Not just that, it’s why Firefly got cancelled. Execs wanted the 16-28 white male demographic, instead Firefly was more popular with women of basically all ages. Rather than trying to sell ads focused more on women, they just canned the show.
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“Lol. Girls suck.” -Network Exec
That’s a great observation, thank you.
From the one time I was in a meeting with television executives, I’m inclined to accept the possibility that by and large, they’re sexist idiots who are too stupid to actually understand they’re idiots.
However, I have this inkling there may be something subtler and nastier going on, given that this is such a persistent pattern, over decades. My guess is that it works out that encouraging parents to spend more on one gender than on both equally means that they’re more likely to purchase expensive toys – and those toys have steep mark-ups for licensing, and thus are especially profitable.
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The same thing happened to Tron Uprising. The issue is theses execs see the shows as nothing but vehicles to sell toys. Once the show strays out of the keys toy demographic it is quickly killed. They are not basing success on any of the normal indicators like market share, ratings or such. They have one number to base success on, toy sales.
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I’m not even that big a fan of the show, but cancelling a show because the “wrong” eyeballs were looking at it is just fucking evil.
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This is not exactly scientific, but I’ll relate why I didn’t go into television production. At my college, I volunteered for three years at the television production club. My final year I produced the most difficult television show - the creative show (as opposed to the show that recorded campus plays and such, which just required setting up the equipment but not writing scripts or creative decisions on lighting or more that minimal editing).
I could work a camera; wire up every single piece of equipment in the studio, edit, everything.
For our group, there were two guys who were just the prototypical nerds. They were graduate students and smart people, they could fix our cameras and were very technically oriented. But these guys could barely have a conversation with me because I was a woman. One guy had been in a relationship with a woman for years and when he would discuss that relationship it was pretty obvious she walked all over him, but he put up with him because he believed no one else would ever love him. It was shocking how bad his self esteem was - he wasn’t that bad looking - not a hottie but no worse than most guys.
Anyway, because these guys who do a lot of technical things most of us couldn’t, they really ended up running the shoots, even when someone else was in charge. They could tear apart the equipment but they couldn’t really write or run a creative meeting or motivate people to participate as actors. But ultimately, everyone was quite dependent on these people when there was a jam, so they ended up making a lot of creative decisions - and there wasn’t much we could do the push back on it because we were so beholden to them for technical work.
I worked on a couple of professional shoots as well and saw the same dynamic. I’ve seen it frequently in software development and engineering as well. I really believe that this type of personality - the men that are scared of women, who use their technical knowledge to control people because they don’t understand relationships - really control television production at all levels that that this is why so much of the content is misogynistic.
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Isn’t that part of the Adventure Time block (another show with strong female characters and a focus on relationships)? I think it is programmed differently because it is targeting a different audience. The exec in the OP is for daytime kids programming (ages 5-12), not the late night crossover crowd.
If girls are watching the “boy” shows, they aren’t watching the “girl” shows (and therefore being exposed to the girl-centric marketing). So you’re producing a show that is competing with another one of your products, so to speak.
And of course you want to market sex specific toys-- that way, you end up buying twice as much! Not only might Billi and Bobbi be more likely to buy GirlCrayons, but also Billy and Bobby would need their own BoyCrayons. Same thing with clothes-- make sure that there is no possibility of hand-me-downs between sexes.
Sort of why Disney has “the vault”. Easy way to make it so their shows don’t compete with each other and maximizes each one’s market share.
It is certainly in the same wheelhouse, with the creator being an writer. LIkewise ‘Bee and Puppycat’ on Youtube, which just had it’s successful kickstarter (presumably to avoid this kind of interference).
The problem here is that there is an inference that there is only one kind of marketable audience. The execs are complaining because they have intentionally courted a specific demographic to appeal to particularly advertisers…and when they get the wrong audience, they can’t or won’t adjust to it. They want an easily sold audience. Of course, the problem is larger…I know many girls who were very angry because they couldn’t get any action figures from Avatar of any of the female characters, who were (when made at all) the rare ‘chase’ figures, with only one per case at most. Because the assumption was that no boy would buy them and girls didn’t buy these kinds of toys, right? It’s an incestuous self-fulfilling prophecy, really.
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I’m a bit surprised. That sounds quite a bit different from the sense I got of the dynamics of the cable TV station where I worked for a few years. In particular, the executives I mentioned meeting had nothing to do with day-to-day operations, and as far as I knew were “money people”. They didn’t hold positions that the producers or technicians would ever work their way up to.
