Women over 30 rule TV Drama
If you want to create a successful drama series, make sure you have women over the age of 30 in your sights, says one Exec.
- Published by David Knox
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If you’re a female over the age of 30 you are in the target audience for Australian television drama.
TEN Drama Exec Rick Maier recently told the Open Channel Conference that women over the age of 30 were the target audience for broadly popular series Drama.
“Australian Drama is predicated on 30+ females. If you want volume, that’s your primary audience. It’s not to say men don’t want Drama, it’s not to say younger men don’t watch Drama, but 30+ females are the bedrock,” he said.
“You can get Packed to the Rafters doing the kind of numbers it does, and Winners and Losers. You need to understand who’s watching what, and where they expect to see it.”
Offspring has been very successful for TEN, with the turmoil of Nina Proudman hitting the right demographics for TEN. When a drama attract male eyeballs they become TV gold –Howzat, which rated around 2.2m for Nine, is a testament to this argument.
Right now Puberty Blues is the most successful show on TEN, and Maier’s own Drama department is attracting praise while other genres struggle. Last week the show averaged 728,000 viewers, which would be considered under-performing on another network. Current downward turns aside, Nine and Seven enjoy bigger ‘footprints’ with the TV audience.
“Puberty Blues at the moment is a very successful show for us on TEN, but we have virtually no-one over 55 watching. If the show was on Seven with its audience base from the shows that precede, it would be doing much greater volume. The demography would be different,” Maier said.
“Conversely Offspring is a fantastic show for us in terms of demography. It’s a Channel TEN show and it belongs there.
“Homeland we play at Sunday night at 8:30 is borderline cable but we get a great response because people perceive it to be correctly placed on TEN.
“Howzat for example did brilliant business on Nine because that’s where you expected it to be, and that’s why it did the box office.”
TEN will soon launch its anticipated telemovie Underground: The Julian Assange Story, which is expected to appeal to males as well as females. The show has enjoyed a swift turnaround of just 12 months from Pitch to Broadcast.
This week Underground screens at the Toronto Film Festival.
23 Responses
I take that back on further investigation it was initially released in 1977 and was a late sleeper hit in 1982(how pathetically trivial but non the less fooled me)
First little timeline glitch I have picked up with the Puberty Blues series thus far,Charlene’s “I have never been to me” was released in 1982
I don’t think there’s any reliable formula for success but whatever Maier’s doing is obviously working very well.
My guess was based on the musical theatre aspect (yes, very cliche) , thanks for clarification.
Demos are exactly where it is at, how do you think I Will Survive has survived? My guess (and that is all it is) is it is doing well within the gay market, the pink dollar is highly sought after, very high disposable incomes.
IWS isn’t working in any demos and I dare say that includes gay men. Having seen too many listen to the sound of their own voices in bars, there are plenty of gay men who couldn’t think of anything worse than watching them on their TV. It has survived because TEN has nothing else and too much money spent on this. OzTAM also doesn’t detail sexuality of viewers.
@secret squirel ahhh thankyou very much, I’m kind of new around here, that makes so much more sense
@Emily – networks don’t target total people per se, that’s just headline fodder for the masses. It *is* all about the demos. The whys and wherefores of ratings have just been discussed to death in this thread: tvtonight.com.au/2012/09/oztam-to-lift-number-of-ratings-households-track-online-viewing.html
Re targeting women: women make the majority of purchase decisions, either on their own or jointly with their partners. If you’ve ever watched any male-skewing programs/sport, you may have noticed that the ads are usually different – no Coles/Woolies, no house-cleaning products, no makeup, etc, etc.
Actually additional comment, didn’t the nieslien wire report say that the ratio of woman to men watching TV was something like 53:47 (and the difference is decreasing) so why would just woman be targeted?
