Is Lifetime's makeover a cable TV fail?

Reuters – Model Heidi Klum introduces the show at the Project Runway Fall 2010 collection during New York Fashion …

Why, oh why, are media executives always trying to fix things that aren't broken? Lifetime, the cable television network, has been providing reliably middle-brow, often kitschy, occasionally drinking-game-worthy female-slanted programming for nearly two decades now. So when the channel began angling for a more cutting-edge cultural identity — most notably, stealing Project Runway from Bravo, a saga that resulted in a long court battle before the fashion-world reality staple was allowed back on the air — longtime fans began to slip away. Without new viewers to replace them, ratings tumbled.

The most recently casualty of Lifetime's growing pains is former head executive Andrea Wong, who had held the job since 2007. Wong oversaw both the Project Runway debacle and a merger with the A&Enetwork six months ago that still hasn't yielded any good news, ratings- or revenue-wise, but Lifetime's identity crisis precedes Wong's arrival. About five years ago, the channel dropped its longtime tagline describing itself as "television for women." Perhaps the head honchos (honchas?) felt that we were entering a post-gendered world in which viewers of both sexes would be equally interested in watching movies with titles like My Stepson, My Lover. If it wasn't clear then, it is now: they were wrong.

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Lifetime had made hay with a reliable, accessible blend of over-the-top made-for-TV movies and viewer-friendly sitcoms, and if some women hated the old tagline, well, for every one of them there were half a dozen ironic college students and gay men willing to tune in, box of Kleenex and martini at the ready on the side table. There's a steady market in producing guilty pleasures.

It's easy to see how programming and marketing types could imagine that adding Runway and other hipster shows would attract and retain more of that audience. But it's a classic misreading of irony and kitsch to aim for direct appeals to the young, hip and culturally aware. If there's anything arch young trendsters hate, it's being told what to like; if there's anything they love, it's collectively discovering something they aren't supposed to adore, but do. And after that, they move on to something new. Keeping up with them is a fool's game.

So Lifetime, go back to doing what you do best. You're like the Mom Jeans of the television world: comfy for your target market, and hilarious for those a few decades (or X-chromosomes) away from it.