Once upon a time, at the same time every week, one of my roommates and I had to ditch our apartment (occupied by a few fellow young women) for a guy friend’s abode so that we could watch South Park as it aired — our own TV was occupied by banter delivered at tongue-twisting-speed by The Gilmore Girls, which aired at the same time as our beloved Kyle and Cartman. So when this female fan of shows like Rescue Me, Archer, and The Following read AdAge’s article discussing the popularity of male-targeted shows among women, the first thing I thought was, “I knew it wasn’t just us!”

In fact, the highest-rated cable show among women so far this year is not FOX‘s female-targeted New Girl or Lifetime‘s Dance Moms, but AMC‘s gore-filled zombie apocalypse drama The Walking Dead. According to Nielsen, the February 10 mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead drew a 5.0 rating/11 share among women 18-49 (almost twice that of its nearest competitor). To give that number some context, shows like ABC’s Once Upon a Time and CBS’ The Good Wife are lucky when the same demographic comes in above a 1.5.

So does that mean that women are seeing past gore and violence to intricate story lines and interesting characters? It’s not that simple. Horizon Media research director Brad Adgate says gore isn’t necessarily a turnoff for women. “If there’s one genre that’s really popular with men and women, science fiction is it—anything that deals with the occult really.” To support his point, Adgate mentions long-running procedurals like CSI and Law & Order: SVU, which boast an overwhelmingly female audience.

It seems we ladies aren’t wading through the scary stuff–we are wholly engrossed in it. Girls may be sugar and spice and everything nice, but we also like to watch shows about serial killers.

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Say you’re a deeply hated racist organization desperate to stay relevant in an era of dwindling membership, a terrible reputation and–you know–the modern world. Say a certain non-white president just got re-elected. What would you do?

Well, the infamous white knights of the Ku Klux Klan have decided to attack their PR problem from two directions by blanketing “target communities” with inflammatory fliers while letting the press know that they’ve totally changed–like, for realsies this time.

You might be surprised to learn that the folks behind the KKK are no strangers to branding exercises: they used a 2011 protest by the infamous Westboro Baptist Church to effectively say “Hey, at least we’re not as bad as these guys”. According to a group spokesman who discussed the future of hateful white men with a Denver Fox affiliate, the KKK “[doesn't] hate anyone”. They just want to ensure that “good things come to our race” (by excluding other races).

We’ll just let Stephen Colbert take it from here:

We understand that networks, cable companies, etc., are struggling to keep up with the rapidly evolving world of online video. Viewers are increasingly demanding that their favorite shows be available to watch whenever and wherever they want, redefining make-or-break factors like ratings and advertising.

So we don’t really mind watching ads while streaming videos on sites like Hulu, as long as it means we don’t have to miss trivia night at the local bar in order to catch the next episode of The Following.

But when we purchase an episode via Amazon or iTunes, our expectations, it seems, are entirely different.

After watching a recently purchased episode of Archer (an FX show) via our boyfriend’s Amazon account, we noticed that fellow fans had given it a surprisingly low rating. Curious, we read through the comments section only to find that every single negative comment concerned the ads for other FX shows that preceded the video.

Here are a few of the angrier comments:

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Yesterday brought news of the most interesting story to emerge from this year’s Consumer Electronics Conference. It’s a classic tale of media ethics gone wrong, and we see it as a major PR fail.

Despite being America’s worst employer, Dish Network occasionally comes up with some cool tech innovations. Prime example: the Hopper with Sling DVR that gives users the power to enjoy “live streaming of every channel from anywhere”. Yeah, it’s a big deal, and CES organizer C|NET nominated the Hopper for its “Best of CES” awards. One problem, though: Fox, CBS and pretty much every major network has filed suit against Dish for allowing viewers to “hop” or skip over all commercials. Oh, and CBS is CNET’s parent company.

So what did CBS do? They banned all Dish products from CES awards consideration/promotion, citing the ongoing lawsuit. Not only is CNET prohibited from giving the award to dish–they can’t even review any Dish products. Here’s the disclaimer:

The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.

If you think this resembles a blatant case of shutting down the competition, you’re right.

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Today in TV Karaoke Competition News: The hottest gossip in the world of tee-vee at the moment appears to involve a battle of egos between new American Idol judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj (with a little BabaWa thrown in for good measure).

