REDESIGNING WOMEN

Television after the Network Era

Amanda D. Lotz

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780252091766
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

In the 1990s, American televison audiences witnessed an unprecedented rise in programming devoted explicitly to women. Cable networks such as Oxygen Media, Women's Entertainment Network, and Lifetime targeted a female audience, and prime-time dramatic series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Judging Amy, Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, and Ally McBeal empowered heroines, single career women, and professionals struggling with family commitments and occupational demands. After establishing this phenomenon's significance, Amanda D. Lotz explores the audience profile, the types of narrative and characters that recur, and changes to the industry landscape in the wake of media consolidation and a profusion of channels.Employing a cultural studies framework, Lotz examines whether the multiplicity of female-centric networks and narratives renders certain gender stereotypes uninhabitable, and how new dramatic portrayals of women have redefined narrative conventions. Redesigning Women also reveals how these changes led to narrowcasting, or the targeting of a niche segment of the overall audience, and the ways in which the new, sophisticated portrayals of women inspire sympathetic identification while also commodifying viewers into a marketable demographic for advertisers.

1. Women’s Brands and Brands of Women: Segmenting Audiences and Network Identities

Lifetime saw an underserved audience and served it. Now everyone wants a piece of the pie.

—Kathy Haesele, Advanswers

The development of more than sixteen female-centered dramatic series and at least three cable networks specifically targeting segments of the female audience did not transpire in the dark hours of the morning some time in the late 1990s. There was no revolution or “aha!” moment after which television programs and programming strategies were forever changed. As the introduction indicates, complex interconnections among a variety of institutional factors and adjustments developed over a period of ten to twenty years, and modifications continue with no indication of how a new merger or deregulatory decision may expand competition or signal the establishment of a new era, or what the consequences of these developments might be.

When I began this work in the late 1990s, the multiplicity of female-centered dramas appeared to be the most significant phenomenon relating to television and gender. However, the more long-lasting development may result from the growth in niche cable outlets targeting women. It is not coincidental that female-centered dramas and cable networks targeting women multiplied at the same time; both can be traced to fundamental institutional adjustments that make programming hailing specific audience niches particularly valuable. The phenomena are also connected, as Lifetime’s first original dramatic series success with Any Day Now was undoubtedly noted by the broader television executive and creative communities, who then sought ways to adjust this form for the audience reach required for broadcast success.

Women were hailed by only one network for most of the cable era, but in the final years of the twentieth century some entrepreneurial voices scrambled to compete for their attention, and multiple brands of “women’s networks” developed. A network brand, as in the brand of any good or service, refers to the identity associated with the network, often related to the type of person likely to “consume” it (or the type of person the network’s advertisers would like to consume their product).¹ Cable networks, and increasingly broadcast networks as well, establish brands to attract certain audiences to their programming; advertisers then inundate these audiences with appeals for goods and services. This system works most efficiently when programming attracts audiences with specific characteristics that networks can sell to advertisers.

For many years, the slogan “Television for Women” provided enough distinction for Lifetime, since no other network explicitly sought the female audience in this manner. Network slogans and advertising campaigns collectively addressing “women’s” lives and needs suggest a generalized construction of women as a coherent and monolithic group. The programming strategies among the “women’s” cable networks indicate a much more heterogeneous construction of female audiences. Additionally, the market acceptance and initial success of these networks, as well as the high profile afforded to marketing consultants such as Faith Popcorn, Mary Lou Quinlan, and their firms specializing in marketing to women, indicate that marketers’ and advertisers’ perceptions of the female buyer have evolved significantly.²

This chapter first describes the institutional history of Lifetime, Oxygen, and WE, as their variant histories, ownership, and competitive positions inform their programming options. The expansion of cable networks explicitly targeting women parallels the increase in dramatic stories exploring women’s lives, and the variation among multiple female-targeted networks contributes to making stereotypes and dominant stories about women’s lives uninhabitable. Proceeding from the assumption that a corresponding relationship exists among representations, stories, and networks, this chapter examines whether these three networks indeed provide a diversity of genres, images, stories, and constructions of “women” and “femininity.” The introduction of multiple women’s networks and the identities these networks establish through self-promotion and programming content indicate the primary axes by which commercial media divide women as consumer markets and what stories programmers believe resonate with women’s varied experiences. Tracing the development and brand establishment of women’s cable networks exposes the increased address of the female audience as diverse and fragmented, as well as the strategies networks use to find them.

