I’m not all that great with guessing ages, and I’m usually too courteous to attempt a guess of a woman’s unless invited to. Based on what little I know about Lisa Hamilton Daly, I don’t think I’m ever getting the gravitas from her to do so.
But she has somehow become a trending item over the last few days on the subject and is a de facto public figure, and since even some of us old farts know our way around LinkedIn, I think I can hazard a guess.
Hamilton Daly’s experience sector begins in 1999 with a two-year stint as a literary agent, and her education tab includes a master’s degree stint at Harvard after a magna cum laude undergraduate stint at UCLA. Let’s be generous with the possibility she had a few accelerated learning chances along the way, so I believe it’s more than fair to assume she’s in the vicinity of age 50.
Which makes the news that’s emerged about how she feels about people both older and younger than all the more incideniary and, given the business she inherited the chance to run only after her corporate parent chose to eliminate more experienced and higher-paid executives a year ago, all the more indicative she’s apparently more out of touch with her audience than most of her peers.
SALON’s Nardos Haile’s recap from yesterday pretty much summed up the base facts:
A Hallmark casting director has sued the company in an age discrimination lawsuit for “vile and ageist conduct,” claiming one of the company’s executives said she didn’t want to cast “old people” like the Hallmark Channel‘s leading ladies Holly Robinson Peete and Lacey Chabert.
In the lawsuit filed on Oct. 9, 79-year-old casting director Penny Perry alleged that Hallmark executive vice president of programming, Lisa Hamilton Daly, singled out Robinson Peete, 60, and Chabert, 42, some of the channel’s most notable faces. Robinson Peete, Chabert and others like Teri Hatcher, who is 59, were used as examples of “old talent” that Hamilton Daly felt needed to be “replaced.” The actors have all starred in numerous holiday movies and shows on the Hallmark Channel.
The lawsuit claimed Hamilton Daly said, “Lacey’s getting older, and we have to find someone like her to replace her as she gets older,” then targeted Peete, saying: “No one wants her because she’s too expensive and getting too old. She can’t play leading roles anymore.”
Alongside the comments on the talents’ age, Perry claimed she was also pushed out of the company and unceremoniously fired in April after nine years. She is suing Hallmark’s executives for wrongful termination, age and disability discrimination and defamation, People Magazine reported.
Aside from the fact that Chabert is indeed younger than Daly under any scenario, she also just happens to be a key part of at least two projects which Daly has championed in the brief time since she took over Hallmark after Wonya Lucas’ reign ended, as US’ Erin Carlson expounded:
Chabert appears alongside Kristoffer Polaha in The Christmas Quest, which premieres December 1 and follows the adventures of an archaeologist and her ex-husband who travel to Iceland to search for treasure. The actress is an executive producer on the movie. She also is hosting a reality show, Celebrations With Lacey Chabert, on Hallmark’s streaming service.
Nice to see how dearly Daly values her colleagues. Especially ones who fall into her coveted demographic cell.
The launch of a wholly owned streaming platform in the currently overloaded climate of standalone brands was an idea that Daly championed after data from an alliance with Peacock purportedly revealed a younger median age than the linear channel was delivering. How many such coveted young ‘uns that was, or how many of them have yet to cough up the monthly subscription fee for Hallmark’s online iteration is proprietary. But we haven’t seen even an inkling of news that even teases something that could be equated to success. Unlike the nearly weekly issuing of stories we saw about a Hallmark movie–even the ones without a Christmas theme–rising to the top of Nielsen charts that led to the network eventually rising to the #1 position for calendar year 2023 among non-news networks–the last year of the Lucas regime.
Lucas just happened to employ a longtime colleague and drinking buddy going back to days we all shared at Turner in the role of cobbling together that sort of spin; that person was yet another victim of the Crown Media purge of top-tier executives. Fortunately for Daly, the person now in charge is a skilled veteran with a wealth of knowledge and experience. I’m certain that person would back up what I was able to unearth about exactly who is Hallmark’s audience (with the caveat that it’s self-reported data from 2018, but as someone with a great deal of actual experience with Nielsen data who just can’t find it as this is being written, I’ll assure you is an accurate representation of age skew then and now);
–16% 18-29
— 22% 30-49
–26% 50-64.
And sorry to break this news to you, Lisa, but your network has at best a trace amount of under 18s.
So that would leave about 35 per cent being age 65 plus. Or in case they didn’t teach math at Harvard, that would mean about 60 per cent of your audience is over age 50.
So remind us again, Lisa–what business ARE you running?
Maybe you still think you’re working at Netflix, where you most recently toiled leading their scripted series strategy. The titles your own LinkedIn bio touts were your babies include: VIRGIN RIVER (renewed for Season 3), SWEET MAGNOLIAS (renewed for Season 2), and FIREFLY LANE (premiered in February 2021). I don’t recall seeing them float to the top of any charts. Perhaps that track record might be part of the reason you and they parted ways at the end of 2020?
Or perhaps it was the Netflix culture that is even more ageist than you appear to be, and they got one look at your timeline and figured by their standards your expiration date had passed?
As for Ms. Perry, I don’t know her, but I did work at Sony with a peer of hers who was reportedly even older than Perry is now and eventually experienced some of what was cited in NEWSNATION’s Ashleigh Jackson’s story that broke early this morning with more sobering details of the Daly regime:
The lawsuit, obtained by Nexstar this week, also alleges that Hamilton Daly told Perry she was getting “long in the tooth,” a phrase often used to imply someone is getting old.
According to the complaint, Perry was gradually excluded from important meetings and decisions, eventually leading to her being offered a demotion with a 50% pay cut.
When Perry asked for more time to think about the offer, she said she was fired. The lawsuit claims that Hallmark then posted a job listing for a new position nearly identical to Perry’s former role.
Carlson’s report added:
Perry claims that under the executive’s leadership, her office was moved to a different floor and she was iced out of meetings as one of her projects was taken over by a consultant who worked outside Hallmark, per Variety. She alleges that Hallmark filled her position with a younger man after letting her go.
In the case of my former colleague, the additional physical issues that Perry says she was dealing with (per Jackson’s story, including multiple sclerosis and legal blindness in her left eye) were fortunately non-factors. But in both cases the tales of involuntary relocation, ghosting and non-inclusion were consistent, very real and very hurtful. I experienced my own version of it around the same time, and unlikely as it was given our own significant age gap we bonded over it.
Yet in both my former colleague and Perry’s cases, they were still responsible for hit movies that made their companies money in spite of whatever their birth certificates may have said. They even collaborated on a couple that Sony was able to sell quite well internationally. And in most well-run businesses, the numbers that matter most are the ones in black on the bottom line, not those circled in red on a calendar.
Naturally, Hallmark is in denial mode, as Jackson tersely reported:
“Lacey and Holly have a home at Hallmark,” the statement read. “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.”
They’re also not discussing how all of Hamilton Daly’s moves, both creative and personnel-wise, are panning out. Which is most definitely a different tactic than what we’ve seen from Hallmark in recent years, especially since the days I worked on joint releases for our mutual success stories which a couple of seasoned veteran ladies took particular pride in.
Maybe Hamilton Daly isn’t quite at a point in her career where she’s going to personally experience what Perry, my colleague and yes, moi, went through. Though from the looks of it, if she soon doesn’t start passing up a few crafts’ service tables in the not too distant future she, too, might get mistaken for someone who is “a little long in the tooth”.
More likely, she’ll find a way to make Perry at least financially whole and go on with her “winning” game plan and attitude. At this rate, karma may ultimately intervene. Executives may not get always get fired for getting old, but they do for incompetence.
Until next time…