Hallmark Channel's diversity problem: "It’s the TV demographic equivalent of trying to become the No. 1 coal mine of the 21st century"

The Washington Post

Reflecting on Hallmark's lesbian Zola ad controversy earlier this month, Jeb Lund notes that "Hallmark is a family network anchored by a stretch of year when it becomes the Christmas network, but Christmas isn’t a segregated holiday, and America still has nonwhite families in it. When you’ve made 40 new Christmas movies this year alone, the fact that you’ve made fewer than 10 with nonwhite or LGBTQ leads in your entire history isn’t going to cut it anymore" Although Hallmark claims it's not political, Lund says the cable channel's vision of America is the result of political choices. "Hallmark’s movies are stridently anti-metropolitan, almost always beginning with a heroine fleeing the city on some pretext or another," says Lund. "The geography of her personal rescue takes the form of small towns and pastoral settings, where everyone has a nice house and a car and is probably a small-business owner or about to improve themselves by becoming one. Blue-collar jobs exist, but they pay at artisanal rates. And cratered school budgets and bankrupt shelters are rescued by private donors; in a world that cannot mention taxes, the commons only ever existed via the goodness of unnamed hearts. The few minority characters who luck into having more definition than a name and bipedal form invariably exist to twinkle at glockenspiel-shattering frequencies and push two oblivious white people toward each other until they collide lips-first. Often, they are little more than white roles cast with black actors, leading to moments like a scene in 2018′s Christmas at Graceland, where Kellie Pickler enters her black best friend’s house to discover decor that looks like what would happen if Williams Sonoma updated the walls of a TGI Friday’s. This year, Hallmark aired what was initially billed as its first 'Hanukkah' movie — a Christmas movie in which a Jewish man poses as a fake WASP boyfriend for the holiday."