Creating Women’s Cable Networks

Lifetime: Television for Women

The success Lifetime attained by early 2001 stands as one of the clearest indicators of the commercial value of the female niche. Lifetime is considered an industry success not only for its ability to reach female audiences but also because it regularly ranks among top cable networks in audience size. Lifetime’s success offers a twofold lesson. Most obviously, it plays a crucial role in understanding changes in institutional perceptions about female audiences and how and why dramatic programs with central female characters began expanding at such a tremendous rate in the late 1990s. Lifetime also illustrates the viability of narrowcasting and similar programming strategies during the multichannel transition.

Lifetime grew out of the merger of two cable networks: Daytime, a joint venture of Hearst and ABC, and the Viacom-owned Cable Health Network. Both were originally launched in 1982. The networks combined as a result of Daytime’s difficulty gaining carriage on cable services and the sense that the networks were competing for the same narrow and specialized audience.³ Lifetime retained much programming from the original networks, with a heavy reliance on advertiser-created series and specials, many of which featured pharmaceuticals and other health-industry products such as hormone supplements and diet aids.⁴ In seeking to establish a Lifetime brand, CEO Thomas Burchill initiated a threefold programming strategy that included acquiring female-identified broadcast-network shows (such as Cagney and Lacey and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd), creating original series, and producing made-for-Lifetime movies, the last of which proved the most successful (see table 4).⁵

Under Burchill’s management, the network initiated programming apparently designed to appeal to upscale heterosexual couples, although it did not openly market its intention to attract both women and men.⁶ The network began its signature “Television for Women” branding campaign in 1995, the year it readjusted its focus to begin what Eileen Meehan and Jackie Byars term the network’s “established” period.⁷ The explicit brand identification and Lifetime’s status as the only channel serving women helped it weather complex takeovers and competitive struggles that reorganized the media industry in 1996.

Lifetime’s next significant development resulted from its launch of three original narrative series in the fall of 1998.⁸ The steady audience gains throughout the cable industry during the 1990s led several of the stronger cable networks to compete more directly with broadcasters by creating original series similar to those on broadcast television.⁹ Although cable series tend to adhere to the narrative structures common to broadcast programming, they often expand status-quo perceptions of what audiences will watch, allowing their programming a distinctive “edge.” Cable’s less stringent content regulations and the smaller audience size required to be considered successful enabled many of their programming risks.

Table 4. Significant Events in Lifetime Television Network’s Development

March 1982: Hearst and ABC launch Daytime.

June 1982: Viacom launches the Cable Health Channel.

February 1984: Daytime and Cable Health Channel merge to form Lifetime.

April 1984: Thomas Burchill named network president and CEO.

1988: Lifetime secures second-run license for Cagney and Lacey.

January 1989: Lifetime begins airing new, made-for-Lifetime episodes of The Days and Nights of

Molly Dodd.

July 1990: Lifetime debuts its first original film.

February 1993: Douglas McCormick promoted from executive vice president of sales to network president.

April 1994: Viacom sells its share of Lifetime to Hearst and Cap Cities/ABC (now the Walt Disney Company), its other partners in the joint venture that owns the network.

February 1995: Lifetime announces itself as Television for Women. Lifetime executives describe the network as focusing on “strong stories, strong emotions, and solid entertainment.”

1995: Lifetime film Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story earns a 7.9 rating.

April 1996: Lifetime Television launches Lifetime Online.

July 1998: Lifetime launches its first sister channel, the Lifetime Movie Network, a twenty-four-hour movie service.

February 1999: Carole Black named president and CEO, Lifetime Entertainment Services.

August 2001: Lifetime launches Lifetime Real Women.

January 2001–March 2003: Lifetime ranks as the most watched cable network in primetime.

Producing original series is usually substantially more costly for cable networks than purchasing the license for off-network syndicated series that fill most cable schedules. A quality one-hour dramatic series typically cost a minimum of one million dollars per episode in the late 1990s, while cable networks spent $100,000 to $250,000 per episode for independently produced, low-budget prime-time shows, and often even less for off-network series bought in syndication.¹⁰ Yet despite the costs, cable networks identify the production of original series as an important step toward competing with broadcasters, as well as an essential practice in establishing their network brand. Lifetime spent nearly eight million dollars developing four pilots, three of which aired during the 1998–99 season.¹¹ The investment paid off when the two-hour time slot in which the network scheduled the three series increased the number of eighteen-to-forty-nine-year-old women viewers by nearly two hundred thousand per week (46 percent).¹²

