Lifetime


September 1, 2001


BOB GARFIELD: Some viewers regard Lifetime the way they might a pint of Hagen Daz -- tasty but a little too sweet, and likely to leave you feeling a little queasy if you consume too much. Reporter Sarah Montague, it's fair to say, is one of those viewers, and she decided to get to the bottom of the network's appeal.

SARAH MONTAGUE: Surely they've caught your eye as you flip through your television guide. Of course you were on your way to Frontline, but didn't you linger for just a moment on A Deadly Silence or Shattered Trust or Dangerous Child? Behind these portentous titles are some of the over 125 movies Lifetime Television presents each year.

According to Dawn Tarnofsky-Ostroff, executive vice president of Lifetime Entertainment, they live up to the commitment implicit in the network's bold branding slogan: [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

WOMAN VOICEOVER: Lifetime: Television for Women.

DAWN TARNOFSKY-OSTROFF: Television for women means a place where women come to be informed, entertained and supported.

SARAH MONTAGUE:Lifetime's films fall into two categories: acquired works and twelve original movies --productions that Lifetime funds and aggressively promotes. These tend to be inspirational and cause-related, while the acquired movies run a predictable gamut --improbable love stories, tabloid-based domestic dramas and damsel-in-distress thrillers. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

ANNOUNCER: Can one man's love heal a lifetime of hurt?

WOMAN: You took my family away from me. I'll never forgive you for that.

SARAH MONTAGUE:Abusive men, dysfunctional children and noble invalids abound. Are such offerings at odds with Lifetime's declared mission to sustain and celebrate women? Not according to Tarnofsky-Ostroff.

DAWN TARNOFSKY-OSTROFF: We do research all across the country, and what we hear over and over and over again is that women really find our movies inspiring, and they don't really see any of these movies as women who are victimized. They see women who are heroines, and it feels very empowering to them.

SARAH MONTAGUE: For me this combination of escapism and uplift makes Lifetime a great guilty pleasure, like chocolate, bodice-rippers and back issues of People Magazine. And I'm not alone in my ambivalence as an informal survey among women in my office revealed.

WOMAN: Well my appeal for watching Lifetime is to find the story behind the story.

WOMAN: I'll stick to Comedy Central.

WOMAN: I've found it to be insipid, insulting, and badly acted!

WOMAN: It's just a way to waste Sundays.

WOMAN: It's why you want to watch TV -- because you want to see the white principal falling in love the Mexican janitor and it working out as this excellent romance.

DAWN TARNOFSKY-OSTROFF: We choose our Lifetime Original Films by first looking for films that are about ordinary women in extraordinary situations.

SARAH MONTAGUE: Lifetime's Tarnofsky-Ostroff.

DAWN TARNOFSKY-OSTROFF: I think women like to get emotionally involved in a good story.

SARAH MONTAGUE: Of course "good" is a subjective word, and novelist Susan Isaacs, author of the salty essay "Great Dames and Wimpettes" thinks contemporary media offers few good heroines.

SUSAN ISAACS: Where are all those wonderful roles played by Rosalind Russell and Bette Davis -- the strong women that we admired? There was movie after movie really praising victimhood!

DAWN TARNOFSKY-OSTROFF: It's as if every viewer at home could say what would I do if I were in that situation?

SARAH MONTAGUE: Dawn Tarnofsky-Ostroff.

DAWN TARNOFSKY-OSTROFF: We really are more than just a television network. We're out in the field. We really try to connect with women and be in their lives for the causes that are important to them.

SARAH MONTAGUE: Real life issues were the basis of several recent Lifetime Original Movies including What Makes a Family starring Brooke Shields and Cherry Jones as lesbian parents and Within These Walls with Ellen Burstyn as a hardened criminal whose humanity is restored through a dog-training program run by a Dominican nun played by Laura Dern. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

LAURA DERN AS NUN: There was a point in my life for several years where I couldn't even talk to anybody face to face. That felt like a prison.

ELLEN BURSTYN AS PRISONER: They're not going to let me out of this one any more.

LAURA DERN AS NUN: You can still be free.

TREVOR WALTON: I know that if I had a busy day at work and I was a mother and a wife and I'd fed the kids, I'm not sure that then in my leisure time I want to sit down and watch a movie for two hours and get thoroughly depressed and at the end of it feel there's no hope!

SARAH MONTAGUE: Trevor Walton, Lifetime's senior vice president of original movies feels that offering hope is part of the network's job!

TREVOR WALTON: We're a very, very frightened group I think, especially in America, and I love the idea of making programs that show you that through all of that clutter of all the fear and headlines, that people are just as extraordinary and optimistic and capable of controlling their destinies as they ever were.

SARAH MONTAGUE: For Tarnofsky-Ostroff, network is sisterhood.

DAWN TARNOFSKY-OSTROFF: We're busy running in our own little lane of life, doing as much as we can as fast as we can, and it's seldom that we really have the chance to connect with another woman, and I think a place like Lifetime is a sanctuary for women!

SARAH MONTAGUE: But Susan Isaacs sees this particular sanctuary as confining.

SUSAN ISAACS: I have nothing against Lifetime, but what bothers me is that their vision of what, what women are seems to be very narrow, domestic; happiness is, you know, a warm, cuddly child and a large hairy dog and women are spunky and women are feisty -- but women are never brave. And women never fight for any ideas that don't arise out of being mom, dog owner and sometimes wife.

WOMAN: [WHISPERING] We would be such great parents, Neene [sp?].

WOMAN: Sandy, please.

WOMAN: I want a child!

SARAH MONTAGUE: Lifetime has taken on controversial subjects often linked to its public affairs initiatives including gay parenting, military coverups and human cloning. Yet almost all are examined in this context of domestic life. Isaacs believes it is the obligation of art to demand more.

SUSAN ISAACS: Women are heroic when they risk their lives or their safety for something larger than themselves.

SARAH MONTAGUE: There is no place on Lifetime for the magnificent wrongheadedness of an Antigone or a Medea. Like a roller coaster, its films follow a careful track which after it curves and plunges deposits you safely on the same ground from which you started. So with the weekend, I plan to open a box of chocolates and settle in with this consoling, conscientious network, but I'll find time too for those disconcerting worlds, those disconcerting women who remain stubbornly outside the frame. For On the Media I'm Sarah Montague. [MUSIC]

ANNOUNCER: The Accident. A moment of truth movie. Next, on Lifetime. [MUSIC]