Paul Dini explains why execs don't want girls watching their superhero shows

http://boingboing.net/2013/12/16/paul-dini-explains-why-execs-d.html

by a_w • 13 years ago

73 72 13 years ago

aidenn0• 13 years ago

Not to defend the execs behavior at all, but as a parent I have seen it going through the toy aisle with my daughter.

  Me:  "Why don't you get <toy with Lightning McQueen on it>?"
  Her: "It's a boy toy."
  Me:  "I thought you liked Lightning McQueen"
  Her: "I do, but that's a boy's toy"

clarebear• 13 years ago

My 3 year old girl has a lot of boy friends because she wears her brother's old McQueen shirts. But then she wants princess Sophia shwag because she gets encouraged to. I would rather she aspire to be both mechanically inclined and pretty than have to choose.

kaybe• 13 years ago

Thinking about this, I know there is plenty of pretty geekwear for women online, but I've never seen any for girls. Maybe I've never noticed? But then there's always the option of buying unicoloured stuff and the print shop.. not fixing the systematic problem though.

gigq• 13 years ago

Not all think that way at least:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CU040Hqbas

ps4fanboy5• 13 years ago

Isnt that the point though even if 10% think differently when its purely profit driven that is still not enough.

ars2• 13 years ago

That doesn't make any sense at all.

OK, by their logic they want boys to watch the show so they'll buy toys.

What do they care if girls also watch? It not like it hurts them - they just don't get the potential benefit.

This makes so little sense that I don't believe a word of this article. Either it's fake or someone edited it in a slanted way.

Untit1ed• 13 years ago

True... I'm guessing what they're getting at is that the execs want to focus on the boys at the expense of the girls - they'd rather have just 60 boys watching the show than 50 boys and 50 girls, because it's only boys who are going to be getting the toys under their Christmas tree, and 60 > 50.

bherms• 13 years ago

I think the implication is that all the time girls spend watching "boys shows" is time they're not focusing on "girls shows", therefore they're losing those marketing minutes.

pacmon• 13 years ago

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems as if they don't really mean they don't want girls to watch, so much as they don't want to target girls. I'm guessing that they think there's no way to write stories that will appeal to both sexes (which is completely stupid as many shows have appeal to both). Unfortunately, it seems like it's mostly due to the higher-ups in the networks that make these decisions (probably due to antiquated thinking).

girvo3• 13 years ago

By targeting one gender, rather than both, advertising execs can ask for more money than a "generic" multiple gender ad. It's stupid.

chime• 13 years ago

I'm going to guess they think if girls are watching it, boys aren't. Gaining 20% girls/parents might end up costing them 10% boys, which they presume might end up being a net loss for them.

He mentioned Cartoon Network specifically. On the other hand, Nick has fantastic shows for people of all ages and genders. I am a huge fan of Korra. A friend of mine started watching Avatar with her son a few years ago and told me to check it out. After Avatar ended, we continued to watch Korra and it is such a great show with strong backstories on almost all the primary characters. If I had a daughter, I'd buy her a Korra doll, video game, and craft supplies. I don't know why Cartoon Network thinks girls aren't profitable.

chaostheory4• 13 years ago

Since we're on the subject, Korra actually had a hard time to be greenlit for the same reason. Nick was scared that boys wouldn't watch the show even after the success of Avatar, the Last Air Bender. Well they still bet on the series and thankfully their fears were proven wrong.

chaostheory4• 13 years ago

I forgot to mention Adventure Time since we're talking about Cartoon Network. Since both boys and girls enjoy it, I guess that's another exception to the rule. I guess this is why no one will take Bee and Puppycat. They mentioned the same obstacles in their kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frederator/bee-and-puppy...

jmmcd• 13 years ago

Good answer above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6919928

hristov• 13 years ago

They are not very smart. I do not know much about kids shows, but it seems like japanese shows always have a girl character with some tiny screeching bouncing talking pet animal which seems specifically designed to be purchased by girls as a toy.

