Great American Media CEO Looks to Promising Future of Faith-Based Entertainment with Pure Flix Merger

In late May it was announced that faith-based streaming platform Pure Flix would be merging with family-friendly television network, Great American Media. 

On paper, the move made a lot of sense. Great American Media brings a portfolio rife with multi-faceted family programming juxtaposed with Pure Flix, a leading streaming service that provides faith and family-friendly movies and series. Furthermore, Great American Media can currently be seen in more than 50 million homes and recently celebrated seven consecutive months as television’s fastest growing network.

This all sounds great but one can’t help but wonder what all of this is going to look like when you flick on the television or visit their streaming platform.  Will it be a seamless transition or will viewers be left longing for the “good old days” when the two companies operated as separate entities.

Great American Family CEO Bill Abbott, a seasoned veteran of nearly 30 years in the television industry, has been tasked with blending these two respected media entities into a programming experience that honors faith, family, and provides fantastic entertainment on any given day of the week.

I recently sat down with Abbott to sift through the rationale and strategy for bringing these two companies together, what viewers can expect to see over the next two years, and why this type of entertainment is of such critical importance at this time.

Recently, Great American Media merged with Pure Flix, a very well known streaming platform for the faith community. What was the rationale and strategy in bringing these two companies together?

Unlike a lot of mergers that happen in the corporate world, this one combines two services that are aligned in terms of mission, in terms of values, and in terms of ultimately what the objectives are. We both have advantages that can help the other. With the linear platform, Great American Family is always on 24/7 and always available in the majority of the country. We can really offer a great promotional platform and a way in which to reinforce the Pure Flix brand. Pure Flix gives Great American Family the opportunity to produce and create content that's a little bit different and can be a little bit more dramatic and faith-based. At the same time, we jump into the streaming world where people are gravitating toward consuming entertainment. So, it was not only a great association and merger from the point of view of the mission, but from a business perspective, it made all the sense in the world. 

What changes can the viewer expect to see in coming months? Will there be a different look cosmetically, different services, and a different approach to producing original content? What types of things can we expect to see over the next six months to two years?

I think you'll see the best of both. You will see the best parts of Great American Family that are maybe a little lighter, and maybe lighten the Pure Flix service a little bit and a little bit more fun will be part of the Pure Flix offering. And then on the Great American Family side, more of the faith-based offerings that Pure Flix has done so well with over the years. As you mentioned, they were visionaries not only in the faith space, but visionaries in the streaming space. They were streaming before streaming was cool and that audience was quick to take to it. So, we want to take the best of both platforms and merge those as well, while creating even more content that speaks to both audiences.

If you don’t mind, let's talk a little about you and your background. What can you tell me about your history in the faith and family film industry and how you got to where you are today?

I spent the vast majority of my career in the faith and family space. I started at CBN, which is the Christian Broadcasting Network and was the Family Channel. While there, I worked for the best CEO that I've ever worked for in Tim Robertson, who taught me more about what being a visionary is in this business. He saw the changes in the world at large, and what it would look like. He was so persuasive. And that really instilled in me the feeling of serving the dramatically underserved viewer who wants a positive notion of faith, wants families to be portrayed in the way where they respect my family members and not the race to the gutter that we see in the rest of the entertainment business. So from there, we were acquired by Fox and Haim Saban in 1997. I saw quickly that they had a very different strategy that I didn't believe in. I could tell you a hundred war stories out of that one. But I chose to focus on the positive which was when I migrated to Hallmark, which for a very long time was also very focused on family. I had a great team around me that built a number of different businesses and really created an appetite for viewers in that space. And we've just seen a changing of the culture, especially over the last 10 years, where anything goes on television. There's no standard anymore in any day part, in any show. It's a race to see who can be the most shocking. That's the biggest change that I see. There was a time when the eight o'clock hour was kind of untouchable, but now all bets are off. So, the need is even greater than it was 20 or 30 years ago to deliver on the mission of providing for that underserved audience, faith and family television.

As we've been talking, the word streaming keeps coming up over and over again. And of course it should. But 10 years ago, the idea of a streaming platform was in its infancy. But it has exploded in the last three to five years. What sets Pure Flix/Great American Family apart from all the others? It seems like every day there is a new streaming platform making its debut.

In addition to all the things that we've talked about in terms of positive and uplifting and that we want to be the quality creator of content, so that when you sit down to watch some piece of content on our platform, you have a positive experience and the takeaway is good. Overall, we need to be uplifting and have that relentless focus on it so that we never deviate from it. We need to be true to our mission and never let the viewer down. It is very important to our brand and very important to our strategy. Furthermore, it’s very important to the culture at large, and something that we are all aligned on and working very hard to create.

What will keep your brand sustainable moving forward with all these aforementioned platforms popping up? What's going to keep you guys right there in the game?

I think the competition helps and that they are doing a lot of the heavy lifting for us. And then, it really is that quality production of content. As we all know, at the end of the day it’s all about how the content gets consumed. That is up to the viewer more and more every day. It will be staying true to who we are, staying true to that mission, and never straying from it. It’s always being sensitive to what the viewer can view as a family and together.

Here’s an out of left field question … Christian comedy … is there a future for it? It seems that the faith-based film community has been a little hesitant to dip their toe into those waters. I think comedy is badly needed in this space and I am glad that Pure Flix has not shied away from it.

I have news for the entertainment community. Christians and people of faith like to laugh too. They like to be entertained and they like content that inspires. It doesn't always have to be about elements that are more serious and are deeper. I couldn't agree more with you on that. It's badly needed and with this sort of a reinvention of our brand, humor definitely will be part of that space. It’s one of the beauties of life.

What is one thing you would like to see happen in the Christian streaming industry in the next five years? What is your greatest hope?

I think the genre gets a bad name sometimes. I think both the romcom genre and the Christian genres share some baggage from sins of the past in which the notion of a cheesy romcom or bad Christian content is more pervasive than quality and producing things that are worth the time and effort for a viewer to watch. And so, we really want to set that standard where we are different, that not only is it squeaky clean, but it's also fulfilling and enriching and in some way, redeeming in value and quality. That's the principle on which this business is founded.

Currently both platforms are offering "Christmas in July" programming, featuring "A Christmas Present" (starring Candace Cameron Bure), "Aisle Be Home for Christmas", "Art of Christmas", and many more.