Quickest Way to Get a Superhero Show Cancelled is to Appeal to Girls

Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don't want largely female audiences

tl;dr Executives are quoted as demanding shows work towards appealing to boys because "boys buy more toys," refusing to acknowledge girls do buy toys (doll sales more were double action hero sales last year) and/or marketing products girls might want, even going as far as to cancel shows with large audiences of girls.

What lame-asses. Adventure Time works towards appealing to everyone, markets all kinds of products for kids and adults and males and females, and has been hugely successful. It's not hard to sell things to females--my Etsy store is mostly fandom stuff and has over 4.5k sales.

I heard Young Justice was good too. Bummer.

jesus christ .__. That was depressing.

How the hell do they know what gender the audience is... do they actually run around schools surveying seven year olds?

Ratings and focus groups usually contain this information.

Executive #1: It seems our show is doing very well in the ratings, sir.
Executive #2: Excellent! How many boys does that make now?
Executive #1: Um...
Executive #2: What?
Executive #1: It's actually girls who are watching the show, sir.
Executive #2: GIRLS!? Pull the plug immediately!
Executive #1: But, sir, ratings are through the roof--!
Executive #2: PULL THE PLUG!
-plug is pulled-
Executive #1: Don't you think you're overreacting just a little bit?
Executive #2: A little bit? Everyone knows that girls have cooties and if left loose they would have destroyed everything!
Executive #1: Sir, that's ridiculous! Everyone knows it's boys who has the cooties.
Executive #2: -gasp- Get the smurf out of my office!
Executive #1: Fine! -storms out and takes his 'Best Employee mug' with him-
Executive #2: You leave the mug here.
Executive #1: ... No -leaves with the mug-

Hrm... Did I have a point to this? Oh, right, executives are stupid.

I was gonna make a thread about this, but I forgot, so thanks, Shlup! Remember everyone, superheroes are for boys. Lady superheroes shouldn't get their own shows and movies, and if they somehow do they are to be hypersexualized and misrepresent violence and arrogance as "commanding respect" and "being empowered". Ladies, when presented with one of these Lady Superheroes, you are instructed to be so grateful for any representation at all that you blindly idolize her without any hint of analyzing her actions or comparing her to Male Superhero counterparts.

This is some horsetrout right here.

The part about how they did a few great episodes focusing on the backstories of the female characters and the executives were like "WTF is this trout!" really bummed me out.

Maybe the reason really was that they want to sell more toys, and girls don't buy as many toys of characters they see on TV. It seems more like a business decision, rather than a 'The Patriarchy's Minions At Work Again' decision.

What are you basing that on? Do you know how many Barbies and My Little Ponys and Sylvanian Families and ANYTHING ELSE little girls will bug their parents to buy? Women aren't just automatically immune to brand association and wanting to reenact the shows they see on TV with loads of merch, you know.

I don't see why execs wouldn't want a marketable/profitable IP. Putting everything else that is offensive aside and focusing on pure business, it just seems odd.

Do they think it has something to do with boys being easier to market to? Maybe they think it's easier to blow some trout up, call it a T.V. show, and then have commercials with loud announcers telling little boys about action figures with real kung-fu grip so they can also pretend to blow some trout up? Are girls more expensive to market to or something?

I'm not trying to defend anything, I'm just surprised execs would put anything (even their misguided misogyny) over profit. It's weird.

Even if their reasoning that boys buy more toys than girls was accurate, have they never heard of diversification? It blows my mind that people who probably have business degrees and are definitely making business decisions on a daily basis don't actually seem to know anything about business.

And to touch a bit on Del's post, it's a shame that TV ratings aren't based on a true random sample. I'm not convinced that TV ratings are representative of actual viewership in a lot of cases.

The Powerpuff Girls are probably among the most popular - if not the most popular child female superheroes.

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A total of 78 episodes were aired in addition to two shorts, a Christmas special, a feature film, and a tenth anniversary special. Additionally, the series has been nominated for six Emmy Awards, nine Annie Awards, and a Kids' Choice Award during its run. Spin-off media include an anime, three CD soundtracks, a home video collection, and a series of video games, as well as various licensed merchandise. The series has received generally positive reception and won four awards.

