File Under: Stupid Network Execs
Amy Gahran has a fascinating post on her blog, Contentious, examining the dearth of women narrators in the documentary business. My favorite quote from Jason Kottke’s article on the topic is:
An acquaintance of mine is doing some documentary work for the History Channel. One of the channel’s guidelines for their documentaries is that they don’t generally allow the use of female narrators - men only. The History Channel’s audience is mostly men and they want to continue to target only men.
Of course, there is nothing more attractive to a man than…another man’s voice! These people are geniuses!
Personally, I enjoy (shall I even go so far as to say I prefer?) the voice of a female. In fact, I listen to Nicole Simon’s Useful Sounds not only for the interesting blog/tech commentary but the German accented female voice delivering the material.
Oh well, hopefully Nickolas Davatzes will realize that men actually do enjoy listening to a woman’s voice.
6 Responses to “File Under: Stupid Network Execs”
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It’s the “History” channel. Of course they’re a couple hundred years behind the times.
or maybe they’re just all gay. shame on you, doug, for your bigoted hate-mongering.
just. let. them. be.
Doug, I’m sure there are web sites especially for guys who “appreciate” german-accented female voices. In fact, when I used to have European satellite, I was aware of more than a few channels dedicated to attending to such tastes.
abuzachary: Worry not my wise Syrian friend…my tastes include listening to the beautifully accented voices of Arab women as well!
Although, to be quite honest, it is tough to get audio here in the West that does not end with the glorious cry of “Allahu akbar!”
Maybe some of the voices remind men too much of their wives… Totally kidding! I happen to be with Doug on this. Let’s be honest, women look better than we do, dress better, and sound better. If we had it our way, or at least my way, I would sit at home all day in my favorite shorts and t-shirt, listening to women sing jazz and, of course, narrate various history channel programs.
Very tried and true practice in sales and marketing: men listen more closely to female voices in narration than they do to men’s voices.