ivarious• 13 years ago

To be fair, magical girl shows for kids in Japan are huge franchises with theatrical movies, boatload amounts of merchandises, live action theatrical shows, video games, and even food products.

lmm• 13 years ago

In Japanese magical girl shows you get the same issue in reverse: they're very careful to make the show as girly as possible with very few male characters (often none at all), because once again advertisers want a segmented audience. E.g. after Heartcatch Pretty Cure took a more serious tone and acquired a periphery demographic the next two series were made deliberately more girly and lost the dramatic arcs.

yarou• 13 years ago

I always thought the target demographic for magical girl shows were the so-called "grass eater" or herbivore men. There's a reason why Akihabara is very popular, and I'd imagine most of the toy sales come from adult men rather than girls.

omarforgotpwd• 13 years ago

Cartoon Network probably tries to target certain demographic rates so they can have different options for advertisers. If you've got a product you're marketing to girls, or families, or ages 3 - 5, Cartoon Network could conceivably charge more to "target" your ad to the demographic you're marketing to via the right show. Otherwise this doesn't make much economic sense to me.

In any case, the show brought on looks like absolute shit.

Sniffnoy• 13 years ago

One thing that's confused me for sometime about how demographics are used in TV is that, well, "the sort of person who would watch X" seems like it would be a useful category that could be targeted. That is to say, you could optimize for "boys will watch this show, and boys will buy these things"; but what about the more straightforward "people who will watch this show will buy these things"? Instead of trying to go for this 2-step correlation sort of thing.

I can't help but think of the phenomenon of network decay -- say of the Sci-Fi network, for instance. Sure, you could notice that your science fiction channel is watched by 18-31 year old males, and try to more heavily target that group; or you could notice that it's watched by science fiction fans and target that. I would naïvely expect the latter to be a more sensible way of breaking things down in this context and thus more effective, but the former seems to be what occurred. Am I missing something?

krakensden• 13 years ago

This is also often given as the reason radio stations are so homogeneous inside of their genre- if you don't fit the mould, you can't sell advertising slots. It leads to weird and perverse outcomes, but it certainly seems like people who refuse to bend go out of business.

sokoloff• 13 years ago

There are likely a lot more advertisers with money to spend marketing products to sell to 18-31 year old males than to very specifically sci-fi fans.

I can imagine beer, clothing, cars, dating and related (shaving, hair and body care products) would fit 18-31 male audience well. Some of those are likely more valuable markets than straight sci-fi demographic products, I'm imagining.

It may well be that a loose 18-31 male demographic fit is more valuable than a tight sci-fi fit.

sgustard• 13 years ago

My daughter has bought a ton of Legos, Star Wars and Harry Potter paraphernalia over the years. Learning that she put money in the pockets of drooling marketing dweebs despite their own idiocy is infuriating.

awjr• 13 years ago

Don't be. TV programs are sold into specific channels that have certain target demographic profiles. Be happy your daughter 'broke' the mould.

judk• 13 years ago

It wasn't infuriating enough that you paid double for character-licensed flavors of the toys?

spiritplumber• 13 years ago

Ponies. That is all.

Seriously, didn't Lauren Faust disprove this once and for all?

noblethrasher• 13 years ago

"Bronies" tend to be older males; think 13 to 40. They probably don't buy many toys.

SkyAtWork• 13 years ago

I realize this is only anecdata but the ones I know buy EVERY ONE of the toys :)

girvo3• 13 years ago

With the disposable income males at those ages have, I'd wager they certainly do buy toys. Lots of them.

tehwalrus• 13 years ago

Bronies do buy toys - in fact, they complain that shop keepers don't take them seriously and/or assume it's for a younger female sibling.

sireat• 13 years ago

co-worker of mine used to buy a lot of toys and other merchandise (pajamas?!). He fit into that age category.

tlb• 13 years ago

Not to defend any of this, but it's true that you can make more total advertising revenue from two shows if one gets all boys and the other gets all girls, rather than them being split 50-50. Each commands a higher ad revenue by being more targeted.

