiring at the end of the year. Those companies are DirecTV (DTV), Comcast (CMCSA), Cablevision (CVC) and Time Warner Cable (TWC).
Schleiff said concerning his first upfront since taking over the network that he will 
be looking for double-digit CPM increases over last year. Past history shows that their normal CPMs has been in the 5 to 8 percent range.
Right now the channel is commanding around $8 prime-time CPMs in the scatter. That's a huge 50 percent increase over last year's upfront prices.
Some of the reasons for the higher prices have been the 82 million homes now being reached and the increase in ratings since last summer. The company has also brought in advertisers that are paying higher rates, while those that had locked in lower CPMs when the channel's disribution was smaller are being dropped.
For the quarter ad sales were 86 percent of Crown's revenue, an increase of 19 percent year-over-year, with overall revenue increasing to $54 million. The company was also able to cut its losses from $47.2 million to $40.2 million.
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