I continue to be preplexed by why networks target total people rather than certain demographics, Surely advertisers would pay a premium for a certain demographic (say 18-34) which watch far less TV that someone over 55, and thus are harder to reach. So why would advertisers pay for total people? If anyone is more knowledgable and can explain this to me it would be greatly appriciated
@snoopy888…you mean her characterisation? Candace Bushnell was the creator of SATC.
What Australia needs is a real life Sex and the City.These Winners and Losers are a joke to Sarah Jessica Parker’s creation.
Channel 10 did well pairing Homeland with New Girl early in the ratings season and built a good audience for them.
Channel 7 or 9 would not want to risk running Homeland at 8:30pm but would probably have put it on at 9:45pm, where it may not have got a large enough audience for them and then been bumped to Thursday or a late night slot.
Remember 7 and 9 screened The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and the Wire at around midnight. And that was before HDRs which encourage people to tape everything on after 9:30pm.
As a man over 30, I generally struggle to find drama that attracts me on the FTA networks and I turned to Foxtel some time ago, so i’m not surprised to hear this. I’m enjoying Puberty Blues, looking forward to series 2 of Homeland, loved Bikie Wars, Howzat and still enjoy Underbelly, but that’s about it for me and FTA drama. Foxtel is full of shows with fresh ideas such as the Walking Dead, Boss and The Newsroom. They all have a harder edge than what you get on FTA and a sense of honesty about them. It’s also great to see drama not based around law and order or medicine for a change and even better they start and finish as scheduled!
I’m not sure what the answer is for Ten, but can I suggest they watch the opening scene of The Newsroom and if they can replicate that intensity and honesty in a production of their own, they’ll pick up both women and men over 30.
… but then we get Toni Collette’s state premier in Rake, and then you might think we have gone too far in that direction… 🙂
I think the pendulum is definitely swinging towards strong female characters in almost any program. Check out any British or US police dramas, for instance, and there’s nearly always a strong female presence. Often they’re the main character/s. Same in Australia – City Homicide and Rush – both had female bosses.
Good to see.
Don’t watch Offspring (wish I’d started) but Puberty Blues is terrific. Bikie Wars was pretty good also. I think 10 seem to be good at drama that I like to watch, so keep it coming next year.
I’m an over 30 male and still in 10’s demographic.
I just don’t get Channel Ten.
On the one hand they are trying to produce quality shows that fit with their “self-perceived” quality network. But, on the other hand, they produce the Shire & Lara Bingle. Not to mention having Dave Hughes front a news/current affairs type program.
I actually don’t think Puberty Blues would pick up over 55’s if it shifted channels albeit I respect the knowledge someone like Maier has. I don’t think it appeals to this demographic. I’m not sure Underground will get the ratings it deserves but I certainly hope so. And I believe more males will watch this than females.
“Homeland we play at Sunday night at 8:30 is borderline cable but we get a great response because people perceive it to be correctly placed on TEN.
Here we go ….exec speak. Homeland would do well anywhere as it is a compelling drama, just need to attract the initial audience.
The Shire is correctly placed on TEN
How would Rick Maier explain the success of another recent drama – Bikie Wars – which rated more than OS and PB? I am in the 30+ demo and consider myself smart and educated and I loved BW far more than OS and PB. And so did all the women I spoke to. What I loved was that it was working class, unlike OS and PB which are both very middleclass and smug. Stop being so stuck up and get yourself a smart, true blue Aussie drama and your numbers will go through the roof.
Lizzie: Bikie Wars skewed more to males than Offspring. I don’t see anything stuck up in the points, which is why I thought they were worth sharing. TEN already has smart, true blue Aussie dramas such as Offspring and Puberty Blues, the whole point of the article demonstrates that on another network they would probably rate higher. But then, we could also discuss why these are not really “Seven” shows, but that’s another debate….
It’s the same with TV ads – So many ads have a smart wife and a dull husband. Women generally do the majority shopping therefore ads get targetted at them. Now we’re finding out women rule the remote as well? Seems women are taking over…