For Hallmark Channel, holidays start early

For Hallmark Channel, holidays start early

NEW YORK

The Hallmark Channel may have aired a movie titled “I’m Not Ready for Christmas” last week, but its viewers clearly are.

The holiday season can’t come early enough at Hallmark, where it officially began Oct. 31.

The family-friendly network devotes the final two months of the year to holiday programming, and its eager viewers made it the third most-watched cable network last week behind ESPN and Fox News Channel.

Prime-time viewership at Hallmark for the first two weeks of its holiday focus is up 89 percent over the network’s average during October, the Nielsen company said.

For the week of Nov. 9-15, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFL Football: Arizona at Seattle, NBC, 19.39 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 18.13 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 16.68 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 14.92 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pregame,” NBC, 13.94 million; “Walking Dead,” AMC, 12.87 million; “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 12.63 million; “NCIS: New Orleans,” CBS, 12.39 million; “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 12.02 million; NFL Football: Chicago at San Diego, ESPN, 11.44 million.

‘Secret Agent Man’ songwriter P.F. Sloan dies in LA at 70

LOS ANGELES

P.F. Sloan, the songwriter behind such classic 1960s tunes as Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” and Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” has died. He was 70.

Howard Wuelfing, a spokesman for Sloan, says the singer-songwriter died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles after battling pancreatic cancer for several weeks.

Sloan signed his first record deal when he was 13 and went on to write songs for such artists as the Turtles, Grass Roots and Fifth Dimension.

He also released several of his own albums and published the memoir “What’s Exactly The Matter With Me?” last year.

Other songs written by Sloan included Herman’s Hermits’ “A Must to Avoid,” Terry Black’s “Unless You Care” and Jan Dean’s “I Found a Girl.”

Associated Press