Hallmark’s been making some major changes over the past several years and a lot of those can be attributed to a change in leadership. Longtime ship captain Bill Abbott left for GAF in 2020 and a whole slew of Hallmark stars followed him to the new network. Taking his place was former Lifetime and Netflix head honcho Lisa Hamilton Daly, who broke diverse new ground with content and added some new talent, but who also made waves for putting some content on Hallmark+ only and was recently sued by the former SVP of Talent and Casting Penny Perry. Now she’s out, too.
Reports indicate the cabler is seeing another major exit, but in this case, Lisa Hamilton Daly will absolutely not be going to GAF, a network known for “traditional” family programming (as Candace Cameron Bure famously put it). The official statement from Hallmark uses a lot of business buzzwords to explain how the company will be “aligning” moving forward without its EVP of programming.
Regardless, the gist is the network will be eliminating the position as a whole (via Deadline) and will be shifting so that Darren Abbott will be the sole head of the network.
Hallmark is aligning its consumer-facing touch points, including content, under a single leader, Chief Brand Officer Darren Abbott, with a focus and expertise in the expression of the Hallmark brand to consumers — from product to experiences and now content, across multiple platforms. Darren has an innate understanding of the Hallmark brand and paired with his leadership and vision, will ensure our content aligns to the promise of our legacy brand.
There’s no doubt that Lisa Hamilton Daly brought her own spin to Hallmark. The network has branched out both in terms of genre and diverse storytelling narratives, with comedies like Three Wise Men and a Baby and its sequel love stories including gay storylines like The Christmas House becoming staples for the network. Shows like The Way Home have also created a higher bar for the content audiences have come to expect, but there’s been some unrest amidst fans too.
And the Chiefs Love Story movie featuring a cameo from Travis Kelce's mom blew up in the ratings this winter.
But there have been some grumbles from fans as Hallmark+ took away some original content from cable subscribers, who still watch via traditional TV or streaming TV like YouTube TV. (As a side note, some Hallmark movies can also be seen with a Peacock subscription or even with a Netflix subscription.) The additional $7.99 cost for Hallmark+ has turned some people off, particularly those who are already paying for cable.
Hallmark+ was even going to take on The Way Home Season 3 before complaints led to a reversal. The show will now be airing on traditional TV.
Then, there’s that lawsuit, which made headlines because it allegedly highlighted points Lisa Hamilton Daly made about the leading ladies at the network, and reported the head honcho had even stated “our leading ladies are aging out. We need to find new talent to take their place.” The reference in question reportedly referred to the network’s face, Lacey Chabert, as well as longtime star Holly Robinson Peete.
The former Mean Girls star is 42 and said at the time the news was breaking that diverse storytelling doesn’t just have to do with race or genre, and that people of all ages deserve love stories, too. She noted fans should be able to see Hallmark stories "through every phase of life."
We'll have to wait and see if we learn more about the exit and where Lisa Hamilton Daly is headed next, but the good news is Darren Abbott should be taking over pretty seamlessly as the single head of Hallmark, and that should mean production on upcoming Hallmark projects is maintained pretty easily. It's a good thing, because they gotta get started on the Christmas movie schedule fairly soon. Yes, really.
