Market Segmentation: Too Far?

Candace Cameron Bure will leave Hallmark
to make movies for Great American Family.

For over five years I've been watching Hallmark movies. The plots lack in suspense. Most conflicts are resolved happily, there are no really bad guys except in the murder-mystery movies, and love always wins over career opportunities and peripatetic inclinations.

To be perfectly honest, I often run the Hallmark Channel as a form of background music when I'm doing something else, like composing this blog post.

Hallmark movies are rife with religious values, e.g., lead characters are always volunteering to help poor orphans, but there are very few explicitly Christian movies on the channel. Church scenes are limited to weddings and funerals, and the words "God," "Jesus," or "Lord" are absent from scripts. The audience is often left to infer that characters are religious by their actions and the values they espouse.

Now some of the biggest Hallmark stars are leaving for a faith-based network: [bold added]

These days, the genre that Hallmark pioneered is everywhere, from major streaming platforms like Netflix to more niche channels like the Food Network and HGTV. While the movies may differ, most share an abiding reluctance to dwell on Christianity.

Great American Family enters the scene with the opposite point of view. With a name that conjures red-state pride and content that embraces faith, the channel is presenting itself as the choice for Christians who think Hollywood is ruining Christmas. Mrs. Bure, a former child star best known as D.J. Tanner from “Full House,” is the religious influencer who serves as its face...

The channel’s formula is what [CEO Bill] Abbott calls “soft faith,” a Christian message he said is there for viewers who are looking for it but doesn’t aim to proselytize. Great American Family also offers holiday films that follow conventional secular story lines: The New York advertising hotshot who falls in love while trying to sell the family farm, the luxury travel blogger who stumbles into romance at a bed-and-breakfast, and the like.

Your humble blogger has long had an aversion to shows that are overtly message-y. Lead characters on network shows sometimes launch into speeches against business polluters, real estate developers, racists, and -phobics who condemn others for "being different." Once the writers' agenda is revealed, then it's clear that the characters are there to serve the agenda.

I won't watch shows where the plot is subservient to ideology, even though I might agree with aspects of the ideology. I'll check out the Great American Family network, but it will be on a short leash.

Reminiscing, with Receipts

Thornton Wilder himself played the minister
in a 1950 production of Our Town.

Thornton Wilder's Our Town was one of the first 20th Century plays that we read.

The language was not above our heads, but few seventh graders had a lived grasp of the theme: that life in all its moments, special and jejune, is not appreciated until it's over. But who can fault us; not quite teenagers, our eyes were looking forward, not back.

Speaking of looking back, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright kept meticulous tax records:

Like any conscientious taxpayer, Wilder carefully documented his tax-deductible business expenses. His returns from 1968 to 1972 include meticulous, multi-page accounts of his work-related travel and associated expenditures. Originally intended to justify tax write offs, today these records offer a unique perspective into Wilder’s writerly life at the twilight of his career...

Wilder explained [in an attachment to his tax returns] that living in a big city or near New York subjected him to constant harassment from “interviewers, photographers, enthusiasts, student delegations, visitors from Europe and Asia.”

“It is necessary that I remove myself,” he stated...

For Thornton Wilder 1968 was especially noteworthy for his (deductible) European travels to watch and work on plays that he adapted to the American theatre. He spent months in Martha's Vineyard recuperating from surgery, then returned to Paris in the fall.

His travel and hotel expenses for 1968 totaled $4,658.76, according to the tax documents, which is about $34,000 today adjusted for inflation.

Comments:

1) Thornton Wilder does look like an accountant in his college year book photo, doesn't he?

2) Yes, boys and girls, CPA's used to type the tax returns. (Look at the mis-aligned "X" in the middle photo.) Typing often took more time than filling out the draft in pencil.

3) To pre-empt possible questions, additional documents and/or explanatory notes such as Thornton Wilder's narrative descriptions were regularly attached to tax returns. Later this practice became impossible with some e-filing software.

Fantasies Change with Age, Too

Candace Cameron Bure seems to be
in every other Hallmark movie.

TV ratings are down, but not at the Hallmark Channel.

In 2016, Hallmark saw a 10 percent increase in total viewership and a 26 percent increase among viewers 18-49. During the 2016 election week, it ranked No. 4 among primetime cable networks – even ranking above MSNBC.

