Viewers Fail to Warm to Hallmark Channel/Zombie Gorefest Hybrid

Entertainment Desk

Hollywood, CA — In an indication that American viewers still have a ways to go before embracing full entertainment diversity, they delivered an emphatic ‘thumbs-down’ on Hallmark Christmas Movies/Zombie Gorefest “mashups” as “Bed and Breakfast and Brains,” “Viscera Over Easy,” and “Just a Hometown Zombie.”

The network expressed cautious satisfaction with the viewing data nonetheless.

“This was a reach project from the get-go,” says Harold Meyerson, VP of Content for the Hallmark, “but we hope to build an audience year by year. We knew going in that it was going to be a stretch for a lot of our target demographic, the 50-150-year-olds, but with exposure we expect to keep building the audience.”That’s how it’s done, my friend.”

With zombie shows on the outs generally in the industry, more than one network thought to integrate the newly-unemployed workforce at now-reasonable labor rates. But some observers considered the Hallmark Channel and zombies an uneasy mix.

Scenes of couples ice skating on an empty rink, decorating a bed and breakfast for its last holiday season, or saving the town’s library by auctioning off local artwork, mixed abruptly with shambling hulking death-in-life things stalking through town and grabbing beloved citizens and munching on them.

Meyerson scoffs at the notion that there simply is no best mix of the two genres.

“We’ll recalibrate the plots based on our internal reviews. Just watch us next year. I think a lot of people are going to like the revised offering. I mean, people will watch anything.”