Proving that content made by women and for women can make big bucks has long been a tough sell in Hollywood.
But the movement to include more women behind the camera to create content specifically for female tastes is picking up steam in the streaming realm, as evidenced by North Hollywood’s Lifeboat Productions, which is tapping into the growing market demand for niche content for young women online.
The female-run production company is shooting a new scripted series called “Cassandra French’s Finishing School” for video-on-demand service Fullscreen Inc. of Playa Vista, owned by Otter Media, a joint venture of AT&T and the Chernin Group. Lifeboat co-founders Jaime Burke and Amy Kim serve as executive producers on the eight-episode order alongside novelist Eric Garcia. It will debut on AT&T’s DirecTV and U-verse on Feb.17 before moving to Fullscreen, which operates a subscription VOD network aimed at millennials.
There’s a growing demand for content targeted at young women, according to a 2015 research report on the financial impact of the female audience released by the Producers Guild of America and New York advocacy group Women and Hollywood.
“It’s moving really fast and continues to snowball,” said Melissa Silverstein, founder of Women and Hollywood and a co-author of the report.
According to the report, Nielsen ratings show women tend to spend more time with digital content on average than men. For example, women account for 64 percent of total viewing time on Netflix and Hulu as well as represent the majority of unique visitors to each company’s website – 59 percent for Hulu and 57 percent for Netflix.
“Why create more content for women? They’re really loyal,” said Silverstein.
Market demands
Burke and Kim said Lifeboat’s decision to focus more on content for female audiences happened naturally as the streaming TV industry has responded to changes in consumer habits.
When Lifeboat was launched in 2012, Burke said people in the industry were still figuring out the digital world.
“The focus was on foreign sales and the genres that translated overseas: horror and action,” she said. “We produced a lot of male-focused content. In the business, people didn’t look at gender as much, but now they are.”
In addition to “Cassandra” for AT&T, Lifeboat is in production downtown on a new series for Awestruck, an imprint of West L.A.’s NBCUniversal-owned AwesomenessTV, which produces content targeting millennial moms. The romantic comedy project, “Confess,” will be the first scripted series for the platform and is set to debut early next year on Verizon’s go90 platform.
If Lifeboat is any indicator, the demand for female-driven content is creating more opportunities for women in the industry. Both of the company’s series feature women in key behind-the-scenes positions, including editing, casting, and writing.
“We find that we’re in a positive cycle of more and more women getting and making above-the-line opportunities, and bringing a lot of talented women with them,” said Burke.
According to Fullscreen, Burke and Kim are well-positioned to take a prominent role in this movement because of their diverse portfolio of premium content created with budgets ranging from $500,000 to $10 million in a variety of genres.
“When we were looking for a producer on ‘Cassandra French’s Finishing School,’ a show that explores relationships from a female perspective, Lifeboat was an obvious choice,” said Jeni Mulein, vice president of scripted TV for Fullscreen. “They understand the digital space, which is extremely important for our productions.”