...the Hallmark Channel has become a growing safe haven for those weary of the violence, conflict, and uncertainty churned out by both news broadcasts and apocalyptic-themed TV dramas.

There are absolutely no surprises in a Hallmark movie. The boy and girl (no LBGTQ romances ever) always meet in the beginning, surmount obstacles (different stations of life, disapproving parents, etc. etc.), and wind up in each others arms at the end, usually engaging in their first kiss.

...and Lacey Chabert seems to be
in the rest.

Children are not a barrier to romance; often they're the ones who encourage a single parent to start dating. They want Mom or Dad to be happy again and have an extraordinarily grown-up attitude about replacing the usually-deceased-not-divorced parent. Yes, that's why Hallmark movies are well-liked--they're fantasy.

The Christmas movie is a sub-genre that is especially popular.

Often there’s a struggling family business that needs saving, like the cozy inn in “Christmas at Holly Lodge,” the old-fashioned holiday shop in “Sharing Christmas,” or the theater that loses its lease in “Christmas Encore.”

A big-time star encounters small-town romance in “Marry Me at Christmas,” “A Song for Christmas” and “Rocky Mountain Christmas.” In “The Perfect Christmas Present,” the hero is a personal gift buyer known to his clients as Mr. Christmas—not unlike the nickname for the title character in “Miss Christmas,” whose job is finding the perfect tree for Chicago....

In addition to a feel-good finale, there’s an atmospheric checklist for every movie. “Buying a Christmas tree. Wrapping gifts. Thinking of gifts. Baking and cooking meals. Family gatherings. All of the things that you think of as traditional,” says Randy Pope, senior vice president of programming.

(For further study, here are 12 Rules of Hallmark Christmas Movies.)

I started watching the Hallmark and Hallmark Mysteries Channels a few years ago when visiting my mother. Now they're a favored way to relax, with G-rated happy endings, deus ex machina financial windfalls, and selfish characters always changing their ways.

I will go gently into that good night illuminated by the faint glow of the Hallmark Channel.

Life: No One Gets Out Alive

(Image from Daily Beast)

Game of Thrones author George R. Martin, on why he kills off so many main characters:

"the truth is, as we say in Game of Thrones, all men must die,” he said. “You can’t write about war and violence without having death. If you want to be honest it should affect your main characters.

We’ve all read this story a million times when a bunch of heroes set out on adventure and it’s the hero and his best friend and his girlfriend and they go through amazing hair-raising adventures and none of them die. The only ones who die are extras. That’s such a cheat. It doesn’t happen that way."

"you should be honest about death and indicate it can strike down anybody at any time,” Martin said. “You don’t get to live forever just because you are a cute kid or the hero’s best friend or the hero. Sometimes the hero dies, at least in my books."

It's okay for a fictional world to be utterly fantastical, yet it must be "realistic" in that it remain true to its own rules. If this dichotomy were easy to navigate, there would be many more bestselling authors.

Simply Waiting

A country road. A tree. Evening.

With this simple stage instruction "the most significant English language play of the 20th century" premiered a little over 60 years ago. Waiting for Godot is about two tramps who spend the day waiting for a man named Godot, who--spoiler alert!--never comes. Vladimir and Estragon talk, a few characters enter and leave the scene, they talk some more, they engage in humdrum activities (trying on boots, eating a carrot), and the play ends, the strong implication being that they'll be waiting for Godot tomorrow.

The action and plot development are minimal, and today's ADD audience would be checking their smartphones in a minute. But that's precisely the point: in our effort to avoid the bleakness of existence ("They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more") we create distractions. We may natter on about meaning and purpose, but we all end up in the same place.

Nathan Lane and John Goodman, 2009 Broadway production.
(NY Times)

In English courses of the Sixties and Seventies Waiting for Godot was required reading. Your humble high school student exasperatedly kept looking for a storyline, conflict, and resolution, before realizing that traditional dramatic structures weren't present. The meaning was that there was no meaning. (Wow, that's heavy, man.)

Whether one agrees with the playwright's vision of existence, one can appreciate his yearning for simplicity: one scene on a stage devoid of embellishment, a few characters with no flashy costuming, and a couple of hand-held props. Cleanse your body, mind, and surroundings, say the wise men of religion or psychiatry. Even if Godot doesn't come, at least we'll have cleaned up the clutter. © 2013 Stephen Yuen