• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, May 31, 2005

Warning: SatireAhead!

In the media war of the worlds, you are either mass or niche. Although lots of channels, publications, and sites bill themselves as both at the same time. This means they purport to attract a peculiar audience by the boatload. But sometimes as an advertiser, you have to ask if the boat is a sunfish or the Queen Mary?

Take for example the potential audience for an original documentary series, "TransGeneration," about people going through gender changes (a joint effort of Sundance Channel and MTV's soon to launch gay network, Logo).

Broadcasting & Cable reports that "The series will look at four college students who have to 'balance the challenges of academia, campus life, and family with their commitment to gender reassignment.'"

I looked through three dozen or so various-sexual-orientation websites to see if I could track down the number of people who have made a "commitment to gender reassignment" but came up empty. It could be that the stigma society assigns to such a calling is sufficient to prevent an accurate headcount. There was nothing on either the MTV or Sundance Channel Web sites about the show or the projected audience. John Eggerton, the Broadcasting & Cable reporter who broke the story, tells me that "Sundance is unrated and thus professes never to know how many people watch, though they have 22 million subs. Logo claims it will have at least 10 million subs at launch, so you could probably fairly say a potential audience of 32 million."

That's the kind of fuzzy math that networks like to throw around, but you'd have to be a middle school drop out to assume that anywhere near 32 million people have enough of a true, or lurid, interest in transgender-challenged college kids to tune in.

The question then shifts to who might want to advertise in or around a show, which focuses on men and women not only playing for the other team, but becoming the other team? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The advertising on Web sites that attend to transgender issues seems to be about socials for transgenders to find one another or some sort of accoutrement to make you look more authentic in your new sexual role. Not what I'd call a broad endemic base.

I suspect most mainstream advertisers (who catch hell from religious fundamentalists if they even venture near a gay-themed show or publication) are not standing in line to see what the right reverend Don Wildmon has up his sleeve for marketers that support a show about changing teams.

At what point do programmers decide that a program of limited audience and advertising potential might work better in the growing world of online video?

Think of the advantages: The show can be heavily promoted (without smirks) with ads targeted to sites and community forums and bloggers who have a declared interest in the subject, thus creating a good viral build. Nobody much cares what kind of video runs online. If you think they do, drop in on orgrish.com for about 30 seconds. Advertisers can then target an audience that they can be certain shares the sentiments and nuance of the show, and probably will fly under the American Family Association's radar (which has probably already thrown in the towel on trying to police the Web.)

MTV and Sundance could then cross-promote (so to speak) the program from their TV platforms and not only help drive traffic to the online show, but also get the props they clearly expect for supporting this very niche part of our great American landscape.