Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 10/23/24

Riding a wave he helped create. Known as the creative executive who built the Hallmark Channel brand, Bill Abbott is finding new – and arguably greater – success leading Great American Media, the company he founded just over three years ago that has already established itself as a top producer and distributor of popular programming that reaches out to a television audience yearning for storytelling that supports traditional faith, family and country values. Here he talks about the companies phenomenal current success as well as building the brand for the future. 

JWK: So, you’re now celebrating the third anniversary of Great American Media. What’s the exact date of that?

Bill Abbott: October 11th we rebranded Great American Country to Great American Family. We just passed it. It will be our fourth Christmas though. So, third anniversary but fourth Christmas. While it was painful at the time making twelve movies so quickly, we have assembled a great high-quality library that we feel really good about now that we can draw on those movies from 2021, as well 2022, 2023 and now the new ones in 2024. It gives us quite an extensive offering in the space.

JWK: How has the company grown over three years and what’s your vision for the future?

BA: It’s been quite a journey. We’ve grown by leaps and bounds. It’s been very, very enjoyable – stressful but, at the same time, we love serving the audience. We love the mission which is all about developing content that families can watch together that is supportive of faith, supportive of family and supportive of country. We feel that those pillars, really, of culture and society (have not been supported very much by media) content that has gone in a direction that doesn’t celebrate them and instead ridicules them. So, it’s our privilege to really lean into that and make that a big part of what we do.

JWK: Do you feel that, while the major networks haven’t moved in your direction in terms of seeking content, the audience has?

BA: Yeah. It’s ironic that the networks haven’t moved in that direction yet. Focus group after focus group that they do tells them that they want more content like that. You see the box office hits that lean into faith and lean into country, like Top Gun, are really what people want to see. It’s a story for another day as to why more content isn’t created in this space. We’re the beneficiary to a degree although we’d much rather see entertainment be much more family friendly and faith focused.

JWK: You’re known, as we’ve talked about before, as the master brand builder who built Hallmark Channel into a household name. This year, you’re launching the first-ever Great American Family Christmas Festival on November 22nd at Northwell Park on Long Island. Tell me about that event.

BA: We’re so excited about that. It is going to something that families can enjoy together. I don’t know if you or anyone that is reading this has been to Christmas Con which is an event that talent goes to and signs autographs and does different panels and things. That’s a great event for the individual Christmas movie fan but this is going to be a family experience. We want people to walk in and be just overwhelmed with the feeling of Christmas, positivity and things that they can do to celebrate Christmas – from Santa’s Workshop where people can do crafts (with) the family to all the different screenings that we’re doing, talent that we’ll have there and other interactive experiences that I think are really going to delight people who attend. It will be great for our brands. The Islanders, UBS Arena and CandyRock Entertainment are partnering with us. It’s a  dream come true.

JWK: As you noted, Great American Media has over, I guess, the past four years already established itself as a major creator or uplifting movies – particularly at Christmastime. Any particular offerings this year that you would like to bring our attention to?

BA: Yeah. We don’t have enough time to get into all of them but I’ll name a few. Right out of the gate, we have a movie called I Heard the Bells that actually we didn’t create. It’s a theatrical. We generally don’t license theatricals because they’re not on brand and they’re not family friendly. In this case, it’s a beautiful story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his creation of the Christmas classic I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. So, we have that movie that will be commercial free on Thanksgiving night as a gift to our viewers. It will be a big event.

We also have two Candace Cameron Bure Christmas movies. Candace is the queen of Christmas (films) even though she would not want be to say that because she’s much too humble – but she is known as being the #1 talent in the Christmas space, along with Mario Lopez who was Lifetime‘s #1 talent for many years. He has a movie called Once Upon A Christmas Wish that is extremely well done that he stars in with his wife Courtney. Then we have a movie called Little Women that has an ensemble cast of recognizable stars and is a retelling of the classic Little Women. It’s very well done. The talent really steps to the forefront in a movie like that. Those are just some of the standouts that are coming up. We couldn’t be more excited about serving the audience. It’s a privilege to do it. We’re very blessed.

JWK: Talking about Candace Cameron Bure, besides an onscreen talent she’s also a creative executive at the company, right?

