The president of the fastest-growing TV network told The Dallas Express his company’s faith and family-centered values are attracting waves of viewers who reject the rise of hyper-sexualized content.
Bill Abbott, the president and CEO of the DFW-based Great American Family network, said the company’s growth can be attributed in part to the entertainment industry’s abandonment of family values. He said his network’s content is based on wholesome storytelling that has become rare at competing companies.
“There is a dire need and desire for family-friendly content that is nowhere in the landscape,” Abbott told The Dallas Express. “There are plenty of places to go for sexual, salacious content. And there are very few places to go for family-friendly content.”
According to Nielsen Media Research, Great American Family ranked this year as the fastest-growing network for 11 consecutive months. The network’s “Great American Christmas” releases include 20 new movies this year.
Abbott is the former president and CEO of Crown Media, the parent company of the Hallmark Channel. He said mainstream content companies have made the mistake of ditching traditional storytelling in recent years.
“They’ve betrayed the audience to a degree in terms of becoming more focused on pushing the envelope a little bit,” he told The Dallas Express. “We will never betray the audience.”
Lifetime Channel launched the first Christmas movie this year to have a sex scene. Relatedly, Hallmark is set to launch a “lesbian romantic comedy” this Christmas.
Abbott claimed a core reason for the increase in such “salacious” content is that it takes less effort.
“It’s so easy as a content creator to go to the salacious place because it gets headlines,” he told The Dallas Express. “It’s easier storytelling, quite frankly, and it can be lazy storytelling too.”
“It’s a lot harder to develop strong characters without those devices where you really have to focus on the dialogue and the storytelling and the characters,” he continued. “We have a great team who has a relentless focus on those details.”
