Male delivery: Its lawsuit resolved, the man-oriented Spike TV readies its debut

Kirk Baird

Monday, July 28, 2003 | 8:27 a.m.

Kevin Kaye, executive vice president of programming and production for Spike TV, is clear on what the first male-oriented network will not be. And that's an entire channel of "The Man Show.

While the Comedy Central show certainly has its fans, Kaye insists his network, which officially launches Aug. 11 and can be seen on Cox cable channel 29, will have a much, um, broader appeal.

Instead of buxom women on trampolines and enough testosterone-fueled humor to fill a dozen fraternity houses both staples of "The Man Show Spike TV will instead feature shows about travel, health, fitness, gadgets, money and, yes, gorgeous women.

"Spike will air shows about all of these things that, I think, guys are interested in and are big parts of their lives, Kaye said. "Comedy Central does well with men, but there's no one place for guys to go and say, 'This is a channel for me.'

And that's the niche of Spike TV, which is billing itself as "The First Network for Men.

Amid a barrage of 500-plus channels, Kaye said Spike TV's gender-specific identity will help it stand out from the TNTs, TBSs and USAs of the cable and satellite realm.

Besides, The National Network, as it is called for now, was already drawing a 65-percent male audience with its lineup of "Baywatch, "V.I.P.," "Miami Vice, "Star Trek: The Next Generation," World Wrestling Entertainment's "WWE Raw and "Slamball" a new extreme sport that combines basketball and trampolines.

So the switch wasn't really a stretch, Kaye said.

"We already were skewing more male. So why not go there, claim what (audience) we have and focus programming to men," he said. "It helps us to define who we are and put everything through a filter that's for men."

Still, having such a narrow programming target can be a "double-edged sword," cautioned Debbie Beece, president of programming for Oxygen Media, a network devoted to women.

"I think you can super-serve the audience (but) it makes it more difficult on some levels ... because all women are different, all men are different and all kids are different," she said. "You're close to being in the 'general entertainment' area."

Then again, Beece said her network, which started from the ground up in 1998, is enjoying millions of new subscribers and has doubled its ratings from a year ago.

"People love having a place to go where it's just for them," she said. "It's certainly filling a need. There's nothing but opportunity for the consumer when it comes to cable television."

At this point, however, the embattled network should be ready for all obstacles. After announcing the decision to change its name to Spike TV, Spike Lee took exception.

The acclaimed director was convinced Spike TV was simply cashing in on his name and that the moniker would mislead viewers into believing he was associated with the network.

As a result, Lee hired famed attorney Johnnie Cochran and filed a lawsuit against Viacom, which owns TNN/Spike TV, to stop the name change.

On June 13, three days before Spike TV was to debut, Lee won an injunction blocking the name switch, forcing the channel to remain The National Network.

In court Cochran claimed his client's name would be damaged by a network calling itself Spike TV and featured "demeaning, vapid and quasi-pornographic content."

Finally, two weeks ago, the two parties made nice and reached an out-of-court settlement.

Said Lee: "On reviewing the circumstances concerning the name change of the network, I no longer believe that Viacom deliberately intended to trade on my name when naming Spike TV.

"As an artist and a filmmaker, I feel that protection of freedom of expression is a critical value and I am concerned that my efforts to stop Viacom from using the Spike TV name could have the unintended consequence of threatening the First Amendment rights of Viacom and others. I am pleased to be able to resolve this matter and be able to work with Viacom on new projects."

Kaye was equally glad the suit was resolved.

"We were happy that it was resolved amicably and that we're still in business with Spike, because we respect him as an artist and a filmmaker," he said.

Ironically, though, Kaye's also grateful for the exposure.

"There is no such thing as bad publicity," he said. "It helped people become aware that Spike TV would exist."

Still, not everyone was happy about the lawsuit, Kaye added.

The network lost more than $16 million in promoting the June launch date -- including a daily countdown that ran on the bottom of the TV screen -- and many cable operators were confused by the announced name change that didn't happen.

But the legal wrangling has passed, and Spike TV can concentrate on developing more original programming.

Already scheduled for the fall is "FunkMaster Flex," in which the New York DJ spends time with such hip-hop celebrities as Eminem and Lil' Kim while he has their cars customized; and "The Joe Schmo Show," an "un-reality" program in which one contestant believes he's competing on a reality series, not knowing that all the other participants are paid actors.

Also in the works are live coverage of the GQ Magazine "Men of the Year" Awards in October along with a new video game awards show in December; "A Guy and His Stuff," about high-tech gadgets and gizmos; and "Top 10 Things Every Guy Should Experience," which follows men to big sporting events such as the Super Bowl.

Already the network offers three new animated shows:

_bu.(c) "Stripperella." Created by Marvel's Stan Lee, the series stars Pamela Anderson as a stripper by night and a superhero by even later in the night.

_bu.(c) "Gary the Rat." Based on animated Internet shorts, Kelsey Grammer voices a morally bankrupt lawyer who, in a Kafkaesque twist, becomes a rat.

_bu.(c) "Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon." The former bad boys of Nickelodeon return in a new series by original creator John Kricfalusi that takes full advantage of Spike TV's lax restrictions.

"They just loosened the standards on it for us," said Kricfalusi. "I think all of us are not sure if this is a good thing yet. We'll see how the audience reacts to it. I think in some cases we went too extreme. It's all trial and error."

When asked how the new "Ren & Stimpy" matched the show's network target audience, Kricfalusi said appealing to men is not a problem.

"I'm a guy, so it's obviously going to have a lot of guy humor in it," he said. "All I know is the old show had a lots of girl fans, so I'm hoping to get them this time around, too."

Which is fine with Kaye. The more viewers the better -- regardless of gender.

"We're not going to be running tampon commercials on this channel," he said. "But I think we want to be as diverse as we can possibly be."

Even before the official name change, the prognosis for the network is positive.

However, considering TNN's overall ratings for the first three months of 2003 were down 16 percent from the same period last year, that's not difficult.

Still, a June 30 special, "The 100 Most Irresistible Women," drew a 2 rating -- compared to the 0.4 it normally drew in the same time slot at 11 p.m. And in its first week,"Stripperella" produced five times the audience of the week before.

The network has even made gains in the coveted younger audience advertisers crave. When TNN was still The Nashville Network -- until its first name change in early 2001 -- the average age of a viewer for the network was 57, Kaye said.

"Right now it's 37. So we dropped 20 ages in two years," he said. "I'd like to be younger, but it's a pretty good place to be."

As for rumors that the male-oriented Maxim is rumored to be developing a channel called the Maxim Entertainment Network (MEN), Kaye said, "Bring 'em on."

"Maxim has been talking about it for a long time. I think the leg up we have is we're in 80 million homes. We have the subscribers and they're going to have to start from scratch," he said. "That's hard in this economy. Look at the uphill battle Oxygen has had in getting subscribers.

"But competition only makes you stronger, so I'm all for it."

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