Women Love Zombies

When it comes to women’s most popular television choices the data is a bit unexpected?

Forget your Sex and the City reruns. Skip the evening ritual of swilling a glass of red wine while keeping up with The Good Wife. Where or what is Broadchurch? Who are the Girls everyone keeps blogging about?

It turns out that when it comes to women and television choices, we are a lot more complex than people think. And by complex we mean ?into zombie apocalypse scenarios?. Last week the Produced By conference took place in Hollywood and included an examination by the Producers Guild into the power of the female audience, now considered a huge success factor by studio executives. During the ?Courting the Female Audience? panel it emerged that hit zombie show The Walking Dead was the number one show for women. We were caught unawares by that one as much as the fictional characters who find their world turned irrevocably upside down by a pandemic that causes rabid flesh eating and lots of last-minute learning how to use a shotgun on former loved ones. When it comes to the undead,?Twilight vampires with body glitter need no longer apply.

Matt Warburton, an executive producer of The Mindy Project noted, ?Female viewers are much more demanding and discerning? they care about the quality of the show.? Procedurals such as Law & Order remain popular but it is shows available on platforms such as Netflix that are really appealing to women, due to their at-you-own-ease availability and serial nature.

Another thing to look out for when it comes to the fairer zombie-loving sex? Sports. American sports network has found that 40% of its audience is female. This is that part of the afternoon where we pitch a drama to HBO about a female sports agent with love interests that include her handsome sports journalist ex-husband and her latest client who plays whatever sport the audience survey results say he should. We’re tentatively titling this one Geraldine Maguire.

Jeanne Sutton @jeannedesutun

For more television trends coverage from Image Daily check out?Blurring Lines, where we look at how violence against women is fast becoming a television trope.