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They’re ‘Desperate’ but attractive to men

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Times Staff Writer

Those “Desperate Housewives” sure have a lot to hide, but here’s one dirty little secret that has caught the television industry by surprise: Nearly 40% of the show’s viewers are men. The gender that supposedly has been fleeing broadcast programming to play video games, surf the Internet, download music or watch sports on cable is tuning in to the Sunday night misadventures of Susan, Bree, Lynette and Gabrielle on ABC.

Of the show’s 22 million viewers, 8.2 million are men, making “Desperate Housewives” the No. 3 show this season among men ages 18-34 and 18-49. Only “Monday Night Football” and two other shows -- “CSI” for the older group, “The Simpsons” for the younger -- are proving stronger draws for a gender that advertisers and competing network executives predicted would ignore a prime-time soap with four female leading characters.

“How can it come as a surprise given what’s on that show?” said Stuart Fischoff, a media psychologist at Cal State L.A. “It’s a babe show. A bunch of attractive women in various stages of desperation and looking for love in all the right and wrong places. This is a show for men of all seasons.”

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Mike Benson, ABC’s senior vice president of marketing for prime time entertainment, designed a promotional onslaught of TV commercials, billboards and print ads to attract women while subtly beckoning the men in their lives, too.

“There are a lot of men who can relate to thinking that their wife is desperate,” Benson said. “I have to be careful how I say that because I’m married. But my wife also jokes now, ‘I’m just a desperate housewife.’ ”

The idea, Benson hoped, was that women would bond with the cast the way they did with Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha of “Sex and the City,” while men would be titillated by Nicollette Sheridan in short shorts or Eva Longoria standing on her balcony in a dainty bra and panties -- and stay around to find out why Mark Moses’ character was digging a hole in his pool in the middle of the night.

For Chris Martz, who circulates his “Desperate” videotapes to male friends to try to get them hooked with him, all it took was the sight of Sheridan, as predatory divorcee Edie Britt, trying to lure a man she’s competing for by pouring water over herself as she washes her car. “The humor is just amazing,” said the 33-year-old Indianapolis magazine editor. “This show is far from a soap opera, which is what I tell my friends. Quite frankly, this is a typical American neighborhood. I am president of my homeowners association and I can see this exact show happening in our neighborhood.”

Creator Marc Cherry, who has said he drew on aspects of his mother and some female friends to fashion the inhabitants of Wisteria Lane, said it’s the pacing of his show that makes it more male-friendly than daytime soaps, which revolve around conversations.

“It’s more of a soap opera oriented toward the way a guy is thinking,” Cherry said.

Cherry’s housewives don’t just sit around talking, they get into all kinds of action-packed trouble. While arguing ill-advisedly with her ex-husband wearing only a towel, Susan (Teri Hatcher) ends up naked on the street, locked out of her house. Gabrielle Solis (Longoria), who is having an affair with the teenage gardener, is caught kissing him by a neighborhood girl and tries to buy her silence with a shiny new bicycle. Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) teaches her rowdy young sons a lesson by driving off without them for a moment, only to return and find them missing. Perfectionist Bree Van De Kamp (Marcia Cross) doesn’t want her friends to know she is in marital counseling, but when her husband reveals it at a dinner party, she takes things one step further by telling the group a humiliating sexual detail about him.

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But even Cherry wasn’t prepared for such a robust male response. “I’m thrilled that men love the show, but I’m also surprised. Maybe I just bought into what the advertisers were saying back in May, that men wouldn’t be interested in this show.”

“It’s harder to reach men for broadcast entertainment programming,” said Stacey Lynn Koerner, an executive vice president of ad-buying firm Initiative Media. “The young male demographic had moved away because it had become somewhat stale. They grew up with television and understand the formulas and format. That’s one of the reasons they gravitate to reality, because it’s unscripted and unknown. But for the first time in a long time, we are seeing scripted programming in ‘Desperate Housewives’ and ‘Lost’ that is not predictable and that is intriguing.”

Although young women flock to shows such as “The O.C.” on Fox and “One Tree Hill” on the WB, young men have stuck to “The Simpsons,” Adult Swim programming on the Cartoon Network, extreme sports and reality shows, said Brad Adgate, research director for the advertiser buying firm Horizon Media.

“Here’s a show with very attractive women in a dark comedy and maybe that’s a program type that attracts young men,” Adgate said. “Conventional wisdom sometimes doesn’t work. Young men are certainly proving with this show that they will stop playing video games and reading Maxim and surfing the Net and downloading music if there’s something worthwhile on television. It proves that television is still a powerful medium.”

And so is advertising. Jeff Norton, the 30-year-old founder of Lean Forward Media, a children’s entertainment and educational production company, said he tuned in for the show’s premiere because it was impossible to escape ABC’s billboards this summer. There was “beautiful Teri Hatcher and the woman who plays Gabrielle who is absolutely gorgeous” enticing him to take a chance.

“To be honest, this show brought me back to watching TV,” Norton said. “It’s really refreshing to see something that is invested in good writing and acting. I call this show ‘Sex and the Suburbs.’ Felicity Huffman is amazing. You don’t see performances like that on television very often.”

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But some male fans prefer to stay in the closet. Joey Aucion, a 26-year-old screenwriter who lives in West Los Angeles, watches the show every week with his roommate. But don’t ask his roommate about it -- he’ll never admit he’s watching a “girl show,” Aucion said.

“He’s very sensitive about it when you talk about it but he’s the first on the couch to watch it,” Aucion continued. “Guys are aware that they’re not the audience intended for the show. But that tongue-in-cheek sensibility that it has makes us want to watch it. It kind of winks at the audience and lets you know that there are cracks in this perfect world.”

Steve McPherson, president of prime time entertainment at ABC, has some experience with closet male fans as well.

“A lot of times what test audiences tell you is very different from what they actually do at home,” McPherson said. “But I think that people have to give men more credit in general. Men won’t watch a show just because some hot chick is on it. They’re attracted to great entertainment and story lines too. If you ask a guy on the street if he’s watching this show, he’ll say no. But when he’s at home and his wife or girlfriend is watching it, he’s right there watching it too.”

As Fischoff, the media psychologist, put it, “Men don’t only think with their genitals. They also have gray matter, and the reason they don’t drop off is because the story lines have remained clever and engaging.”

OK, but what about the eye candy? Surely some men have noticed that the housewives are as beautiful as they are desperate? Oh yeah, said Aucion, whose 67-year-old father is as addicted to the show as he is.

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“He likes that girl,” Aucion said and laughed. That girl is Longoria, the 29-year-old Texas native who is the least familiar face among the cast. “That’s basically all we talk about. That girl is ridiculously attractive. We all went and looked up who she is.”

Longoria, who is in high demand and made cross-country appearances on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” last week, said she’s overwhelmed by her “hot” label and tries not to dwell on that kind of attention.

“It’s not just me, there’s four other gorgeous women on the show,” Longoria said. “When it comes to being the hot one and all this hype, it’s grounding to have my family and friends around me. I’m just thankful that people are watching because I hired a trainer since I was going to be wearing so much lingerie. He’s very happy his work paid off.”

In case there are any doubts, listen to Martz. “At the end of ‘Desperate Housewives,’ I’m mad,” he said. “I want more! I need more!”

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