‘Tis the Season for Holiday Movies—and Hallmark and Lifetime Aren’t Afraid of Netflix

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Imagine you’re trapped inside a Christmas movie. What would
it look like? Would there be an indomitably cheerful grandmother baking endless
cookies? A handsome, small-town innkeeper helping you “save Christmas”? Someone
leaving you handmade cards on your bedroom window while you sleep?

This describes the plot of a 2019 UPtv Christmas movie, A Christmas Movie Christmas, which
debuted on Oct. 27. It stars two sisters, played by Lana McKissack, whose
character Eve loves Christmas movies, and Kimberly Daugherty, whose character
Lacy doesn’t. The former wishes on a Salvation Army Santa to live in the
reality of a Christmas movie, and the next morning she and her sister start
doing just that after waking up in the dreamland of “Holiday Falls.”

The grandmother-they-never-had appears with cinnamon
waffles, the Christmas-loving sister decides to salvage the town’s yearly
festival with aforementioned handsome innkeeper, played by a Disney channel
star of yore, and Lacy proceeds to get stalked by the local baker/animal
shelter volunteer (spoiler alert: they fall in love).

“We wanted to write a Christmas movie that really celebrates
Christmas movies more than we make fun of them,” says Daugherty, who also
cowrote A Christmas Movie Christmas with
her husband, Brant Daugherty, who plays her love interest in the film. Brant’s
character, Kimberly assures me, “is sweet—he just doesn’t know that what he’s
doing can come off as creepy.”

Tropes like these, from handsome, obsessive lovers to hot
cocoa and baking scenes, come from a holiday programming tradition years in the
making. Starting with Lifetime, Hallmark, and ABC Family (now Freeform), networks
like UPtv, ION Television, and OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, all began
producing cookie-cutter Christmas classics where girl returns to small town for
Christmas, meets or reunites with small town man, and falls in love with him
while planning some sort of Christmas event. This type of made-for-TV movie has
only grown more popular year-over-year, with holiday movie debuts now beginning
in late October to keep up with the steadily increasing demand.

Two years ago, another player threw its hat into the holiday
movie arena. With formulaic films like 2017’s A Christmas Prince, 2018’s The
Princess Switch, and 2019’s The Knight Before Christmas (the
latter two starring Vanessa Hudgens), Netflix has proven it can produce for yet
another niche genre. “This year, after seeing such positive consumer sentiment
last year with holiday films and series, we wanted to give consumers more,”
says Lauren Condoluci, from Netflix’s communications team. “So we expanded a
little bit.”

This means Netflix has produced a variety of holiday movies
for this season, ranging in style and budget. There’s the animated,
family-friendly Klaus, by Despicable Me creator Sergio Pablos, and the young adult flick Let It Snow, based on the novel by John
Green and coauthors, which follows a diverse cast of teens navigating the
holiday season. Meanwhile, the films starring Hudgens stick closer to the sort
of script A Christmas Movie Christmas
gently parodies.

Generally regarded as a film and TV industry disruptor,
Netflix has pried people away from theaters and made them intolerant of
commercial breaks. Now that it’s honed in on the holiday season, could it lure
viewers away from Lifetime, Hallmark, and their many imitators? Or is this just
another symptom of an enduring dedication to the uncomplicatedly “cozy” (a
buzzword among these networks’ programmers) holiday movies in an endlessly dark
news cycle?

The origin of the ‘Hallmark
holiday movie’

Hallmark would like you to believe that it invented the made-for-TV holiday movie, but Lifetime’s senior vice president of original movies, co-productions, and acquisitions, Meghan Hooper, will tell you that’s not true. “Hallmark has done a very good job at messaging that they’ve created this space,” she says, but Lifetime premiered its first holiday TV movie in the 1990s. Hallmark, though it stems from the Hall brothers’ company that sold Christmas cards since the early 1900s, aired its first holiday flick, Santa, Jr., in 2002.

Dolly Parton is pictured in the Hallmark Channel’s “Christmas at Dollywood,” which is among the holiday films airing on the cable network in 2019.

Audience enthusiasm prompted both networks to expand their
holiday offerings in the 2010s. Hallmark’s first “Countdown to Christmas” aired
in 2010, while Lifetime’s “It’s a Wonderful Lifetime” package included six or
seven original movie debuts in 2012.

Today, the two brands jockey for the best holiday movie numbers. Hallmark released 38 original holiday movies in 2018 and will premiere 40 this year across its cable channels. Lifetime’s not far behind with 30. This season, as of Dec. 2, 58 million have watched Hallmark’s holiday content, while 68.8 million have watched “It’s a Wonderful Lifetime” as of Dec. 8. (Numbers were provided by the networks via Nielsen.)

By the end of this month, both networks expect to exceed
last year’s viewer counts: 85 million for Hallmark, and 74 million for
Lifetime. In addition to weekly Saturday and Sunday original movie premieres
starring the likes of Dolly Parton and Kristin Chenoweth, Hallmark’s
broadcasting its charity work with Project
Christmas Joy, a special about rebuilding tornado-ravaged towns in Alabama.
Meanwhile, for the first year ever, Lifetime is leaning all the way in. “We
decided to go 24 hours a day holiday movies,” says Hooper.

