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 A member profile by Chris Davison, davison@intellcap.com
Henry Schleiff is President and CEO of Crown Media Holdings, parent company of the Hallmark Channel. Henry’s career has spanned many aspects of the business, from broadcast to cable, business affairs to creative, talk shows to sports. I recently had a chance to speak with Henry to discuss economics, movies, and twisted puppets.
Q: Can you tell us about your background? What made you want to work in entertainment?
My background really is one of a lawyer. I went to law school, I clerked for a federal judge, but even throughout college and law school my passion, my interest and my desire was to get into the world of television. To be able to entertain, inform and have product that inspires is such a great calling that it was something that always intrigued me. The power of the medium to reach a sizable audience was what attracted me to the business. Even in my earliest days as the lowest of the low associates at a corporate law firm - while I was there I was also writing freelance for Saturday Night Live. It was kind of an odd combination, trying to be a serious corporate lawyer while using the excuse of freelance writing to hang around the SNL set in the late 70s. I figured out that the best way to combine my interests in law and television was to become an in-house counsel, which I did at Viacom. I worked largely on matters dealing with cable, some matters dealing with Showtime and with some recently-bought TV and radio stations. After a couple of years a friend set me up with someone at HBO and they asked if I’d think about giving up the practice of law and just be in business affairs, negotiating rights for sports and theater. I’m a tennis lover and they wanted to send me over to Wimbledon so at lunch I asked them “Do I pay you or do you pay me?” I immediately, that afternoon, left skid marks at my old job and went right over to HBO and was there for almost the next eight years. I loved it at HBO since it was a great bunch of people with a great sense of energy and innovation.
In the world of pay cable we were kind of setting the rules because nobody knew what “pay television” rights entailed. It was fun to negotiate those deals and it lead to increasing responsibilities over the years. I ended up as Senior Vice President of Business Affairs and Administration which really meant that I oversaw all of our deals for production of original programming, for syndication and our activities in the foreign marketplace. I left HBO to go back to Viacom, which was a very different company with Sumner Redstone taking it over. I was offered the opportunity to run Showtime but I said I couldn’t compete with my old friends at HBO. Instead I focused on broadcast and those were the years we were doing all those great Fred Silverman dramas like “Matlock,” “Jake and the Fatman,” “Father Dowling,” and all those great “Perry Mason” movies. We had just started the syndication of “Cosby” which was for some time the record-holder in syndication. We introduced a small little show called “Roseanne” from Carsey-Werner and then I oversaw the radio and television stations, which I had never done. I did that for about five years and then I really wanted to produce for network but Viacom wanted to produce for cable so I said “Great, make me your partner and I’ll produce for both” - and we did. I became an independent producer and produced everything from a Golden Globe-nominated show with Forest Whitaker all the way down the food chain to something called “Twisted Puppet Theater,” about which we’re still getting complaints from puppets so it doesn’t really count.
We did a series called “Intimate Portraits” for Lifetime, the first one of which was on Jackie Kennedy. I produced for a while but I really missed the business of a larger organization so I went over to Universal’s television interests on the East Coast and did that for two years until Barry Diller bought those interests, including USA, and renamed them Studios USA. Under Barry I oversaw the development of new product for cable and other areas like talk shows such as “Sally Jessy Raphael,” “Jerry Springer,” and “Maury Povich.” While I was there I got a call from my old friends at Time Warner, from Dick Parsons, who asked me to come back over and run this thing called Court TV, which they were kind of getting ready to fold so there wasn’t much downside to inviting me back. We branded it well and grew it from about 33 millions subs when I first started to about 83 million subs by the time I left. When I joined Court TV there was an offer to buy it for about $400 million and later when we eventually did sell, it was for $1.5 billion. That transaction was completed just about a year ago and I went over to Time Warner’s corporate headquarters and after about a couple of months I was approached and given the opportunity to joined Hallmark Channel, which I thought had certain similarities to Court TV.
At Court TV we built a brand and people came to understand it and now I think that Hallmark Channel is similar in that it has a very clear brand. In the cable business to be successful it is imperative to understand, promote, distribute and ultimately exploit your brand in all forms of media. Hallmark’s family-friendly brand, a brand associated with quality and emotionally compelling original movies, is really a very easy brand to market and so the transition for me has been a very easy one.
Q: Who are your main competitors and how is the Hallmark brand different from them?
