Crown Media Narrows 2007 Loss

STUDIO CITY, March 12:
Crown Media Holdings, the parent company of the Hallmark Channel in the U.S.
lowered its full-year loss from 2006’s $389 million to $159 million for 2007,
however its fourth quarter rose to $37.3 million.

Net revenue in Q4
increased 19 percent to $69.6 million, from $58.4 million in the prior year’s
fourth quarter. The company experienced an increase of 21 percent in
advertising revenues to $63 million and a 3-percent increase in subscriber-fee
revenues to $6.4 million. For the full year, revenue increased 17 percent to
$234.4 million, with ad revenues up 18 percent to $206.2 million, and
subscriber fees up 12 percent to $27.8 million.

As at the end of the year,
Hallmark had 83.9 million subscribers, up from 74.6 million at the end of 2006.

“We have had a truly remarkable
year,” noted Henry Schleiff, the president and CEO of Crown Media. “We
delivered continued strong ratings culminating in a record-breaking December,
we have continued to expand our distribution at a rapid pace with 84 million
subscribers to-date, and advertisers’ recognition of the value of our brand and
the quality of our programming has given us another year of double-digit growth
in advertising revenues. Most importantly, over the past twelve months we have
completed the renewal of the vast majority of our distribution agreements on
fair and reasonable terms, which will contribute to the generation of operating
cash flow for 2008 and beyond.”

—By Mansha Daswani