Excited yet? The “exclusive” TMZ video of the two arguing during Idol auditions resembles the beginning of history’s most tedious catfight. We can’t really understand any of it, but we get the general impression that Nicki is a little intimidated by Mariah’s seniority and that Ms. Carey is playing this year’s J.Lo by steadfastly refusing to be upstaged by anyone.

One thing is clear: Barbara Walters raised the stakes on Thursday’s episode of The View by repeating Mariah’s claim that Nicki threatened to “shoot the — b*tch” while walking offstage. Minaj then got a bit defensive (and slightly insane) on Twitter, mocking Carey for hiring more bodyguards while the show’s publicists loudly claimed that no one had made anything resembling a death threat.

Is this what passes for excitement in Seacrest-world? We’re already bored, but we guess we need to ask what the show’s producers and third-party stars think about all this deadly-serious drama.

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Zoinks! Both Fox and CNN, in a rush to report this morning’s historic Supreme Court health care ruling, told everyone the exact wrong thing. That’s embarrassing.

Fox corrected itself on the air after seeing news on the SCOTUSblog that contradicted their initial statement that the health care law had been ruled unconstitutional. EVP of news for Fox News Michael Clemente has put out a statement about the gaffe that includes a poke at “one other cable network.” This statement is after the jump and gets the side eye.

CNN amended its reporting on air as well. They’ve also sent out an email to correct their previous “Breaking News” email alert and issued a statement, which we’ve also got after the jump.

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Photo: Evan Agostini/AGOEV, via Associated Press

A new report from the USC Annenberg Center says that most newspapers will be gone in five years. But 239 magazines launched this year, up nearly a quarter from 2010.

Christiane Amanpour is leaving ABC‘s weekly news program This Week, though she is sticking around to contribute six ABC primetime specials per year, make ABC News appearances, and is launching a show on CNN International. George Stephanopoulos will be heading back to This Week, though many wanted to see Jake Tapper fill the job. For now, he’s just the substitute.

NBC is launching NBCLatino.com in 2012. Broadcasting & Cable says it’s the first broadcast network to launch a site that specifically targets Hispanics. CNNenEspanol.com launched in November. And NBC previously launched TheGrio.com, targeting Black audiences.

The NFL deals with Fox, NBC, and CBS will include more content across more platforms.

It was revealed this week that James Murdoch received an email indicating widespread hacking by News of the World reporters back in 2008, seeming to contradict Murdoch’s statements about when he learned of the activity. But he says he didn’t read the whole email chain. Really? [via The Guardian]

Click through for more media moves.

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Laurel Bernard has been promoted to EVP of marketing at Fox, one of a few changes announced yesterday as the company reorganizes its marketing and communications team.

Bernard will now add management of the affiliate marketing and multi-platform distribution marketing teams to her previous responsibilities, which included managing the national promo teams.

Brian Dollenmayer is now EVP of on-air promotions and marketing. And Shannon Ryan has been promoted to EVP of marketing and comms, leading Fox’s publicity, corp comms, and creative services.

[via Broadcasting & Cable]

Fox announced today that it cancelled five shows I’ve never heard of: Breaking In, Lie to Me, Human Target, Chicago Code, and Traffic Light. Some fans were so mad, they started ranting on the Twitter and Human Target was trending. But it’s still cancelled last we heard. So that’s a shame.

The Hollywood Reporter took a closer look at some of the emotion expressed over the loss of these fan favorites.

“Crud,” wrote one tweeter.

“I am not happy with Fox!!!” exclaimed another.

And from a Fox-watcher possibly in the U.K.: “Oh bollocks.”

Some of the new shows are The New Girl starring Zooey Deschanel and Alcatraz by J.J. Abrams, the guy behind Lost, a show I actually did watch.

In a move straight out of the LeBron James PR playbook,  American Idol‘s Ryan Seacrest will be hosting a press conference on Wednesday, September 22 to announce the panel of judges slated for next season. The news announcement about the press conference went up today.

“The fact that Fox is scheduling a media event for the (anticlimactic?) announcement bolsters those who believe that the network is merely trying to build buzz for the aging reality show,” Brian Stelter writes on the New York Times Media Decoder blog.

Among the list of judge possibilities are Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez (who at one point seemed out of the running because she was being a diva but is now rumored to be signed for $12 million), and Elton John.  If the show is trying to build buzz, mission accomplished.