Tradition and Innovation: Italian Women's Channels, Factual Entertainment and the Significance of Generation in Women's Viewing Preferences

Cecilia Penati and Anna Sfardini discuss the success of women’s television in Italy and the way in which a ‘swarm’ of channels grew that developed gendered arenas of lifestyle television. In their audience research with different generations of women from different regions of Italy, they discuss how older women viewers saw the idea of television addressing them directly as ‘progress’, while younger viewers who still took pleasurefrom lifestyle television were more critical of its traditional gendering around the home. They argue that the popularity of television’s address to women in this context can thus be understood as a constant re-imagining of ‘woman’ between innovation and tradition.