Vulch, I'll allow you Mostly Women, but not Some Men and Some Women. I'm not having a go at the gender, what I'm putting forward here isn't speculation, it's commercial fact. What TV execs realised some thirty or so years ago was that TV wasn't paying enough (by their standards and expectations, that is). Good programmes were too hard and too expensive to make, and the strike rate was very low - TV was just too difficult, and great writing (just as it is in the in the print/publishing world) was too rare.
So how does a dumbarse, talentless TV exec deal with an industry where talent, taste and the ability to spot talent and taste is paramount? You change the industry, effectively moving the mountain to Mohammed.
TV took their queue from book and magazine publishing. The womens market was thriving where other books and mags went to the wall. The worst writer in the world, Barbara Cartland, was also the most prolific, Woman's Own had virtually no-one else on the cover every week apart from Lady Di, and the formulae for articles had not changed in half a century. Problem pages and fashion (or "shopping and f*cking" as it became known) were the staple diet, and it wasn't long before specialist mags like "Bride" and "Baby" proved that the womens market was sturdy and long-lived.
