Veteran producer and talent manager Larry Thompson was captivated by the true story of the Amish community in Nickel Mines, Pa., that somehow managed to forgive a gunman who killed five girls in a 2006 schoolhouse shooting.

Thompson believed the story would make for an inspiring TV movie about the power of faith and forgiveness, but he knew the dark subject matter would be a tough sell in Hollywood. 

In fact, the Lifetime Movie Network initially passed on the story, though it eventually agreed to broadcast the film. Entitled “Amish Grace,” the TV movie premiered last year on Palm Sunday and was the cable channel’s most-watched original movie in key demographics. It is scheduled to air again April 17.

Getting a faith-based movie produced was hard enough, but getting it made in California required more than divine intervention.

A top executive at Lifetime Television has resigned at a time when the cable channel is starting to make a shift in its programming strategy.

JoAnn Alfano, Lifetime's executive vice president of entertainment, said Friday that she was leaving. Her exit comes a little less than a year after Nancy Dubuc was named head of Lifetime. Dubuc, who also runs the History channel, was brought in to oversee Lifetime after the ownership of the network was restructured. Once owned by Walt Disney Co. and Hearst Corp., Lifetime is now owned by those companies as well as NBC Universal.

Since adding Lifetime to her portfolio, Dubuc has pushed for more reality fare. The network has run episodes of the History channel's popular reality show "Pawn Stars" and is developing new reality shows featuring Roseanne Barr and Beth Holloway, mother of Natalie Holloway who vanished several years ago.

Lifetime has also been edging back into the "women in jeopardy" movies that were its hallmark for years until the network tried to move out of the genre for more critically appealing shows. In the last two months it has run a ripped-from-the-tabloids movie based on an infamous murder in Boston known as the Craigslist killing and another about Amanda Knox, the American college student who was found guilty in Italy of the murder of Meredith Kercher, another student.

In a statement, Alfano said she decided a few months ago to leave Lifetime after seeing some of her projects make it through the network's development process.

Before she joined Lifetime, Alfano spent several years at NBC in program development and later was head of television at Broadway Video, an entertainment firm founded by "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels.

-- Joe Flint

You'd be forgiven if you thought you were watching MTV or Spike and it turned out you were watching VH1 or if your TV said Lifetime but you could have sworn it was History Channel.

Both Lifetime, which is owned by Walt Disney Co., NBC Universal and Hearst Corp., and Viacom's VH1 have been borrowing shows from their sibling channels in an effort to juice their sagging ratings before the end of the year.

At Lifetime, repeats of History Channel's reality hit "Pawn Stars" have been popping up. Given that Lifetime's new chief -- Nancy Dubuc -- kept her job as head of History Channel as well, this move is hardly a surprise. "Pawn Stars" would not seem to be an ideal fit with Lifetime, but Dubuc wants to broaden the network's audience a little, and the hope is that viewers who might not normally check out Lifetime will stumble onto "Pawn Stars" and stick around. However, the risk is that Lifetime's core female audience will be alienated. Given the channel's ratings slump, however, that may be of little concern to the new team there.

VH1, meanwhile, has raided Spike and MTV's closet for reruns of "Entourage" and "Jersey Shore," respectively. Like Lifetime, VH1 has been in a prolonged ratings slump, and the hope is that borrowing those shows for a couple of weeks will get it some new viewers. A VH1 spokesman said it was a way to "test out show formats and formulas with our viewers and help drive promotion for the series back to our sister channel."

On the one hand, it is hard to argue with Lifetime and VH1 using programing from their siblings in an effort to jump-start themselves.

But the moves also continue the disturbing trend of cable channels being indistinguishable from one another. Shuttling shows from one network to another is different from when a cable network such as Spike shells out millions of dollars for reruns of a show such as HBO's "Entourage" or TBS does the same for "Big Bang Theory."

What Lifetime and VH1 are doing may have the cable operators who pay to carry them wondering why they are shelling out so much to be served leftovers.

-- Joe Flint

Photo: "Entourage." Credit: Claudette Barius/ HBO

Lifetime's new president, Nancy Dubuc, said one of her first priorities as she takes over the cable network aimed at women is to "take a close look at who the audience is."

Well, right now, it's a woman pushing 50 who most likely lives in flyover country.

So the question for Dubuc is whether she is going to embrace that audience or try to flee it like her predecessors.

If history -- and her stint at History Channel -- is any guide, odds are she will try to flee it. Everybody wants hot shows that get talked about among the hip and cool in New York and Los Angeles. Lifetime's "Army Wives" and "Drop Dead Diva" may be successful, but do you see them on the cover of Entertainment Weekly or US Magazine?

For almost 10 years now, Lifetime has been desperately trying to woo the Carrie Bradshaws of the world and leave the suburban housewife with three kids behind. It hasn't worked. All Lifetime has managed to do is alienate its core without attracting the younger viewers it so desperately wants.