BA: Yes. She’s our chief creative officer. She does a spectacular job of bringing us different scripts, talent, movies and opportunities – and really viewing things through a very different lens which is very important. At the same time, it’s always surrounding faith, family and country. Candace is as committed to that as any one of her colleagues at the company. She’s a great colleague and somebody that we treasure an opportunity to work with.

JWK: And, of course, you don’t just make Christmas movies. You produce movies all year round. How about on the television series front? Anything new there?

BA: I’m so glad you asked. We do – and I would have forgotten to bring it up if you hadn’t. That’s how busy we are with so much going on. We have When Hope Calls coming. This will be Season 2. We did Season 1 at the other place. We did a When Hope Calls Christmas movie here that continued that story from Season 1 and was extremely well received. We know the appetite for this modern-day telling of Little House on the Prairie or The Waltons, something very much in the family-friendly tradition. It has great characters. The showrunner Alfonso Moreno is brilliant. We’ve cast the project with some high-profile talent like Cindy Busby, Christopher Russell and Nick Bateman who are well-known and loved by viewers. So, we can’t wait to bring this. The biggest question I get is when is When Hope Calls coming back. Viewers are just really looking forward to that.

JWK: Do you have a date?

BA: We don’t have a date yet. We will soon. We don’t have a date for County Rescue yet either. That’s Year 2 of a series that was created last year. It’s being filmed in Chattanooga, Tennessee right now. That tells stories of the EMS. It’s not a reality show. It’s scripted and centered around EMS workers, the lives they live, the pressures they’re under and some of the ways they relate to each other.

JWK: I’ve done some interviews regarding that show. How is your partnership with Sony going following your Pure Flix merger deal – which is now Great American Pure Flix – in June?

BA: They are a dream partner. They have been so supportive of everything that we do. They are very much respectful and really understanding of the business and the unique aspects of entertainment – yet, at the same time, the need in the market for what we’re doing. They’ve been just great to work with.

JWK: Besides Great American Family and Great American Pure Flix – which is kind of like Netflix for people attracted to faith-based content – Great American Media has other channels as well. Would you care to describe those briefly?

BA: Sure. We’ve made some changes. We’ve rebranded Great American Living as Great American Faith and Living. That is very much a combination of lifestyle programming and faith programming taken from Pure Flix. Then we have two FAST channels: Great American Adventures which is solely a lifestyle channel on the FAST platform as well Pure Flix FAST which is a FAST channel that’s free that features Pure Flix content. Then, certainly, the streaming platform Great American Pure Flix has really replaced Great American Community. We want to make that more like a community where people can interact with each other and chat and like-minded people can all get together in one place. That’s on the roadmap on the tech side. Developing a streaming platform is not for the faint of heart. It’s a lot of work! It is a lot more complicated than one would think.

JWK: Would that be almost like an X kind of component?

BA: To a degree but it will be more focused on conversations around movies, content and faith. It won’t be as random as X tends to be and we’ll certainly monitor it to keep it from getting political. We want to create a safe space where people who are like-minded can go to and not worry about being shouted down or feeling like they’re in some way being assaulted.

JWK: And Great American Family is, of course, its own entity too.

BA: Yeah. That’s our linear channel…You can text CHRISTMAS to 877-999-1225 to find Great American Family on a cable operator near you. It is in over 50-million homes and growing rapidly even though the linear space is quite challenging right now.

JWK: Where do you see Great American Media in five to ten years?

BA: We’re on our way really to establishing ourselves as the leader in this category – to really being known as the destination for content that’s supportive of faith, family and country. That’s the vision and we’ll never back down from that. The more content we create and the more awareness grows, the closer we get to really being that network that is so well-known that everybody knows about it, talks about it and looks at it as the example of how to build a business and, at the same time, be focused on culturally relevant things that contribute positively to society.

JWK: With some of the broadcast networks seeming to possible candidates for sale, do you think that maybe Great American Media and Sony could partner and go after one of those?

BA: That’s a good question. I think we’re always looking at strategic opportunities. We’re always interested in getting bigger and having a bigger impact. Obviously, with Sony and our group we’ve got people in the right places to look at options like that. We’ll have to see where the road takes us and what God has planned.

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.