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Same with Kim Possible. Kim Possible has had a pretty notable amount of DVDs and video games released, and I can only imagine that there's a pretty fine number of merchandise available.

I don't keep up with modern cartoons so I have no other exampls to provide. It's disappointing that the execs aren't willing to think outside the box on this because it could have probably earned them a lot of success because the market for female icons is so little. Now whatever show they make is just going to get lost among the rest of the trout marketed at little boys and be forgotten in a couple of years.

Perhaps the reason girls don't buy as much stuff for these shows is because all the toys are marketed towards boys. :3

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Originally Posted by Calliope

What are you basing that on? Do you know how many Barbies and My Little Ponys and Sylvanian Families and ANYTHING ELSE little girls will bug their parents to buy? Women aren't just automatically immune to brand association and wanting to reenact the shows they see on TV with loads of merch, you know.

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Is Barbie a TV show?

I mean, obviously the thought process here is based on the idea "girls' cartoons don't sell as many toys as boys' cartoons". Is that true? I have no idea. I just can't imagine this scenario where girls' cartoon toys do sell as much as boys' cartoon toys, but execs cancel it anyway because they want to oppress girls. The former seems more likely.

There are many shows, DVDs, games and other merchandise about Barbies that are not actual Barbie dolls, yes.

You get my point. Such examples are TV shows based on the merchandise, rather than the other way around in this case.

Does it... matter?

Whether their motivations are one of sexist intent or not doesn't make their decision to cancel the show any less foolish especially when they haven't tried any measures to market to girls or appeal more to a male audience. Furthermore I see no one here talking about how they're doing this to oppress girls, just that it's a dumb move based on nothing more than an assumption.

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Originally Posted by Old Manus

Is Barbie a TV show?

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I don't get any TV channels, so I can't tell you if it's a TV show - but there are a LOT of Barbie made-for-TV type DVDs that are in constant demand at my workplace. If people want to stop targeting merchandise towards women and girls I personally think that's fine (once those kids hit twelve or so they'll be drowning in a sea of sparkly "NAUGHTY" branded shorts, makeup, scents and other grooming products designed to destroy their sense of self-worth, anyway) - I just think it's pretty poor that as a whole women are viewed as a market to sell to, and men are viewed as a market to entertain.

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Originally Posted by Shorty

Does it... matter?

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Nope. Not one bit.

I refuse to acknowledge this thread because a woman posted it.

Seriously though you can't fault old rich white ....

I can't finish the sentence lolol.

Well, from what I can tell fromthe article, they are just being stupid. This is one of those cases where people are ignoring what is in front of them in favor of what they believe. So from what I can see, this is what is happening:

-They THINK boys buy more toys. Maybe due to some market research or study or somthing. It probably has a lot to do with what typeof toy also, and how it is marketed. But they ignore that part. They just see and think boys=toys and girls=not toys.
-They don't care about the number of viewers that are female because these things make a crap ton of money on merchandising and they still have that preconceived notion up above.
-And I *think* they seem to be under the impression that the larger female audience they have, the smaller the male audience will be. Meaning, they think if 100k, or whatever, females are watching, that there won' continue to be the 120k, or whatever, males watching, but that sudeenly the number will go down to 8k, or whatever, males. And they think if they lose males they lose money because they think males buy the merchandise. Is it true that the more females watch the less males watch? Maybe in some cases but I doubt it is a huge issue.

I'm pretty sure the people in charge of figuring out the above are not doing their job properly. I don't know where they're getting their research or what it is telling them though, so it is hard to say.

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Originally Posted by Del Murder

Ratings and focus groups usually contain this information.

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But where do those guys get it? With all the statistics and surveys I hear on TV, how come I've never actually heard of anyone taking these?

Imagine an alpaca eating a piece of bread too big for its mouth.

That noise is the sound-equivalent of how much sense this decision makes to me.

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Originally Posted by Depression Moon

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Originally Posted by Del Murder

Ratings and focus groups usually contain this information.

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But where do those guys get it? With all the statistics and surveys I hear on TV, how come I've never actually heard of anyone taking these?

