For the Week of June 26, 2006 

"Lifetime Entertainment Services is dedicated to offering the highest quality entertainment and information programming as well as advocating a wide range of issues that affect women and their families. " – "About Lifetime" (Lifetimetv.com website)

Since its premiere in 1984, Lifetime has become one of the top-rated television networks on basic cable, serving more than 88 million households nationwide. Originally, Lifetime served as a combination of two previous cable networks: Daytime, featuring programming for women, and the Cable Health Network, which offered content concerned with family health and fitness. In its earliest days Lifetime followed the example of its forebears and aired programming primarily concerned with family and women's health issues. But in later years, and particularly since its purchase in 1994 by ABC/Disney and the Hearst media chain, the network has become increasingly sensationalistic. Today, Lifetime airs practically no programming concerned with family; and health and women's issues are rarely dealt with in an informative fashion. Instead, Lifetime has devoted itself to churning out "docu-dramas" and TV series which vastly overstate "threats" to women and their children. The source of such "threats" in these dramas are varied, but generally come from either diseases, or from men. This emphasis on intimidation and fear results in a dark, almost surreal portrayal of life as being hostile to women. The influence which such an unremittingly negative world-view may have on viewers – particularly children – is a matter of potential concern. 

"Dipping into the Lifetime channel may leave viewers so rattled by the fear of violence, wrongful incarceration, sexual discrimination or death by disease that they become convinced that they've got one of the many disorders that the network is dedicated to combating." – media critic Tunku Varadarajan (Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2002)

Such a view is easily justified by an examination of Lifetime's programming. Lifetime's medical drama Strong Medicine, which the network's website boasts is the longest-running original drama ever created for basic cable, has featured storylines involving a drug-addicted prostitute who requests tubal ligation surgery, a faked hysterectomy, a menopausal transvestite, a transgender mother in a custody battle, heroin addiction, birth defects, AIDS, ADD, pelvic inflammatory disease, Tay-Sachs disease, brain disease, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, flesh-eating bacteria, rheumatoid arthritis, chicken pox, and a woman who blushes uncontrollably.

Similarly, Lifetime's crime drama The Division has "entertained" and "informed" its viewers with stories on killer liposuction, gigolos, child abuse, celebrity sex solicitation, a woman facing a ‘three-strikes' life sentence for holding drugs, Internet baby brokers, identity theft, the rape of female jockeys, child molesters, police brutality, criminal brutality and a priest who is prosecuted when his attempted exorcism of a young woman fails.

But Lifetime's negative world-view is not confined to raising the specters of disease, medical malpractice or crime. In Lifetime's world, no greater threat to women exists than those with whom they must share the world – men.

"The Lifetime channel…takes aim at women with marathon victim-fests morning, noon and night. Most are dramas featuring a helpless female victimized by a spouse or terrorized by a crazy co-worker or a psycho boyfriend…If you watched nothing but the sappy programs and movies on Lifetime, you might be tempted to believe all men are 1) unfaithful rats, 2) abusive monsters, 3) dishonest scumbags or 4) all of the above." – Myrna Blyth, author of Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America

In one month alone, Lifetime viewers were treated to the following male-bashing movies (descriptions are taken from TV Guide magazine): Deception (June 8, 2006), "A PI probes a case involving cheating husbands"; Wicked Minds (June 13), "A young man's affair results in the murder of his father"; Point Last Seen (June 16), "A woman's children are kidnapped by her abusive ex"; Abducted (June 17), "A man runs off with his ex-wife's baby"; the self-explanatory double-header of Unwed Father and Too Young to Be a Dad (both June 18); Fatal Reunion (June 20), "A stalker terrorizes his old high-school flame"; Scared Silent (June 26), starring Penelope Ann Miller as a rape victim; and, finally, Harlequin's ‘Recipe for Revenge' (June 27), "A woman is stalked after reporting a murder." It should be noted that these are only the movies which aired in prime-time; Lifetime also airs similar movies throughout the programming day and on weekends.

But it would be inaccurate to claim that Lifetime only shows movies portraying men in a bad light. Lifetime also devotes a (much smaller) portion of its programming to sex-crazed, abusive women: An Unfinished Affair (June 7), "A disturbed vixen gets even with the lover who left her by seducing his innocent and impressionable son", and Cheater's Club (June 26), "Adulterous wives turn up dead after following their therapist's advice to cheat", being typical. Furthermore, Mary Kay Letourneau (June 20), a movie about a real-life teacher who sexually molested a student, aired at 7 pm Eastern time, which is 6pm Central time. No doubt it made compelling dinnertime viewing for children in Iowa and Nebraska.

Finally, in keeping with its stated "commitment to diversity", Lifetime airs movies spotlighting gender identity issues. June movies on this theme included An Unexpected Love (June 8), "A woman falls for a lesbian," and the back-to-back airing on June 19 of The Truth About Jane, concerning a lesbian daughter, and A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, about a transgendered teen who is beaten to death by teenage boys. Laudable though the network's compassion for those facing gender issues may be, understanding such issues requires a more adult sensibility. Many parents would object to having to discuss such issues with pre-teen children who happen to stumble across such programming. This is not an unrealistic concern; as a basic cable network Lifetime's movies are available to anyone with cable, and The Truth About Jane aired at 6 pm Central time, with A Girl Like Me coming on at 8 pm. A "commitment to diversity" should not absolve a television network – particularly one which claims to champion women's (and therefore mothers') interests --  from acting in the best interests of children who may be watching.

It is difficult to imagine a better example of the need for cable choice than the Lifetime network. From programming devoted to esoteric life-threatening diseases, to a multiplicity of movies showing children being kidnapped or murdered by their fathers, to the overwhelming emphasis on and depiction of sexual content, Lifetime network's output is uniformly unsuitable for children. Such movies and programs are potentially terrifying to youngsters, and give viewers – young and old alike -- a distorted and unrealistic picture of life. Those who choose to revel in such salacious fare may of course do so; but why should America's families be forced to see, and pay for, programming which is simultaneously harmful and degrading to so many? Only when true cable choice is achieved will America's children be safe using a TV remote.

"Lifetime claims that its central mission is to be supportive of women…but some things are better left unseen, and that includes most Lifetime movies dressed up as ‘reality' television."– Myrna Blyth, author of Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America

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