Guess what? Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart aren't just interested in the bold and the beautiful. Not everyone shops at Bergdorf Goodman or, gasp, even aspires to that. As for the standard industry babble that Madison Avenue pays more for younger viewers, Lifetime and other cable networks need to make the case that folks over 40 with families are just as valuable, if not more so.

Plus, with every cable network becoming interchangeable, perhaps Lifetime could stand out by trying to go after quality as opposed to schlock. Leave the shows about addictions, dating and dysfunction to everyone else and develop some shows that one doesn't have to be embarrassed about watching. There's nothing wrong with the occasional guilty pleasure, but it can't be the only thing on the menu.

No one is suggesting that Lifetime shouldn't try to compete for younger women. But instead of doing what previous regimes have done and try to get young in one bold move such as buying "Project Runway," do it gradually through original programming that can talk to the network's entire audience as "Army Wives" does. It took Leslie Moonves years before anyone wanted to pitch a sitcom to him that would appeal to younger viewers because the network had an image of being the place to go if you were selling Depends. No one really makes those jokes anymore.

-- Joe Flint

Photo: "Army Wives." Credit: Fred Norris / Lifetime

So will Lifetime's next show be “Ax Women?”

Probably not, but look for the cable channel's new president, Nancy Dubuc, to bring the same strategy she used to make History Channel so hot in the ratings to her new gig.

In a brief interview, Dubuc, who will continue as president of History Channel while running Lifetime, kept mum on much of her programming strategy, but acknowledged that one of her top priorities will be to develop some hit reality shows.

“We most definitely need to find a way to be successful in reality,” she said.

It's not just because such shows are popular with viewers. They are also cheaper. Programs she championed at History Channel include “Ax Men,” which is about loggers, not fans of the body spray; “Pawn Stars,” a reality show about people who go searching for the odd and arcane at pawn shops; and “Ice Road Truckers,” about, well, truckers who drive on ice.

Lifetime has tried for years to establish itself in the reality space. Part of the problem is that its core audience is older while the majority of reality TV shows appeal to younger viewers. This has been the challenge for Lifetime for almost a decade. It wants to be both a hip channel to glamorous girls on the coasts while maintaining its core female audience in flyover country that want to watch “Army Wives.”

One of the oldest cable networks, Lifetime used to own the female audience. It has seen its hold on women fade as Oxygen, Bravo, TLC, and even less-niche networks such as USA and TNT have gotten more aggressive in going after the female audience. Next year, Oprah Winfrey will launch OWN in partnership with Discovery Communications, and that channel is also expected to be aimed at women.

“There are many more channels fighting for bigger audiences especially in the female space,” Dubuc said.

Some have criticized Dubuc’s tenure at the History Channel because she moved the network away from some of its more traditional documentary fare. Even “America: The Story of Us,” its latest historical show, has been panned by many critics. That the first person the series interviewed about America was Donald Trump and the second was actor Michael Douglas probably didn’t help the network make its case that it was still serious about history.

But in terms of the bottom line, Dubuc’s approach has paid off. History Channel has gotten some of its best ratings ever in the last year. Needless to say though, Tony Soprano would no longer recognize what was his favorite network.

-- Joe Flint

Photo: Nancy Dubuc. Credit: A&E Television Networks

Andrea Wong, chief executive of Lifetime for nearly three years, is leaving the network. Her contract was due to expire in April.

The shake-up comes less than six months after a corporate restructuring that lumped Lifetime into the A&E Television Networks group, leaving Wong no longer the top executive at the joint venture between Hearst Corp. and Walt Disney Co. Instead, she reported to Abbe Raven, the head of A&E Television Networks. 

Wong worked to give Lifetime a makeover from the network's frumpy image -- but some of her bold business moves backfired.

The MIT graduate agreed to spend more than $150 million to nab the hit show "Project Runway" from Bravo. The expensive deal, which wound up in court when NBC Universal contested the legitimacy of the channel switch, included dozens of movies from the Weinstein Co. that were viewed as stinkers. While "Project Runway" performed well -- though down considerably from when it aired on Bravo -- ratings at the channel have been sliding. It was not the uplifting Lifetime story that Wong was hoping to write when she left her prominent job at ABC in 2007. 

Wong's departure was first reported by the blog deadline hollywood.  It is unclear where Wong will land.

-- Meg James 

Walt Disney Co., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and Hearst Corp. have finalized an agreement to merge several cable networks together, for now anyway.

Under the terms of the agreement, A&E Television Networks (AETN), which is owned by all three companies, will acquire Lifetime Entertainment Services, which is owned by Disney and Hearst. The channels that will now make up A&E Television Networks are A&E, History Channel, Lifetime Television, Biography and a handful of smaller networks.

Although the deal is being positioned as joining the three companies together, ultimately it is part of an ongoing process to reduce and eventually eliminate NBC Universal's stake in the entity. When the deal is completed, Disney and Hearst will each own 42.5%, and NBC Universal will have a 15% stake. The companies said there are "mechanisms" that could require NBC Universal to exit the partnership no later than 15 years and quite possibly sooner.

