Lisa Hamilton Daly Out At Hallmark Media

Hallmark has announced the departure of Former Executive Vice President of Programming Lisa Hamilton Daly.

Hallmark Media announced the dissolution of the role of EVP of Programming on Monday effectively firing Daly. The network executive previously worked at Netflix and Lifetime. During her time at network one of its most successful series launched Virgin River currently in its sixth season.

With Daly joining in 2021 we can see some of the changes of the likely spearheaded or championed by her. This includes Hallmark Mystery’s rebrand and more varied stories being told across the network. Stars of the network have cited her as being open to backing stories about friendships instead of the traditional falling in love stories. We also saw LGBT characters take centre stage in several stories.

Lisa Hamilton Daly also helped bring Hallmark’s mega-hit The Way Home to the network. A family-friendly story with time travel aspects central to the story would seem a stretch for the network even now but has proven wildly successful.

Statement

Hallmark Media released the following statement to Deadline.

“Hallmark is aligning its consumer-facing touch points, including content, under a single leader, Chief Brand Officer Darren Abbott, with a focus and expertise in the expression of the Hallmark brand to consumers — from product to experiences and now content, across multiple platforms. Darren has an innate understanding of the Hallmark brand and paired with his leadership and vision, will ensure our content aligns to the promise of our legacy brand.”

“In this move, the position of EVP, Programming was eliminated and Lisa Hamilton Daly will depart the company. Lisa is an extremely talented creative leader and we are grateful for her many contributions to Hallmark Media including expanding our storytelling and characters in new ways.”

Controversy

Things at the network took a turn for the worst in the wake of former Hallmark Media casting agent, Penny Perry‘s age discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit also stated that Daly called Perry “long in the tooth.” The suit also alleges that Daly called Lacey Chabert and Holly Robinson Peete as too old for the network.

The lawsuit is still pending so it is not surprising that Hallmark Media would take some action to hopefully put it behind the network. Whether that will happen remains to be seen.

At the time, Hallmark released this statement: “Lacey and Holly have a home at Hallmark. We do not generally comment on pending litigation. And while we deny these outrageous allegations, we are not going to discuss an employment relationship in the media.”

SOURCE: Deadline.com