HALLMARK CHANNEL ORIGINAL, "LOVE BEGINS", ENCHANTS AN AUDIENCE OF 2.9 MILLION WITH 1.8 HH RATING

Highest Rated September Original Premiere in Network History

"Love Begins" warmed the hearts of 2.9 million unduplicated viewers on its Saturday, September 17th world premiere on Hallmark Channel with a 1.8 HH rating, making it the highest rated ad-supported cable movie of the day in addition to scoring the spot of #1 movie of the week.

Hallmark Channel continues to demonstrate the strength behind the network's original movies with "Love Begins" - the highest rated September original premiere in its history. Among its key demo (W25-54), "Love Begins" was the #2 rated cable movie of the day and #3 movie of the week, respectively. In addition, "Love Begins" ranked among the Top 10 in the 9-11pm time period in HH and key demo delivery (#4 in households with 1,528,000), lifting Hallmark Channel to be the 4th highest cable network in Prime Time for the day among HH (1.5 HH rtg).

"Love Begins", the first of two prequels inspired by Award-winning author Janette Oke's beloved book series, Love Comes Softly, stars Nancy McKeon ("The Facts of Life"), Wes Brown ("True Blood") and Julie Mond ("General Hospital"). "Love Begins" tells the story of Clark Davis (Brown), an adventurous man whose dreams of striking gold are put into jeopardy after he and a friend start a fight which damages a local café. Through a plea deal with the Sheriff (Jere Burns "Dear John") and café owner Millie (McKeon), Clark works off his sentence as a farmhand for the Barlow sisters, Ellen (Mond) and Cassie (Abigail Mavity, "Summerland"). Over time, Clark and Ellen fall in love, but will Clark gives up his plans of striking it rich out west for the comfort of a family and home?

About Hallmark Channel

Hallmark Channel, owned and operated by Crown Media Holdings, Inc., is a 24-hour basic cable network that provides a diverse slate of high-quality entertainment programming available in high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) to a national audience of 87 million subscribers. The top tier program service is distributed through approximately 5,492 cable systems and communities as well as direct-to-home satellite services across the country. Hallmark Channel is the nation's leading network in quality family programming with an ambitious slate of original TV movies, lifestyle and general entertainment content, and is the home of "The Martha Stewart Show", which anchors the channel's daytime original programming block. Hallmark Channel's sibling network is Hallmark Movie Channel, also available in HD and SD, which focuses on the family-friendly movies with a mix of classic theatrical films, presentations from the acclaimed Hallmark Hall of Fame library, original Hallmark Channel movies and special events.

Source: The Nielsen Company, September 12-18, 2011