The one time I was actually in a meeting with them, it was part of a push they were making to change programming in order to attract a different demographic than our established viewers – a stupid idea, and their brilliant suggestions for achieving were even stupider, but they were incredibly overbearing, and it was obvious everyone was afraid of them.
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Huh - so you encountered this on more professional shoots as well? It seems with your college group you used who you could and these people would have some leverage. But in a pro shoot I would think the division of labor between creative and technical would be more pronounced. I can’t imagine the tech guru coming up to Joss Whedon and telling him to undo another button on Kaylee’s blouse.
Though in the case of the article, it’s the execs holding power over the creatives and I could see where that dynamic could exist.
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I guess your one of the people that try to belittle somebody who doesn’t necessarily hold the same view as your own? Perhaps I am mistaken, but I can see no other reason to respond by starting with, “Ah, you’re one of those people.”
For what it is worth, I do not necessarily have a view on the issue. I merely raise the question of whether there are real differences between the sexes when it comes to buying preferences. From the perspective of television show creators, the primary purpose of creating such content is to make money. If for whatever reason boys want and tend to get more expensive toys in relation to certain types of entertainment then it only makes sense from a marketing perspective to cater particular types of shows to boys. There are certainly many types of shows catered to girls.
Whenever anybody tries to explore why such differences might exist, the PC crowd often times shuts them down if they don’t like the scope of the examination. Larry Summers at Harvard was a perfect example. He took a devil’s advocate position and suggested perhaps we should look to see if there were genetic differences between women and men that resulted in a higher concentration of men working in science. He made clear the view was not necessarily his own, just that perhaps that should be evaluated. The next thing he is being shouted down and labeled a sexist. The concept of free speech is meaningless if you have to be on guard for your livelihood every time you say something that might often the PC crowd.
That is all I am saying. I am not saying they are correct. I am merely asking what is the evidence they are wrong? For instance, the Legend of Korra is a great show, and I was excited to recently start watching season 2. However, the fact that it is an excellent show, doesn’t necessarily translate into strong merchandise sales. Perhaps it does.
There are plenty of shows geared toward girls where the toys are quite expensive. My niece has a million toy horses and watches any show or kids movie with a horse theme. She also loves Monster High. The toys are expensive.
I did work on some professional shoots. The person who was in charge - a former owner of an ABC station - was even worse than the two grad students as far as being a misogynistic douche. I would characterize my experience as being in such an all male world that there was absolutely not even the slightest consideration of my feelings - sort of like being a woman in a man’s locker room. Please also understand that I was quite young at the time - but then, all people start out careers young. Do they get encouraged or do they get shut out? Women get shut out. If you look at the stats on genders employed in TV production you’ll understand that this is the norm.
Joss Whedon has power now, but did he when he started out? How many people want to be in his position, and how many people are willing to suck up to the execs to make that happen?
The creative people are not the people in power except in VERY rare instances. It is whoever can make the production go forward - technical people or money people.
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I don’t even get that. Growing up I watched the whole lineup that came on after school; He-Man, She-Ra, Thundercats, G.I. Joe, Robotech. I’d shut it off at Scooby-Doo because I never could stand that show.
Right? American Girl dolls? Their clothes cost more than mine do.
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This is a good example of how capitalism is destructive to culture - or at least how it reinforces cultural conservativism. Society is good and ready to start transitioning away from these outdated stereotypes. We’ve reflected on the situation and concluded that rigid arbitrary gender roles are not good for society. There’s not unanimous agreement, but there’s certainly an emerging trend.
But capitalists have a different conclusion, because they have a different priority: The marketing/retail system works most profitably with traditional gender roles, end of discussion. You cannot make an ethical or political argument against gendered toys to capitalists. It doesn’t matter how unfair it is to the kids, or the impact it will have on society.
It doesn’t matter how much sense you make, because making sense is not their business. Making money is. So they will hold society back. They will actively subvert social progress through their control of media, in order to protect their business interests.
Ever wonder why toy marketing is structured exactly how it was in the 1950’s - the dawn of modern marketing? It has never changed, and never will. As long as we have a culture that can be guided and manipulated by the rich, this is what we’re gonna get.
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And it is with supreme irony American Girl dolls are made in China.
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