Talking TV: A New Network Targets Women Over 50

Women over 50 aren’t getting their fair share of TV airtime, and with 63 million of them in the U.S. market, Dorthy Miller Shore aims to change that.

Shore is chair and CEO of Prime Women Media, a digital media brand that is looking to expand into a cable network next year. She says this underserved demographic is a linear TV advertisers’ dream — resistant to cord cutting, financially well off and leaning into issues around health, dating and finances.

In this Talking TV conversation, Shore explains the impetus for the network, how she plans to program it and why streaming isn’t her platform of choice for its initial launch.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Prime Women Media is a digital media company geared to 50-plus-year-old women, and the company is looking to launch a new TV network next year aimed at the same demographic, which it sees as underserved.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Dorthy Miller Shore, board chair and CEO of Prime Women Media, about where she hopes to launch the network, how she’s going to program it and why she sees television as the next step for her brand. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Dorthy Miller Shore, to Talking TV.

Dorthy Miller Shore: Thank you, Michael. I’m delighted to be here. I want to tell our story.

Great. Well, first, why a TV network for 50-plus women?

Well, we are traditional TV watchers. We actually watch cable instead of satellite. We like our news, local and national. We like the movies and all that. We also like to channel surf. We’re not cord cutters. The distributors need to retain us. And so, we think we’re really viable market for them.

How do you see this demographic as underserved? In what ways is linear TV failing to represent this group?

Well, there’s 63 million of us. It’s not exactly a niche market. We’re 20% of the population and only 8% of the women on any show is over 50. Grossly underrepresented. And that hasn’t changed in film across the board. You turn 50, you’re kind of put out to pasture. And that’s true everywhere.

It does seem in my anecdotal experience that there are richer and more roles for women over 50 in scripted television programs than I’ve seen in quite a long time, particularly on streaming and premium cable offerings, though.

Well, you know, there are more than there were. There’s no doubt. But there’s not a tremendous amount. In fact, there there’s a lot of women out there, over 50 actresses, that have really been lobbying about this because there aren’t any good roles. And very often the roles they do come up with aren’t, you know, anything that’s typical of the over-50 woman. Younger men and women see women over 50 in a light in which they no longer live. We’re not our mother’s daughters. We are a lot more active. We’re involved in so many things. We’re a woman who is interested in many, many things. We’re still spending money, contrary to what many advertisers think. We have more money than most of them. So, we are a viable market.

But the main reason for the network, though, for us is after having an online publication PrimeWomen.com, which, by the way, is free. You can get on and subscribe to that. But we found out that women really want and need more information and television takes it to a whole new level. I mean, you can read about it, but that really doesn’t change perceptions and it doesn’t help women to see how they can live differently.

There’s a lot of issues that we face after 50. It’s sort of that menopause thing, and it changes your life in so many ways. One of the biggest areas is health, and that’ll be a real feature of our program — health and what you can do about that.

And so, it’s one thing to Google it and I can read about it, but it’s quite another to be able to see it on television and hear other women talking about it and learning how they’re dealing with it and hearing from qualified doctors.

It’s amazing that we have so many doctors out there who have not been on top of women’s issues and health. For example, there was a story in The New York Times back in February on menopause and how women had been misled for years over a very flawed study that was done of women who had taken hormones. And so, women had gotten completely away from hormone replacement, and there’s suffered just needlessly for years with things that happened there. So, it’s not like anyone is really staying on top of this.

We want to be that network, that channel they can go to where they can hear from really qualified doctors. One of the shows — and it’s going to be entertaining and informative — we’re going to have three doctors that are specialized in either as OB-GYN or brain health and that sort of thing. We’ll have a very lively host for the show, and then we’ll have women come on that are also big personalities talking about these health issues so that women out there, they can hear it, see it, and it can make a big difference. That’s just one area.

Let’s come back to content. I want to talk more about that in just a moment. But first, I want to just ask you a couple of things about distribution, because you mentioned, you know, that this cohort is not cord cutters. They are still cable subscribers and linear TV watchers. But you don’t see a correlate streaming platform or a FAST — free supported ad-supported television channel — as a right destination for the brand?

Well, I do think it’s a good destination for us to start. It’s not that we may not eventually get into streaming, probably, but it’s a good place for us to start. There’s still a big market out there. It’s a very big market.

It does track that this is a linear TV-oriented demographic, but the fact is that cable television is coping with a very serious level of cord cutting, and there’s a substantial amount of constriction happening in that space. Do you see those dynamics as significant headwinds that you’re going to have to face in launching the channel?

Well, the way I see it, yes, they need to get rid of a lot of those channels that aren’t bringing them any customers and advertisers. They will be making space for a channel such as ours, which will bring them more customers and ad dollars.

