Hallmark Channel's "Countdown to Christmas" is still going strong amid an erosion in cable viewership

Vulture

"What’s most striking about Hallmark’s continued yuletide success is that the network hasn’t suffered the same ratings erosion as most of its cable peers, even if its Nielsen numbers have taken a bit of a hit from their highs of a few years ago," says Josef Adalian. "Back in 2017, for example, Hallmark Channel’s two big Christmas premieres the weekend of November 17 to 18 notched an average of 4 million; this weekend, its two movies attracted 3.2 million same-day viewers. A 20 percent decline isn’t insignificant, but it’s also far, far less severe than the Nielsen disaster that has beset so many of the network’s rivals. When Hallmark movies were topping 4 million viewers in 2017, AMC’s Walking Dead franchise was still drawing 7 million same-day viewers, while reruns of the series could get over 1.5 million. This past weekend, the combined same-day audience for two different Dead spinoffs (Fear the Walking Dead, World Beyond) didn’t crack 2 million viewers. So yes, Hallmark isn’t ho-ho-ho-ing quite as heartily as a few years ago, but its position in the TV universe is in some ways even stronger than it used to be. It’s harder than ever to get holiday TV commercials in front of holiday viewers, but Hallmark is still doing so with relative ease. (And there are early signs the network is getting a bit of a pandemic bump: While ratings are off from the highs of a few years ago, a rep for the channel says overall holiday viewership is actually up 7% vs. the same point last year.)"