Entertainment

Summer cable gets a boost from women

The broadcast networks’ dearth of female-oriented summer shows has been a boon for cable.

Hallmark Channel (“Cedar Cove”), BET (“The Game”) and Lifetime (“Devious Maids”), among others, have logged strong women viewership numbers since early July — while female-skewing series including “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” (ABC) and “The Good Wife” (CBS) are in summer repeats.

Case in point: “Cedar Cove,” based on Debbie Macomber’s best-selling book series about a judge (Andie MacDowell) who moves to a small town and finds romance. It shattered Hallmark Channel records last Saturday night, premiering to 2.4 million viewers.

“There’s no question that if you look at the numbers for women viewers in May, versus July and August, you’ll see a significant uptick in terms of what those ratings [for women] are on cable,” says Bill Abbott, who oversees Hallmark Channel as CEO/president of Crown Media Family Networks.

“In May you’ve got a lot more quality content on the broadcast side,” he says. “And cable has made summertime a destination and focus for female viewers.”

Lifetime’s “Devious Maids,” which got off to a so-so start in late June, heated up last month and is now the fastest-growing drama in Lifetime history. Last Sunday’s episode topped all of cable in key women demos.

“This is the first year without ‘The Closer’ and there’s a void there that needs to be filled,” says industry analyst Brad Adgate of Horizon Media, alluding to the former powerhouse TNT summer drama starring Kyra Sedgwick. “Women do watch more TV and there’s a pronounced skew there in cable, particularly among older females.”

“There’s less of a platform to promote these [female-skewing] shows on broadcast, because they’re just not on in the summer,” says Abbott. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy.”