Great American Media CEO Bill Abbott On Faith And Family TV

Can Great American Media’s family of channels unseat the Hallmark networks in the competition for the faith-and-values audience? They’ve certainly hit the ground running.

For many years, Hallmark Channel and its cable and streaming siblings owned a big chunk of an audience that many other TV providers didn’t seem to want: adults interested in clean, wholesome entertainment, romantic but not sexy, just fun and occasionally tugging at the heartstrings.

Even if most of Hallmark’s movies and TV shows weren’t geared for the whole family, they didn’t require kids to be hustled out of the room.

Then, in 2020, Bill Abbott, who was the longtime president and CEO of the Hallmark channels’ parent company, Crown Media Family Networks, departed.

And he wasn’t the last person to do so.

The Creation of Great American Media

In 2021, Abbott cofounded Great American Media. He and his partners acquired and reshaped existing cable channels into what are now Great American Family, the recently rebranded Great American Faith & Living, Great American Adventures, and the direct-to-consumer app Great American Community.

The company also partnered with Sony Entertainment to rebrand its Pure Flix streaming service as Great American Pure Flix. It offers the same faith-focused programming it always has, plus much of Great American’s output.

Abbott has been running a playbook similar to the one that made Hallmark Channel dominant in its space. He’s also acquired several former Hallmark stars to create media that’s as wholesome as what Hallmark used to do, but sometimes leaning more into faith.

Thus far, the exodus from Hallmark to Great American Media has included Candace Cameron Bure (who’s also Chief Creative Officer for the company), Danica McKellar, Jen Lilley, Trevor Donovan, Jessica Lowndes, Cameron Mathison, Lori Loughlin, Daniel Lissing, Jesse Metcalfe, Mario Lopez and more.

Since Great American Family launched in the fall of 2021, the channel has invested heavily in producing original films — including, of course, Christmas movies — plus TV shows and specials. It also recently aired the Movieguide Awards.

The image at top shows Bure in Great American Family’s 2023 film My Christmas Hero, for which she was also an executive producer. Here’s a peek:

Getting the Story From President and CEO Bill Abbott

This past week, I talked to Abbott. We discussed his aggressive move into original content for his linear channels (offering content on a traditional day-date schedule, rather than on-demand), his plans to capture the family audience, and more.

(This is also a subject I recently discussed with The CW’s programming chief, Brad Schwartz, including his decision to have his broadcast network air The Chosen.)

The entire interview is embedded below, but here are some highlights (edited for clarity).

How Great American Media is doing as a company:

We’re actually doing quite well. On a lot of metrics we are profitable, and we are really monetizing our content ina variety of different ways. And certainly having Great American Pure Flix as a streaming platform changes the business model, and that we’re able to utilize content across now streaming and linear.

And while linear is in certainly a decline, and there are headwinds against linear, it still represents great reach for advertisers and a great value proposition. So the advertising side has been very strong, and we are in a very good place.

Why producing family-friendly content doesn’t set Hollywood on fire:

Because it doesn’t win awards, family-friendly content or faith-based content, because it’s not considered sexy, because it’s not water-cooler quote, unquote, it gets overlooked, and isn’t the favorite thing for people to work on and produce.

So we feel quite blessed that we’re in a position where not a lot of competition really wants to play in the space.

Convincing creatives to work in the family and faith genres:

You don’t get your next job at Fox by working on family-friendly content. And so, certainly we have to be vigilant about hiring the right people, who really have a passion for it. And it’s more than just money, it’s a mission, and the same is true on the creative side.

The role of faith, at Hallmark and now at Great American Media:

Well, so I think the Hallmark case was a little bit different. It was more of, Hallmark never wanted to be overtly in the faith space, and so that wasn’t a decision that necessarily we agreed with on the creative side. And so, on our side, now we are becoming much more overtly faith. …

And so as we look at the space, we are going to be just absolutely going with the tide of supporting faith, family and country, and doing it in a way that is focused on the positive sides of all of those elements and aspects of life. Where so much of the entertainment community will portray them in a negative light, we’re going to be relentlessly positive, and are relentlessly positive around the content we produce supporting faith, and family and country.

And, whether we might see some overtly Catholic faith content:

It’s interesting that you say that. One of our fans, and he’s a personal advisor to me really, is Father Randy, who does our book club, and he’s made the same note. And it’s a good note.

Click here to learn more about the company and its channels.

Here’s the whole conversation: