For Betty Cohen, joining Lifetime Television as its president last year was actually a homecoming. Few recall that Betty was the first on-air promotion producer for Cable Health Network when it merged with Daytime network and evolved into Lifetime. The Wisconsin native and Stanford graduate had been working at a political action ad agency, the Public Media Center, in San Francisco when the 1977 recession hit and she got the New York City bug, moving to Manhattan and capturing the CHN promotion job for which she admits she had few qualifications.
Once in television, always in television, however, and Betty went on to become one of the leading promotional executives and programmers in television, working for Nickelodeon before joining Turner Broadcasting where she headed TNT and launched both the Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. At Lifetime, she is on a mission to recapture the lead in cable network ratings, which was lost in 2004, and to make inroads on the broadcast networks.
"The challenge for Lifetime is we are in a competitive set of general entertainment networks with the broadcast networks, TNT, TBS and USA. But our target is women; we're more narrowly focused than our primary competitors and we want to outperform them in ratings," she told me over salads at the famed Michael's Restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Compounding Betty's challenge is the aging of the Lifetime audience in the past few years. "Our median age is 49 and we want our core audience to be 18 to 49," she explains. "We need to bring more younger women into the mix without alienating our core viewers." Movies, which have been the mainstay of Lifetime as ratings for its series programs have declined, tend to appeal to an older audience. Still, Betty believes made-for-Lifetime movies will continue to be an important part of the network's future.
"It's amazing how Lifetime has built such passion around our Movies of the Week. It's typically difficult to build passion around movies, but when women want a break from their work and families, they like to escape into movies and they have an amazing connection with Lifetime movies." Lifetime is continuing to produce 60 movies annually, with 12 major event productions (typically based on books and maintaining the triumph over adversity theme). Six more movies are being produced for the first time for the amazingly successful Lifetime Movie Network, which focuses on more 'pure escape' supernatural and 'sixth sense' themed movies. Lifetime recently announced a new Lifetime Original Movie starring American Idol star Fantasia, based on her autobiography. MediaVillage has learned exclusively that Lifetime Movie Network's first original production will be Past Tense, starring Paula Trickey of The O.C. and CSI. Trying to prove to her ten-year-old daughter that her nightmares about a murder aren’t real, widowed mother Kim Shay "investigates", unwittingly bringing a killer into their lives. Struggling to accept her daughter’s claims about having been the murder victim in a past life, Kim follows a trail that leads to the killer not only of the victim, but of her own husband.
"Men," Betty points out, "can escape into more traditional sports and action programming. Women want something that informs their own journey, consciously or sub-consciously, when they escape. Society has changed so much there are no more proscribed roles for women. They can do anything they want and that means freedom, but it also means responsibility. They want validation of their own choices. They don't want lessons, but they do want to relate to dilemmas, stories, and issues. Women refer to their lives as works in progress. They are looking for reassurance. When you lose yourself in a story," Betty suggests, "sometimes you find your own story."
Betty believes this explains the success of Sex and the City, which she wishes Lifetime had acquired, and Desperate Housewives, which Lifetime successfully closed an exclusive deal to air when it moves to off-network repeats this August. (Lifetime will re-run the full first season on a weekly basis, joining with the hit NBC series, Medium.) "These programs showed us the old rules have been broken and no new rules have been written. That's what excites me about developing new series programs for Lifetime right now."
In this context, one of Betty's first moves was to remove Lifetime's long-standing logo, Television for Women. "It felt limiting in a multi-channel world," she explained. "Women don't want to be told what to think; they don't want us telling them what is television for women. They want to decide for themselves and we want to be there for them." Betty has set two priorities for Lifetime programming. First, introducing a greater variety that holds the network's core audience and attracts new audiences who spend more time with the network. Second, Betty is developing series that appeal to multiple generations.
This focus is being spearheaded by two new series: Angela's Eyes starring Abigail Spencer of All My Children and Lovespring International, from the production company headed by Will & Grace's Eric McCormack. "We are also developing a new series, State of Mind, that we like a lot," Betty told MediaVillage exclusively. Similar in context to Grey's Anatomy and written by Amy Blum, the story centers on a group counseling center and its dysfunctional counselors.
Angela's Eyes, premiering in July is an hour-long drama centered on an FBI agent in her twenties who has the exceptional gift of knowing when someone is lying. Lovespring International, scheduled to premiere in June is an improvisational half-hour comedy about a matchmaking agency marketed to customers as an elite Beverly Hills company despite its location in Tarzana, California. The ensemble cast is comprised of relationship counselors and a staff psychologist who try to convince loveless people that their service can lead clients to the perfect mate. Betty envisions the opportunity to create a community website in conjunction with Lovespring that would invite user-generated content on viewers' worst dates, most dysfunctional relationships, dating site experiences, and other features. "On Valentine's Day," she mused, "we could invite viewers to send us their stories on how they met someone. We have an opportunity to have programs that are larger than life and connected to real life at the same time."
"We have a real opportunity," Betty concludes, "to take this well loved Lifetime brand that's playing in the cable network space to a whole other level. Women are born to network and we can expand our involvement with them and their involvement with each other, through our programs, through online, e-mail and participation in user-generated content. We are the leader in women's entertainment, and we need to be as relevant as possible for all women."
To contact Betty Cohen, send an e-mail to contact@mediavillage.com