New Lifetime Initiative Calls for More Women Behind the Camera

LOS ANGELES: Lifetime has launched Broad Focus, a major campaign meant to offer females additional opportunities to write, develop, produce and direct programming for the channel.

The purpose of Broad Focus is to encourage and cultivate women's talent in media, find content leaders who are creating the best female-focused stories for TV and raise awareness about the need for more women in content-making roles. Last year, 20 percent of Lifetime's movie directors were women, while 43 percent of its writers, 35 percent of its exec producers and 29 percent of its producers were female, all of which exceed the industry averages.

As one of Broad Focus's first extensions, Lifetime has teamed up with Geena Davis's inaugural Bentonville Film Festival, currently taking place until May 9. The network has become the event's exclusive cable television partner and will telecast one of the winning films. It will also select a winning script from the festival's script-writing contest next year to put in its development lineup.

Later in the year, Broad Focus will be presented on-air through sponsored short-form content about female filmmakers, and with short films directed by women in collaboration with marketers. Lifetime is currently showcasing these projects to the upfront marketplace.

"There is a large, untapped well of female talent out there and we want to remain first in line to that source of creativity," said Nancy Dubuc, president and CEO of A+E Networks. "In this day [and] age, it's hard to believe as an industry we still struggle to fully recognize women's talents in behind-the-camera roles, especially as directors. Our company invests heavily in finding fresh, unique voices and Broad Focus will inspire us to look deeper and in non-traditional places to discover women among those storytellers. I'm proud we are challenging ourselves and our friends in the industry to do more to support them."