I’ll answer you by going to our ratings: Last week we were the 4th-highest rated network out of all 69 Nielsen-measured cable networks in primetime. We’re 10th in total day, 9th in adults 25-54, and 8th in women 25-54, so what I’m saying is that we’re consistently in the top seven or eight most highly-rated networks in primetime, total day, adults 25-54 and women 25-54 so we must be doing something that is relatively distinctive and well-received in the marketplace. Therefore, I think that we have very few direct competitors. ABC Family, I think, is very clearly trying to skew a little bit younger with its programming. It’s very clear that TV Land is trying to go 18-49 being a little bit cooler - a little bit hipper. It’s very clear that Lifetime is trying to go more after younger women. Our closest competitor is probably HGTV, which coincidentally I think we just tied with this week in our primetime ratings. We have about the same demo, an emphasis on women 25-54. In this environment there’s a lot of scrutiny of programming in terms of violence or sex and I think we offer a very clear and attractive alternative for a number of viewers and subscribers. With Hallmark Channel, at the end of the day people know that they can sit down with their family and watch it comfortably.
In terms of Economics 101 – in which I got a ‘C’ only because the guy in front of me got a ‘C’ – even I understood the basics of supply and demand. I think that our extraordinary growth in ratings and demographics over the last 18 months shows that there is an unbelievably strong demand, especially across Middle America, for family-friendly, compelling programming that makes you laugh or makes you cry, and there’s just not a lot of supply of it. So if you put huge demand against small supply, then out comes very successful businesses like Hallmark Channel.
Q: What is your #1 original movie of the past year and what makes it a hit?
Also a very good question. I can tell you that I noticed that, statistically, our highest-rated movie over the last 12 months was “A Christmas Card” starring Ed Asner, who as you know, is an Emmy nominee for that movie. It did a 4.2 in its debut ratings and we’ve also had a number of movies in the high threes. The reason that it did well is that it was a very beautifully written, holiday-based story with at least one or two recognizable, lovable actors like Ed Asner. It had all the elements, it’s a movie that made you laugh and made you cry, it had themes of love that are timeless, and most of all it bore the Hallmark imprint of quality. Not only are we the leading producer of quality original movies but I think we really are a major player in certain genres such as Westerns. We almost own that genre and I think we are among the leaders in mysteries and love stories.
Q: How do you pick your movie projects?
We’re very, very selective because we can afford to be. Going back to supply and demand, the popularity of television movies still exists out there but there are fewer and fewer places where you can see these small, feature-like quality movies. I’m happy to say that by and large the broadcast networks have abdicated this area. Occasionally they’ll do a movie, indeed occasionally you’ll see a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on CBS, but they’ve really left that ward to the providence of cable networks. I think that’s great for us since we have unbelievably successful and great producers. I was up in Toronto last week and I visited both Gerry Abrams, who has won a number of Emmys, and Orly Adelson, whose movies have received Emmy nominations. We now have more and more quality television producers who are looking for places to create and show their product so we have access to better written scripts, better produced movies and great talent such as Katherine Heigl, who is an Emmy nominee for “Grey’s Anatomy” and is off to a promising film career with “Knocked Up.” We’re in a very favorable position of being the beneficiary of the overall genre of television movies. That’s really Hallmark’s calling card, no pun intended. As you know, we’ve announced just recently that we’re increasing our output of original movies from 18 movies a year to 30 movies a year.
Q: Any thoughts on the revised Emmy nominations procedures?
I think they should all be focused around Hallmark talent. There should be at least one Hallmark nominee in each category. That would be my only suggestion.
Q: Can you tell us about your Cable in the Classroom programming?
Cable in the Classroom is an industry organization that supports education through cable programming. On Hallmark we offer a monthly movie, usually a classic literary adaptation, along with a corresponding educator's guide designed to develop student's skills of language arts, research and healthy classroom teamwork and debate.
Q: Any thoughts on the HRTS during its 60th Anniversary year?
They are really to be lauded for the fantastic work that they’ve done in providing opportunities for so many in this industry in so many ways. The two most obvious ways are through their ongoing educational initiatives, bringing in young people and exposing them to the experience, and then what I think is probably the very heart and soul of HRTS is the opportunity to network with your peers and colleagues through the great luncheons. You can always take a half hour or an hour before to catch up with friends and colleagues that you may have missed or are just anxious to see. I can’t imagine any industry that has more talented people, more people that are frankly just fun to be around, to share experiences and war stories and have some laughs with. I think that’s what this industry is about and I think that’s very much what HRTS provides a forum for and in that sense it is extremely valuable.
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