TLC’s Slate: Driving A Hybrid

Anthony Crupi
APRIL 07, 2008 -

TLC’s Ambitious Upfront slate is designed to provide even more targeted programming to the network’s increasingly younger-skewing female audience, while building on recent ratings gains. Discovery Nets ad sales president Joe Abruzzese is particularly enthused about the untitled Real Simple project, noting that the partnership with the magazine “is an opportunity to try out so many interesting ideas,” adding that the Time Inc. brand “is a perfect extension of what TLC is all about. It should be a fun model to sell.”

Abruzzese says he’s also a fan of Scott Sternberg Productions’ The Singing Office, which has Joey Fatone and Melanie “Scary Spice” Brown attached as hosts. While at first blush the premise sounds a bit squirrely––Fatone and Brown hunt for unsung musical talent in America’s office parks and boardrooms––the show is based on a wildly popular Dutch format.

TLC president, gm Angela Shapiro-Mathes singles out another new strip that is also a departure for the net. When it premieres later this year, Single Moms will be TLC’s first dating show. “It focuses on women who are either divorced or widowed, and they have young children,” she says. “They’re not only looking for a companion, but also a chance to find a father figure for their children.”

TLC will try a hybrid genre on for size with Your Place or Mine?, which fuses the game-show format with home renovation. Your Place pits two teams against each other for a chance to win full-room makeovers. Although TLC has American Chopper lined up for a fifth season, it’s unlikely to return the other programs in its Thursday night “Turbo” block. Abruzzese says Turbo is being scrapped because “those shows don’t make a really good fit with TLC’s female-leaning audience.” Chopper will be aligned in a block devoted to unusual lives and lifestyles, rubbing elbows with the likes of returning series L.A. Ink and new entries Ashley Paige and Napoleon Complex.

In addition to the new projects in the hopper for 2008, TLC is going back to the well with the creators of some of its signature series. The network is working on an unnamed project with Chopper executive producer Craig Piligian and is in conversations with Jon & Kate Plus 8 executive producer Bill Hayes about a second series.

Along with cable’s best engagement stats among adults 18-49, Abruzzese also has a promising story in TLC’s recent youthful trend. In the last three years, the net has dropped its median age to 38 from 42.5. Moreover, TLC viewers tend upwardly mobile, boasting a median income of $63,000 per year, well above the U.S. median ($46,000). —AC

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