Spoiling the Myth of Women as Niche

Several months ago, I observed that when it comes to their television viewing habits, men are idiots. What I neglected to mention, perhaps out of an instinct or self-preservation, was that subjected to similar analysis, women are crazy.

It’s women, after all, who overwhelmingly comprise the daytime television audience, and let’s face it, you have to be a little nuts to religiously tune in an entire programming genre--the soap opera--that you can stop watching for six months and rejoin without missing any substantive story advancement.

That said, soaps may be daytime’s least annoying format, compared to the emotional manipulation passed off on talk shows and what the industry likes to call “relationship” shows, such as “Change of Heart” and “Forgive or Forget,” which take hapless real people and do all they can to embarrass them under the guise of improving relationships and entertainment.

While men undoubtedly have a fidelity problem regarding their approach to TV viewing (and maybe a few other pastimes), you seldom hear a man say he must rush home for his daily dose of “Change Your Life TV” on “Oprah,” lament the cancellation of “Another World” or discuss an article he read titled “Sneaky Ways You Can Break Down All His Love Barriers” or “Sex Tricks He’s Never Seen Before”--actual cover lines from the current issue of Cosmopolitan.

Nor does it speak especially well for females that they represent the core audience for so many mediocre prime-time series. The benevolence of women (particularly those in the key age 18 to 49 demographic) has allowed series like “Suddenly Susan” and “Beverly Hills, 90210” to continue occupying valuable network shelf space, and turned sappier fare like “Touched by an Angel” and “Providence” into bona fide hits.

Undaunted by this apparent irrationality, cable television has of late discovered a new appreciation for women, with two channels under construction that promise to specifically cater to them. Gaining the most attention has been Oxygen, a venture overseen by Nickelodeon matriarch Geraldine Laybourne, teaming with high-powered partners like Oprah Winfrey and “Roseanne” producer the Carsey-Werner Co. The other is a Time Warner network that will draw upon the media giant’s publishing franchises, such as Vogue and Gourmet, and both have stated plans to make their debuts early next year.

On a cursory level this makes sense, given the seemingly unlimited assortment of channels in our future. After all, we already have several incarnations of ESPN, a couple of Fox Sports West outlets and the Golf Channel, so why should the Lifetime network be granted a monopoly on courting feminine eyeballs?

Yet to say, as Laybourne did not long ago, that women are somehow “underserved” by cable--or for that matter any form of television--is patent nonsense, a sales pitch dressed up as community service. This recent fuss about women, in fact, is really just a marketing hook, another case of business ventures trying to confuse their own desire for consumers with a hunger for their product.

In the first place, women remain the mainstays of network television. Many prime-time shows are geared to women, precisely because men have proven so consistently elusive. Females easily outnumber males in viewing the vast majority of popular series; the Fox Sunday lineup, anchored by “The X-Files” and “The Simpsons,” is among the few exceptions.

Moreover, the male-oriented channels cited speak to specific interests, not gender, and there are already plenty of cable networks similarly tailored to segments of the women’s market. The list includes the Food Network, Home & Garden Television, E! Entertainment Television, Romance Classics and even its parent network, American Movie Classics. E! also has launched another new channel, style., which features shows with titles such as “Model” and “Shabby Chic,” devoted to that subject.

One can easily argue that more competition and choice is never a bad thing for consumers, compelling a network like Lifetime to forge stronger links with women to maintain their loyalty. What seems misguided, however, is rolling out multiple channels broadly targeting “women” in an age where people are more defined by interests and associations than the restroom line they stand in at a concert.

Even Lifetime, whose marketing slogan is “Television for women,” has struggled to establish a true programming identity. Carole Black, who replaced Doug McCormick (a man!) as the channel’s president in March, acknowledged that women--accounting as they do for more than half the population--have “many wants, needs, desires and interests,” as well as numerous viewing options.

“Women are evolving all the time,” she said. “You can’t stay stagnant. You can’t say, ‘This is the formula, now we’ll never change.’ ”

Self, the women’s magazine, came to a similar conclusion in a study that director of marketing and strategic planning Cynthia Walsh presented to a research group in Los Angeles last week. Surveying more than 1,700 women age 18 to 49 who earn at least $30,000 annually, the magazine charted changes in self-image since the 1950s notion of TV moms like June Cleaver. Nearly four in five of the women polled said they rely on themselves, for example, and consider themselves more adept than their mothers were in this regard.

Given how women differ by generation, economics and race, trying to shoehorn their TV viewing under such a broad umbrella seems pointless beyond a few sweeping observations. Research tells us women generally like “stories,” relationships and emotion more than men, who prefer action and comedy. This need to emphasize storytelling has grown clearly evident in modern TV news, which has veered away from hard reporting or global perspective to focus on more personal stories, content to be interesting if not terribly edifying.

Of course, some people will doubtless object to any of the gender stereotyping inherent in this discussion, but consider the following: Next week NBC introduces “Passions,” a daytime drama that promises in the press notes to offer “romance, love, jealousy, secrets, surprises, tension, suspense, intrigue, treachery, comedy, families, marriages, sibling rivalry, life, death, crime and evil of both the supernatural and the very natural kind.”

If that description makes you curious enough to consider taking a look--as opposed to, say, watching a baseball game--well, you know who you are.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.

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