For NBC, which only had a 25% in AETN prior to the merger, the deal makes sense because it will be part of a bigger more valuable entity, even if its piece is smaller. The company still has a strong group of cable networks of its own with USA, Syfy, Bravo and MSNBC among others.

Abbe Raven, president and chief executive of AETN, will oversee the new entity, and Andrea Wong, the high-profile CEO of Lifetime, will report to her. There will likely be layoffs once the deal is completed. The companies said the combination is expected to "yield substantial cost efficiencies."

-- Joe Flint

Almost 16 months after Lifetime Television struck a deal to snag the fashion reality hit "Project Runway" from Bravo the show will finally debut in its new home tonight.

A lot is riding on this for Lifetime, which needs "Project Runway" and its stars Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum to bring in a big young audience for its investment to pay off. According to Nielsen Media Research, Lifetime's prime-time audience has fallen in the last six years from an average of 1.7 million viewers in 2004 to 1.2 million this year, a drop of almost 30%. Among women ages 18 to 49 during the same period, the drop is 33% and for women ages 25 to 54 Lifetime is down 37%. While the network has had some recent successes with "Drop Dead Diva" and the drama "Army Wives," its median age is still hovering around 50.

So can one show heading into its sixth season turn everything around? Probably not, but it's a start. During its last two seasons on Bravo, "Project Runway" has drawn more viewers than Lifetime's prime-time averageof the last few years. Its season five premiere took in almost 3 million people. No wonder NBC and Bravo were willing to put up such a huge fight to try to keep the show from moving.

Besides heavy promotion for the return of "Project Runway," Lifetime is also making it available online, something Bravo was unable to do in its deal. PaidContent's Staci D. Kramer broke news today that full episodes will be available at MyLifetime.com on the Saturday following the Thursday episode. It's the only place online to find the show, Kramer notes, since Lifetime isn't making it available on iTunes or other sites and outlets.

The cash-strapped Weinstein Co., which ended up paying millions to NBC in order to take it to Lifetime, also has some risks in the move. "Project Runway" used to be made by a production company called Magical Elves. But since Magical Elves does other shows with NBC and Bravo, the show is now produced by reality kings Bunim/Murray ("The Real World"), a company that's known to be quite expensive.

While the dog days of August may seem like an odd time to premiere such a big bet, Lifetime was obliged to launch "Project Runway" now as part of the settlement with NBC, people familiar with the matter said. That may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. After all, the competition is a little lighter and fewer people are taking vacations this summer because of the weak economy. Last week, AMC's "Mad Men" had record ratings in its season three premiere. 

Ironically, after all the fighting between NBC and Lifetime and Weinstein Co. over "Project Runway," the Peacock network may end up still profiting from the program. It's in talks with Lifetime's parents about merging some of their cable networks (which also includes A&E) into one entity.

-- Joe Flint

Photo: "Project Runway" stars Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum. Credit: Mike Yarish / Lifetime Networks

Imagine if the New York Yankees were co-owned by the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles. Sounds crazy, right? But in the entertainment industry such partnerships among rivals are becoming more and more the norm. For example, Hulu, the red-hot online video site, is owned by News Corp., NBC Universal and the Walt Disney Co. The CW Network is owned by Time Warner and CBS.

Now Disney, NBC Universal and Hearst Corp. are near a deal to create a new joint venture that would house cable networks A&E, History Channel and Lifetime. The news was broken by Claire Atkinson at Broadcasting & Cable. Here's how it would work, per Atkinson. Hearst, Disney and NBC already are partners on A&E and History and a handful of spin-off channels (Hearst and Disney each owns 37.5% and NBC has a 25% stake). Disney and Hearst co-own Lifetime. The three companies would create a new company combining all the networks that would be majority owned by Hearst and Disney, with NBC getting a stake that would be less than 25%, according to a person briefed on the talks.

On the surface, the deal makes sense for everyone. NBC gets a chunk of Lifetime, a very successful cable network, while Disney and Hearst get a bigger piece of three powerful cable channels.

There are cost-savings (that is, layoffs). The new entity will probably combine a lot of backroom operations such as affiliate relations and maybe even sales and marketing.

But here's the rub. While the companies are partners on these channels, they have other interests that conflict. NBC owns Bravo, USA, SyFy and Oxygen, which compete with Lifetime and A&E. Disney and Hearst own ESPN, which competes with NBC on occasion for sports rights. These networks often find themselves bidding on the same content, and the channels that have multiple ownerships can find their needs taking a backseat.

Viacom used to be in the joint-ownership game but recognized the unintended consequences when it was partnered with Time Warner on Comedy Central and owned a stake in Lifetime. It ultimately bought out Time Warner and sold back its interest in Lifetime.

From a purely competitive standpoint, these partnerships are ultimately bad news to the creative community. It becomes tougher to create bidding wars for content if the channels you're pitching are all owned by the same companies.

There is some irony in all this if the deal goes through. NBC, which lost a nasty legal battle to stop "Project Runway" from leaving Bravo to Lifetime, would be able to profit from the show. 

-- Joe Flint