Despite positive critical reception and some audience gains by the original series, made-for-Lifetime movies remain the network’s strongest ratings performer. As other scholars have argued, many of these films feature women as victims or provide them with an extraordinary challenge in the first act that they struggle to overcome.¹³ The success and brand identification of these films led the network to create a second network, the Lifetime Movie Network (LMN), in September 1998. Programming for LMN consists of movies, miniseries, and theatrical films from the Lifetime library, as well as some purchased from second-run distributors. Although early market surveys reported a ready audience for the network, with 93 percent of women who watched Lifetime aware of its films, the network had a slow start.¹⁴ Stymied mainly by lack of distribution, a year after its launch LMN reached only five million households.¹⁵ LMN increased its reach to twenty-two million by 2002, an increase largely due to “retransmission leverage exercised by parent partner Hearst.”¹⁶ By April 2004, the network reached forty-seven million homes.¹⁷

The creation of LMN indicates Lifetime’s first attempt to leverage its brand and suggests the network’s awareness of the need to address the heterogeneity of the female audience. As Lifetime reached its “established” period, it became evident that one network could never serve all women, particularly as competitors emerged to challenge its uncontested status as the network for women. Lifetime’s films consistently achieved its highest ratings but were unappealing to some female audiences. The creation of LMN allowed Lifetime to devote less of its daily schedule to replaying older films, while not forfeiting the value of what had developed into an expansive film archive. The main network could then counter-program itself, making space on the Lifetime schedule for content more likely to appeal to women uninterested in the network’s films.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century Lifetime entered another transitional phase. Despite six relatively successful years, it did not renew the contract of CEO Douglas McCormick, who had held the position since 1993, and named Carole Black the new Lifetime CEO in March 1999.¹⁸ Lifetime thus employed its first female CEO, recruiting Black from KNBC in Los Angeles, where as general manager she was credited with bringing more women viewers to its newscasts.¹⁹ Upon her arrival, she noted that the lack of a strong competitor had made the network complacent.²⁰ Although Lifetime had nearly universal cable penetration, research in 1999 indicated that “41 percent of female cable subscribers don’t know anything about it.”²¹ Black consequently increased the marketing budget from eight million to forty million dollars, allowing the network to expand its advertising campaign that had been focused on the twenty markets with the highest female cable view-ership to a national level.²² In addition to the extensive network promotional campaign, Black expanded the programming budget to $236 million, a 20 percent increase over 1998.²³ Less than two years later, Lifetime moved from the number-six to number-one cable network in prime-time viewership.

Black inherited a solid network and expanded its gains. Lifetime earned the sixteenth highest revenue among all U.S. television networks in 2003, with $820 million (eighth among ad-supported cable networks).²⁴ Lifetime also possesses a large potential audience base, reaching 87.5 million cable and satellite homes, making the network nearly universally available to cable or satellite subscribers.²⁵ In 2002, Nielsen Media Research ranked Lifetime the second-most-watched cable network, with an average of 992,000 viewers per day (behind Nickelodeon), and more significantly, Lifetime drew an average of 1.58 million viewers in prime time, which earned it the distinction of the most-watched cable network in 2001 and 2002. Despite its viability, Black faced pressure to continue its growth and to prevent new competitors from eroding its grip on the female cable audience. The hype and potential of Oxygen Media led many to wonder whether the upscale female audience Lifetime targets could be split profitably and what assets would prove the most beneficial in the competition. Rebranding by the generally targeted cable networks TNT, TBS, and USA to a more specific identity aided them in reestablishing their top cable ranking in 2003 through 2005...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Female-Centered Dramas after the Network Era
• 1. Women’s Brands and Brands of Women: Segmenting Audiences and Network Identities
• 2. Fighting for Families and Femininity: The Hybrid Narratives of the Action Drama
• 3. Sex, Careers, and Mr. Right in Comedic Dramas: The “New” New Women of Ally McBeal and Sex and the City
• 4. Same Story, Different Channel? Returning Home and Starting Over in Protagonist-Centered Family Dramas
• 5. Of Female Cops and Docs: The Reformulation of Workplace Dramas and Other Trends in Mixed-Sex Ensembles
• Epilogue: The 2001–2 Season and Beyond
• Conclusion: U.S. Feminist Television Criticism in the Post-Network Era
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index