Playboy Discovers Women Will Watch Porn With Real Chemistry, “Contextualized” Sex
The New York Times has a fascinating article about Playboy TV, of all things—specifically, how it’s trying to evolve into a destination for both sexes. As Brooks Barnes writes, as of now, the network is both “too tame to compete with sex-related video-on-demand services” and “too raunchy to appeal strongly to women,” meaning that it’s stuck in the middle (sort of like the CNN of the adult cable world, no?). In order to fix that issue, Playboy spent the last year trying to figure out how to change the network’s character.
Twelve months of focus groups and research later, they have their answer: in 2011, Playboy TV will “begin shifting from traditional pornography toward a higher-quality, female-friendly slate of reality shows. Just as Nickelodeon has its Nick at Nite, Playboy TV will call this block of shows TV for 2.” Here’s a taste of some of the new programming that will appear on TV for 2:
The first new series is “Brooklyn Kinda Love,” a docu-reality program scheduled to make its debut on Jan. 15. Produced by Joe and Harry Gantz (HBO’s Emmy-winning “Taxicab Confessions”), “Brooklyn Kinda Love” follows the intricacies of four real couples’ relationships. Another new show involves monogamous couples receiving advice on how to achieve greater intimacy. In all, the channel will add six new shows by the end of next year.
The content remains firmly sexual — this is subscription television — but Playboy insists that it is less identifiable as pornography. The emphasis is now on intimacy, learning as a couple and of course those all-important higher production values.
“This is not just a face-lift,” Mr. Rosenson said. “This is a major movement away from the type of adult fare that you can easily find on the Web.”
He added, “They say that every important TV niche has been filled, but I’m pretty sure we’ve found one that hasn’t.”
It’s a clever idea—and it’s also sort of refreshing to see a porn purveyor purposefully trying to court women. Though many people might still think that women simply aren’t interested in watching pornography, Playboy’s research shows that’s not true: They just want to watch a different sort of pornography.
Specifically, writes Barnes, Playboy discovered “that women — particularly younger women — were not opposed to pornography as long as it had certain attributes. Among them: real chemistry, nonenhanced body parts, varied body shapes and ‘contextualized’ sex. ‘They want the romance to flow organically from the story and not pop up in a forced fashion as is the case in so many adult movies,’ Ms. Lee said.”
In other words, to get women to watch Playboy TV, the channel is going to have to start airing higher-quality programming featuring sex that doesn’t look fake or cheap. It’s unclear exactly how Playboy translated this information into ‘let’s air a bunch of reality shows,’ but even so, we’ll be standing by to see if the experiment works. Read the rest of Barnes’s article at NYTimes.com.