The ad dollars are huge, and I can speak to that from my background as an advertising executive, and with our PrimeWomen.com, we’ve seen the interest grow over the years. We’ve been out there over seven years. It’s grown exponentially in interest. And in fact, our sales manager sent out a press release to a long, long list of advertisers that she collected over the years. Some of them were advertisers with some big companies, etc., and sent that out to them. I mean, the inquiries have been astounding, them wanting to know when they going to advertise on the channel, what are the rates going to be.

So, we know they’re out there. It’s a pretty winning combination. And I think that that the distributors are going to say, hey, maybe we need to get some of this rid of some dead weight and make room for this channel.

What kind of timeline are you targeting for the launch?

Next year. We’ve got new programing in the works and so we’ve got to create all of that and get it ready.

Which quarter are you aiming for?

Second.

Where are you in terms of overall development? Is the financing in place? And are you talking with the major cable companies about carriage yet?

Yes, we have talked to all the major cable and satellite distributors and had great conversations. They’re all very interested. So, we’re pretty excited about that. As far as financing, that will be coming very soon. There again, we have a big network of women around the country that we know, like my other two founders and I have been involved in women’s groups forever.

We’ve always been a big supporter of women. So, we are involved in an International Women’s Forum and National Association of Business Owners. We’ve got this huge network and again, sending out the press release, I’ve had so many women contacting me and saying, Hey, how do I invest? I want to invest in this network. So, the fundraising part sort of underway, and we don’t expect any issue around that or the distributor.

Well, let’s come back to programing then. You started to talk a little bit about show with doctors, with dealing with menopause and health-related issues. First of all, are you going to be handling all the production yourself or are you going to be working with outside producers? What’s that picture look like?

This has been going on since last July. We’ve been working with top experts, consultants in the business that are helping us, that have built networks before. They know how to produce these reality shows that we want to do or scripted or anything we want. They’ve got the talent and they’re bringing on more and more people. So, we brought in a CFO who has a great background with other networks. It’s something that we’ve been in the works with right now.

And we’ve got some shows already sort of sketched out, if you will, that will start production as early as June. We’re pretty well into it. We’re not just going to try to, you know, wing this. We went out and got the experts.

Hope not, yeah.

Professional women business owners, we know we have to have the right help.

And you’re based in Dallas. Are you going to be shooting these shows in Dallas?

Yes, it will be based in Dallas.

Are you looking at entirely unscripted programing panel shows, reality-oriented? Is the health-related material also the crux of this? Or do you have scripted programing that’s appeared elsewhere?

We’ll launch with some brand-new, original content. And I’ll go back and tell a little bit more about that. And then we will acquire programing, movies, series, documentaries, but they’ll all feature women over 50. That will be key.

The programing that we’re developing in addition to health, another big, big one is career. This age group, you know, they have a lot of headwinds. You know, they’ve got sexism, which is still out there, by the way, and ageism. So, there’s a lot around that. We feel like that’s a big area of interest. And it’s also an area that myself and the founders have a tremendous amount of expertise as business owners our entire lives. We want to address that and help women get past that. One of the shows is called Turnaround. We’ve got an expert who helped businesses turn it around.

These women are going to be not just, you know, urban and suburban. They’re going to be rural. We want to make sure that we’re covering the gamut. Then relationships. Big interest there because, again, your life changes. Divorce happens. You lose your husband or maybe you’ve been single your whole life and then you’re starting to go I’m a little lonely here. So, we want to talk about dating. It’s a whole new minefield out there for women this age.

We think that’s going to be terribly entertaining, too, in having these shows. I won’t go into a lot of detail because we’ve got kind of a secret format that we’re going to be using, and we think that’s going to attract not just women over 50. I think it’s going to attract a broad audience of women and men just because it’s going to be that entertaining. So, that’s just giving you an idea of some of the shows. They’re all going to be entertaining, informative and inspirational.

As you’re describing some of the topics, I’m just worried, is there going to be any fun?

Yes, it’s going to be lots of fun.

Are you still soliciting pitches from outside producers or, for people who might be watching this who are in the production sphere, do you want to hear about more shows?

Of course, yes. I mean, we have someone that will be taking that over in charge of all the production. We’ve already gotten, as you can imagine, lots of inquiries from producers, talent, you name it. So, we kind of set them all over in a file and let them know, hey, we’ll be back in touch in June, perhaps on the 1st of July. But yes, we we’re wide open. We have our ideas and want to hear others.

Got it. And how many hours are you looking to launch with per day of original programing or programing generally?

I wish I could say exactly the number of hours, but about 20% of the total will be original. Then 80% will be acquired. It’s a lot.

Dorthy Miller Shore, thank you for explaining the idea here. And best of luck as you get it off the ground.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube page. And we are back most Fridays with a new episode. See you then.