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Lifetime Cable Shakeup Coming in Wake of Ratings Woes

Feb 23, 2010  •  Post A Comment

Lifetime, the cable network aimed at women, is headed for a management shakeup as it tries to regain its ratings momentum, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The network’s recent efforts to add more sizzle to its programming failed to catch on, and the primetime audience drop has been enough to take the network out of the ranks of the top five cable networks among women younger than 50, the paper reports. Even the splashy and expensive purchase of rights to Bravo’s “Project Runway” didn’t pay off with more than just solid ratings.

A former marketing executive at the network, Brent Poer, tells the paper the problem is that “There were a lot of people at Lifetime who wanted our viewer to be hipper and more fashionable," but that was not who the audience was.

Chief executive Andrea Wong has already left the network and Nancy Dubuc, the head of History Channel, is expected to take on the role.

–Elizabeth Jensen

2 Comments

  1. they should have never got rid of “the golden girls’. I know alot of people, like myself, who stopped watching their network.

  2. Their problem is that they are Lifetime. No matter what programming or staff changes they make, they are still a niche network with a reputation chiseled in stone as the place for low-fi TV movies about weepy victimized women.
    If they want to join the big channel’s club, they will have to change their name and broaden their target demos.

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