It's an unfortunate fact of human nature that many boys find toys less desirable if they see girls playing with them too. Toy marketers would prefer to advertise on a show with 10M boys and ~0 girls, than a show with 10M boys and 2M girls at the same price, because those 2M girls might buy their toys, the boys might see them and write off the toy as "for girls".

With a few exceptions, toy marketing is an exploitative business. Don't let your kids watch TV or buy them action figures.

almosnow• 13 years ago

Yup, while the misoginy is more than evident, I agree with you that the root of evil there is their desire to make their shows as profitable as possible.

Tyrannosaurs4• 13 years ago

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "make their shows as profitable as possible in ways they already understand"?

The piece mentions Harry Potter and while the lead character may be a boy, the smartest character is a girl and as a franchise that did OK. Sure not everything is going to be Harry Potter but it, Hunger Games, Buffy and so on show it's more than possible to have a franchise that has a mixed audience and still works.

It feels more of a "we know how this works and we're comfortable with it" thing than an absolute profit maximisation.

Confusion3• 13 years ago

That's not a fact of human nature. That is nurture/culture at its finest. Do you think young chimpansee boys and girls play with different 'toys'?

Capitalism didn't create this culture, but it certainly isn't going to make it go away. Blaming managers for capitalist comsiderations is like blaming the wind for uprooting a tree.

nerfhammer4• 13 years ago

Do you think young chimpansee boys and girls play with different 'toys'?

Yes, they do, and their preferences are largely similar to those of human children.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982210...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18452921

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513802...

RivieraKid• 13 years ago

I don't know whether what you're saying is true but is it backed by evidence or just an assumption?

chaostheory4• 13 years ago

I remember working for an online retailer several years ago. Their marketing department made it clear that targeting by demographic was outdated and they felt that grouping people by their behavior was a more modern and accurate way of keeping track of people and future habits. Maybe one day media companies will enter the 21st century of metrics when most major media transitions to the internet.

Confusion3• 13 years ago

If you are blaming the execs for this, then you understand very little about culture and are simply satisfying your ego eith righteous inidignation. The execs are making the only right decision that allows them to keep their job: it's their job to make decisions that earn the most money for the company, irrespective of enlightened moral considerations.

If you want this to change, raise your children to believe differently and preach different moral standards. This kind of change depends on you, not on complaining about what others do while swept up in the cultural winds.

And don't take a job where you will be required to take these kinds of decisions.

StudyAnimal• 13 years ago

Presumably the reverse is also true. I guess boys don't want ponies and princesses either, and now that I think about it, boys are portrayed slightly negatively in e.g. Barbie movies. Just market segmentation I guess.

vellum• 13 years ago

This is amazingly short-sighted and dumb. A lot of the cash cows like Spongebob and Scooby Doo make an epic amount of money, and they aren't particularly tailored to one gender or the other.

In 2003 alone, Scooby-Doo generated more than $750 million in revenue from licensing and merchandising

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/scoobymonstermexico.php

PeterisP• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure they know the exact gender distribution of Spongebob / Scooby Doo merchandise buyers.

I don't - but from observing friends of my kids I'm fairly sure that it's nowhere near 50/50, despite, as you say, "they aren't particularly tailored to one gender or the other".

tn13• 13 years ago

I am not sure what is so surprising about this. Assuming that the execs understanding of female and male consumers is correct if there is a bias in their behavior, they should use that fact to increase their profits. We should stop forcing this gender equality down everyones throats.

alexsilver• 13 years ago

So sad. I distinctly remember how my sis and I (female) got a pair of generic brand transformers as a present back when I was 8. Dad was inspired after we watched Voltron every Saturday! Of course, my sister (being slightly girlier than me at that age) promptly used nail polish to paint its ugly-grey "shoes" because we needed to distinguish "ours" but still, what fun! It turned into a fighter plane and back and we'd spend hours playing with it.

... I mean, no, girls don't buy toys. Maybe if they didn't explicitly make it boring and discouraging for girls then they would?

Paul Dini explains why execs don't want girls watching their superhero shows

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