How Starz promotes Outlander, the problem, & how to fix it
So what is the network looking to do moving forward? Establish a premium female viewership. It’s an understandable goal for them — Outlander is one of their biggest hits, and when you look around the marketplace there’s a real void there. Some of HBO and Showtime’s largest hits cater more towards men, and while Netflix and Amazon have plenty of female-focused shows, not one of them has made this particular demographic a top priority.
Yet, there is a difference between knowing your audience and then understanding it. That’s where the latest quote from Starz COO Jeffrey Hirsch comes into play. This is someone who has made invaluable contributions to keeping great shows on the air; yet, there is an element of his commentary to The Hollywood Reporter that is disconcerting. This is what he had to say on a discussion of whether Counterpart, the recently-canceled series starring JK Simmons, would have fared better with a female lead:
It depends. There’s a lot of shows out there that have wonderful female leads that skew male. You have to be very careful. What we have seen with our Spanish Princess/White Queen series is great women in history play really well for that audience. We’ll lean into that as a quasi-genre. Outlander you can say that it’s great because women like it because she’s a surgeon who goes back in time but there’s also another side of that, which is there’s some eye candy for that audience and people like when he has his shirt off. You have to be really thoughtful about when you’re looking at a piece of content and whether it’s really going to be female or not. And it’s not easy. The nice thing for us is 65 percent of our show leadership are female. You don’t need me to figure it out; we have professionals doing that.
Just like Starz wants to be thoughtful with its content, they have to be thoughtful with their descriptions of it. For years now, one of the issues surrounding Outlander from a media perspective has been the objectification of the male form. Major publications often refer to Jamie Fraser as a “hunk” or a “stud” rather than a nuanced character, a leader, a husband, and a survivor of great trauma. During some television interviews, Sam Heughan’s performance is ignored in favor of questions regarding what’s “under his kilt.” We don’t want to lay the lack of Emmy nominations for Outlander in publicity-friendly categories at the feet of any one thing, but this sort of coverage hurts. It puts Outlander in the box of “guilty pleasure” programming when, in reality, it is about so much more than that. It’s about history, sacrifice, family, and loyalty. Sure, it is a love story too, but it’s not stereotypical romance.
Here’s our conclusion on the subject of how a show like Outlander should be promoted, and it goes far beyond Hirsch’s comments. While the idea of Starz catering to an intelligent female audience is a fantastic idea, there may still be work to do when it comes to elevating the promotion of their shows to be on that same level. The fix is a rather simple one: Still highlight Jamie Fraser, but have the love for the character be more of a subtle thing. There can still be admiration for physical attributes without such an explicit focus on it. Allow other components to shine through since Sam brings so much more to the character then just what he looks like. Ascribe this to many characters on other shows and Starz will be moving in the right direction.
Photo: Starz