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Ratings come from randomly selected housholds that are given a box to monitor their TV viewing for a set period of time. You probably have to fill out a form identifying demographic information before you are able to participate. It's administered by the Nielsen company.

Focus groups are probably similar but on a much more specific level.

It's kind of silly that these things determine what stays on TV and what is canceled since a lot of people get their viewing from other means, and these things are never truly random anyway (families are oversampled for instance), but this is how it's been for the last 50 years. =/

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Originally Posted by Old Manus

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Originally Posted by Calliope

What are you basing that on? Do you know how many Barbies and My Little Ponys and Sylvanian Families and ANYTHING ELSE little girls will bug their parents to buy? Women aren't just automatically immune to brand association and wanting to reenact the shows they see on TV with loads of merch, you know.

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Is Barbie a TV show?

I mean, obviously the thought process here is based on the idea "girls' cartoons don't sell as many toys as boys' cartoons". Is that true? I have no idea. I just can't imagine this scenario where girls' cartoon toys do sell as much as boys' cartoon toys, but execs cancel it anyway because they want to oppress girls. The former seems more likely.

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It's not that they want to oppress girls; it's that they're lazy and short-sighted and don't understand that they could do very well for themselves if they chose to focus on everyone and market toward whatever demographics the show draws in. Young Justice was a really popular show; it would have been easy to market products for it. But, no, the girl demographic was growing so they cancelled. Again, look at Adventure Time--appeals to both genders and pretty much all ages, marketed to all its demographics, and hugely successful on both accounts.

I only kinda read the first post and then skipped to reply, so this might have already been said.

But seriously, maybe girls don't buy as many of your stupid toys because you make troutty toys for girls! And so smurfing what? Boys are still gonna enjoy the show and buy the toys. :mad:

That's a really crappy reason to cancel a show. By that same logic MLP should have been cancelled season 1 because boys watched it.

For the record barbie has a ton of movies. I can sing all the barbie and the diamond castle songs. Source, my niece. So toy sales to correlate to shows and movies as well

I don't know why this was closed, so I'm reopening it.

Damnit. I had another even better thing to post in this thread, but it was closed, and now I've gone and forgotten it!

EDIT: I think it might have had something to do with Bronys

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Originally Posted by Pant Leg Eater from the Bad World

Damnit. I had another even better thing to post in this thread, but it was closed, and now I've gone and forgotten it!

EDIT: I think it might have had something to do with Bronys

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The idea of a bunch of grown men watching a show designed for little girls is a bit weird. But considering that there's so many of them, I think the writers and animators have taken it as a compliment.

I thought the majority of show themed plushies sales were by women.

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Originally Posted by Shorty

I don't know why this was closed, so I'm reopening it.

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I think Freya's been on the gin again.

She doesn't drink gin because she isn't classy.

Originally, commercials were the only televised promotion of toys. The earliest use of a television show specifically designed to sell toys seems to have been Magilla Gorilla in 1963. Transformers and G.I. Joe began their run in 1984 due to restrictions against product placement in children's programming having been largely removed. Barbie had her film debut in 1987. Frankly, the latter is a surprise to me, since I thought Barbie only recently began receiving direct-to-video films and shorts. Shows what I know. (I don't remember my point.)

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Originally Posted by Hypoallergenic Chie

That's a really crappy reason to cancel a show. By that same logic MLP should have been cancelled season 1 because boys watched it.

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Actually, that logic doesn't follow. The ruling is that boys buy more toys, so My Little Pony having a young male fanbase would be preferable.

@Shlup in regard to the company being short-sighted, I really don't believe in such an epic level of utter retardedness. I don't think this is about the company being dumb. There's no way to make the "honest mistake" of not realizing you can profit as much if not more from a female fanbase, unless there is an underlying prejudice. I'm not saying they're not stupid, but they're only stupid insomuch as all prejudice is stupid.

I was told that they marketed Thor 2 toward a female audience and that was a giant ole' success.

I have no proof on that but it made sense to me since we ladies love some Thor abs and Loki heart-barf.

Yeah, that article was depressing.