Inside Hallmark Channel’s Heroic Effort to Save Their Holiday Movies

“You are unable to cancel Xmas on Hallmark.”

So explained Michelle Vicary, Hallmark Channel’s govt vice president of programming, as she began chatting with E! Information more than the phone on Dec. 8. And she’s not mistaken. Like string-mild protected trees and candy canes, Hallmark Channel’s Xmas movies have become a staple for numerous in the course of the most fantastic time of the yr.

Countdown to Xmas, the network’s yearly programming occasion that commonly kicks off in October and runs by the close of December, is their Super Bowl. It can be so well known that it will make Hallmark the best rated network in the fourth quarter, attracting hundreds of tens of millions of viewers just about every yr.

But soon after the coronavirus outbreak shut down manufacturing on movies and Television set sets in March, followers feared they wouldn’t be getting their Xmas cheer courtesy of the network’s vacation rom-coms.

Although Hallmark commonly churns out far more than 100 original movies per year—including programming blocks to rejoice each and every period, like Spring Fling and Slide Harvest—the mission to preserve Countdown to Christmas’ slate of 40 movies became the team’s sole target soon after the shutdown when they realized it was likely to be significantly more time than two months just before manufacturing resumed. 

“We realized we were not likely to get movies on in the spring and even into the summer season,” Vicary explained to E! Information. “We were concerned about the slide, but we realized we experienced to get our Xmas slate likely.”