Planned Cable Channel Is for Women, by Women

Two of the most formidable women executives in the entertainment industry are forging a partnership to create a cable channel targeting an influential yet underserved and dissatisfied segment of the television audience: women viewers.

Geraldine Laybourne, a veteran television executive who built Nickelodeon into the leading channel for children, and maverick prime-time producer Marcy Carsey, along with her partners at Carsey-Werner Co., are testing the cable industry’s appetite for a hip and contemporary channel for women that would be buttressed by companion sites on the Internet.

Their effort underscores a growing awareness of the financial clout of women in American households. Women control the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth and write a majority of all checks, according to industry research.

Yet television has been slow to add new channels for women in part because advertisers still pay more to reach men, who are believed to be harder to reach.

The rise to power of women executives in television may encourage change. “We are now at a point in our careers to make things happen,” said Kate McEnroe, president of AMC Networks, whose flagship channel is American Movie Classics. “While cable is still male-dominated through an education process, there has been a growing recognition of women’s purchasing power. For a long time, they thought having one channel, Lifetime, was enough.”

McEnroe helped get the ball rolling two years ago, when she convinced AMC’s owner, Cablevision Systems Corp., the nation’s sixth-largest cable operator, to launch a thematic channel for women called Romance Classics, which airs such programming as romantic movies. “Our research shows that 80% of all checks are written by women and 70% of the nation’s wealth is controlled by women,” McEnroe said. “Yet we have only three to four channels, compared with the 20 to 25 specifically catering to men.”

Channels such as ESPN, ESPN2, the regional sports networks, CNN, MSNBC, Comedy Central, Speedvision, Discovery, History Channel and even Home & Garden attract more males than females. Lifetime, TV Food Network and Romance Classics are programmed with women in mind.

Laybourne and Carsey’s proposed channel would be the first general interest channel for women run and owned by women. Lifetime, the only general interest channel targeting women, has long been run by President and Chief Executive Doug McCormick.

Laybourne and Carsey-Werner’s principals would bring an impressive record to the project. Laybourne built Nickelodeon into a $4-billion service for children for Viacom Corp. before leaving two years ago to become president of Walt Disney Co.’s cable group, which owns the Disney Channel and has investments in Lifetime, A&E; and E! Entertainment Television.

She left Disney in late May to form her own company, Oxygen Media, targeting women and children. Disney and America Online are her first investors.

Carsey-Werner is the heavyweight Hollywood production house built by Carsey and longtime partners Caryn Mandabach and Tom Werner. The company, one of the last remaining independent television producers, has made a fortune from such stereotype-bending sitcoms as “The Bill Cosby Show,” “Roseanne,” “Cybill” and “Grace Under Fire.” The company has three sitcoms currently on the air: “3rd Rock From the Sun” on NBC, “That ‘70s Show” on Fox and “Cosby” on CBS.

Sources say the Carsey-Werner partners are forming a new company to team up with Laybourne. The channel would be the first foray into cable for Carsey-Werner and Oxygen Media.

Sources say at least one powerful cable operator, Tele-Communications Inc., is on board. But cable executives warned that the channel is in the formulation stages and could change direction or be put on the back burner depending on the industry’s response. The best case, they say, is for a launch 15 to 18 months from now.

Launching any new channel is a longshot today because of a shortage of space on cable systems and a consolidation in entertainment that has left a handful of conglomerates with most of the leverage.

Cable executives say one of Laybourne’s selling points is her intention to create new services for women that capitalize on the convergence of computers and television. Operators say the proposed channel, called Oxygen, will practice what Laybourne calls “telefusion” by having companion sites on the Internet that will help drive traffic to the channel and vice versa.

MSNBC, the 24-hour news channel jointly owned by NBC and Microsoft, is based on such a strategy, while several other cable channels from E! to ESPN have started popular Web sites to tap into a medium that is siphoning viewers from TV.

With cable systems fully stocked, some cable programmers are even testing new program services first on the Internet before migrating them to cable, as AMC Networks plans to do with its newest channel, American Pop.

The cable industry is invested in Internet success more broadly because it is selling modem services that use cable wires to provide high-speed connections to the Internet. In addition, new digital cable set-top boxes will allow consumers to surf the Internet over their TV sets as they watch television.

Laybourne is one of several cable executives trying to apply their television know-how to the Internet to create value for advertisers, consumers and cable operators. Mandabach, Carsey and Werner would be the most notable network television producers to lend their programming expertise to an Internet-related venture.

Laybourne envisions using audiences gathering on the Internet as a springboard into the television and publishing businesses. As a starting point, Oxygen Media bought three online sites for women last month from America Online. The cable channel and the online sites would be cross-promoted and complementary.

Though it is unclear how much money either partner is putting into the new channel, cable operators say Laybourne is promising to plow $75 million the first year into original productions and to eventually air reruns of Carsey-Werner sitcoms during prime time.

For Carsey-Werner, a move into cable is part of an expansion in the works for several years. The company has been seeking to reduce its reliance on the network television business in part because of wrenching changes since 1995, when federal rules gave networks increasing powers to own and produce the shows on their air.

Time slots for independent producers like Carsey-Werner have dwindled as networks have favored their own programs; networks have also demanded ownership stakes in programs.

Two years ago, Carsey-Werner entertained a $1-billion acquisition offer from Disney under which the three principals would have run the ABC network. That proposal, one of several by studios and networks over the years to tap the company’s talents, ran aground because of a reluctance by the principals to become employees after years of ownership.

More recently, sources say, the company considered pairing up with Paxson Communications, which at the time was looking for a Hollywood partner to program its group of television stations.

Some cable operators are dubious about the ability of any independent to launch a free-standing cable channel. Operators say entrenched programmers such as Disney, Time Warner and Viacom, with must-have channels such as ESPN, CNN and Nickelodeon, have the edge in forcing operators to carry new ones.

While most new channels these days pay for carriage, Laybourne is trying to avoid that expense by promising the industry exclusivity. Under law, only those channels not owned by operators can be offered solely to cable customers and not to rival satellite services.

Some operators are also worried about Laybourne’s abilities to produce top-quality programming with a budget of $75 million a year. While Laybourne had a knack for stretching limited resources to build Nickelodeon in the ‘80s, cable channels are investing more aggressively today.

TBS recently agreed to pay $1 million an episode for “Seinfeld” reruns starting in 2002, surpassing the previous record of $600,000 an episode that Lifetime paid for “Ellen.”

Even so, several operators say they are eager for a new channel for women. Falcon Communications, a cable operator based in Los Angeles, says its research with customers shows that women, minorities and seniors are the most unhappy with cable offerings.

In search of new services, one cable operator said he recently entertained a pitch from celebrities Gail Zappa and Roseanne Barr, who are shopping the idea of a racy channel for women that would talk frankly about issues such as sexual techniques. Zappa is the widow of famed musician Frank Zappa.

The cable operator dismissed the channel as too bizarre.

That may well be, but McEnroe said many male programming executives have difficulty grasping the panoply of programming that interests women.

“Many of them still think of Romance Classics as soft porn,” she said.

“They can’t get their arms around the concept of romance.”