Both channels kicked off this year’s holiday season on Oct. 25, and more than 20 million have signed up on Hallmark’s Movie Checklist app to get alerts when new holiday movies debut.

“Without question, the sheer quantity of content that [Hallmark]
brings out is admirable,” says UPtv’s general manager Amy Winter. As of Dec. 8,
12.7 million had watched UPtv’s holiday movies. The network will premiere 10
this season.

Both UPtv and Lifetime executives acknowledge Hallmark’s
influence on their networks’ holiday productions. Winter says she looks for
scripts with “a little bit more meat to them” than a Hallmark movie might have,
something that “winks” at the audience—though A Christmas Movie Christmas offers more of a starry-eyed grin than
a wink.

Jumping between Hallmark and Lifetime channels, there’s little that differentiates between the two. Characters juggle big job opportunities with holiday parties, stare wistfully at childhood photos, and mingle with former sitcom stars like Patricia Richardson (Home Improvement), Melissa Joan Hart, and the grown-up Mowry twins, Tia and Tamera.

Kim Fields and Adrian Holmes in Lifetime’s “You Light Up My Christmas,” which premiered Dec. 1.

There is one notable difference between the networks.
“[We’re] more dedicated to making sure our movies reflect the world that we
live in,” Lifetime’s Hooper says—code for a level of diversity and inclusion
that’s comparatively lacking across Hallmark’s holiday originals. More than
half of Lifetime’s 2019 holiday movies feature a lead actor of color, and
people of color have played significant roles in Lifetime holiday movies going
back years. This year, Lifetime’s debuts also include four LGBTQ relationships
and one “gay kiss.” (Meanwhile, the Hallmark channel just got in hot water for pulling an advertisement
featuring two brides kissing. Because of the backlash, the
channel reinstated the ad.)

Across 30 movies—and in 2019—four LGBTQ relationships isn’t
something to brag about. But in the made-for-TV holiday movie tradition, it’s
notable. When asked if Hallmark was making an effort to cast more diverse
actors, Michelle Vicary, EVP of programming and network publicity at Crown
Media, which runs Hallmark’s cable channels, said, “I think the entertainment
industry in general has to do a lot of work to make up for a lack of diversity.”
She pointed to the handful of black stars in Hallmark’s holiday films like
Patti LaBelle, Tia Mowry-Hardrict, Tamera Mowry-Housley, and Brooks Darnell (Mowry-Hardrict
also stars in Lifetime’s A Very Vintage
Christmas).

“Holiday movie” also usually translates to “Christmas movie.”
“This year, we have two [movies] that incorporate the Hanukkah tradition,” says
Vicary, while UPtv has yet to make one. Most of Lifetime’s 2019 movies have
“Christmas” in the title, but Mistletoe
and Menorahs debuted Dec. 7.

Will Netflix leave
cable traditions in the dust?

Netflix breaks the holiday movie mold by being, well,
Netflix. While Hallmark, Lifetime, and UPtv share a primary demographic—women ages
25 to 54—Netflix, though it doesn’t report demographic or viewership numbers, programs
for people of all ages in “literally 190 countries,” says Condoluci.

“I remember seeing A
Christmas Prince launch on Netflix [in 2017] and people freaking out about
what is this space? What is this movie?” says Hooper. Cable networks know that,
as a streaming service, Netflix isn’t beholden to the same rules as they are.
With a budget expected to reach
$17.8 million in 2020, Netflix also has lots of room to experiment.

Hallmark’s Vicary says she doesn’t consider Netflix
competition. “I think they have a different audience, and I think that they
don’t necessarily try and create the same experience we do,” she says. (Besides
its owned and operated platforms, Hallmark offers its content on streaming
services like Sling and AT&T Now, while Lifetime puts some of its movies on
Netflix.) Meanwhile, UPtv’s Winter sees Netflix as still in a “testing” phase,
figuring out their holiday programming strategy.

“We’re not looking to dominate everything in your Christmas
series schedule,” Netflix’s Condoluci says. “We just want to make some things
that make sense for our members.” That means sticking to only a few
cookie-cutter Christmas flicks each season, and making sequels. A Christmas Prince was followed up by The Royal Wedding in 2018 and The Royal Baby in 2019. The Knight Before Christmas, starring
Hudgens, ends with room for a 2020 sequel.

There’s a chance Netflix could help direct under-25
audiences to the made-for-TV holiday movie popularized by cable networks. “I
welcome Netflix into this space,” says Hooper. “It’s put these movies more into
the zeitgeist. People are talking about them more, which is only benefitting Lifetime.”

Thanks to a generation less apt to tolerate misogynistic tropes
like damsels in distress, theatrical release romantic comedies have fallen more
or less out of favor. This leaves a new void that the predictably romantic
made-for-TV holiday flick can jump right into, Hooper suggests.

“I think people do want those movies,” she says. “I also think these movies are escapism, and given everything happening in the world right now, I think that’s also a reason why these movies continue to do better.”