PASADENA, Calif. -- The fact that television is interested in attracting a female audience should come as no surprise. Not if you hear some of the statistics that are bandied about.
"They make 70 percent of all retail purchases in this country," said Pat Mitchell, president of CNN Productions and Time Inc. Television. "They pay 95 percent of all household bills, including -- not so coincidentally -- the cable bill. Yet in a 130-channel cable universe, there has been only one network that designed itself specifically for women. So doesn't it make sense, from a whole lot of perspectives, to offer women a few more choices?"And, indeed, Lifetime will no longer have the field to itself. Come 2000, Geraldine Laybourn (the former chief of Nickelodeon and Disney's cable networks) -- in partnership with Oprah Winfrey and sitcom producers Carsey-Werner -- will launch the Oxygen Channel. And Time-Warner owned Turner is planning a women's channel of its own.
The new Turner channel will be closely tied to CNN and magazines published under the Time and Conde Nast umbrellas.
"This is very significant brand power," Mitchell said. "This is vast editorial resources and they immediately distinguish us and differentiate us from any other women's network on the air or those being proposed. This network will have access to the news and the information-gathering forces of CNN, Time Inc., which has a thriving and growing segment of the women's population reading its magazines -- some 18 titles targeted at women readers, some 40 million women currently reading Time Inc. magazines. And you add to that the Conde Nast titles and we start with an unparalleled source of content, expertise, experience.
"With such resources, then, we can promise our women viewers that we will not be offering movies or reruns or sitcoms, but reliable and relevant information -- information that addresses the needs of the lives of all today's active and smart and time-challenged women."
She wasn't long on specifics, but, apparently, we can expect to see plenty of informational magazine shows.
"It will cover the subjects and features that readers go to the magazines for and have come to rely upon them for," Mitchell said. "It's a wide-ranging landscape of a woman's life, from fitness to finance, from Kosovo to the best beauty buys. This network recognizes that women want to be empowered, to be encouraged. That's what they go to their favorite magazines for and, hopefully, that's what they'll come to this network for."
The one thing we do know for sure is that the new channel will have a rather simple title. The choice may not seem particularly innovative, but there's some sound reasoning behind it.
"We knew we had the right concept, but frankly, we had a hard time finding the right name. We were using these criteria -- we wanted it to be simple and clear, incisive to reflect the tradition of Turner networks," Mitchell said.
And, as she rightly pointed out, most of Ted Turner's networks are called exactly what they are -- Cable News Network, Headline News, the Cartoon Network, Turner Network Television (TNT) and so on.
"So we wanted something broad enough to communicate the spectrum of the programming but that would also cut through the clutter of all the new names for all the new channels, and here it is -- The Women's Network. It certainly leaves no doubt who the network is for and certainly communicates what kind of programming is offered on this network."
The Women's Network is set to launch this coming spring.
BOOMERANG: Turner is also launching a second cartoon network next year, and this one doesn't have quite such a simple name. Although Boomerang does make some sense if you think about it for a minute -- it's aimed at baby boomers.
The channel is designed to complement the Cartoon Network, aiming at adults 30-plus as well as their young children.
"It's going to be a 24-hour basic-cable network," said Betty Cohen, president of the Cartoon Network. "And the programming on Boomerang is going to be 90 percent unduplicated of that from the regular Cartoon Network."
Most of the programming will come from the Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera libraries, and will include "Yogi Bear," "Huckleberry Hound," "The Jetsons," "Quick Draw McGraw," "The Smurfs," "Top Cat," "Jonny Quest," "Scooby Doo, "Tom & Jerry" and "The Flintstones."
Boomerang has scheduled an entirely appropriate launch date: April 1, 2000 -- April Fool's Day.