WNBA highlight film meets Oprah in 'Players Journal'.(Sports Weekend)

0 Comments | Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), May, 2001

Byline: Ted Cox When the major TV networks try to attract young male viewers - a notoriously difficult audience to reach - they present sports, scantily clad women and plain guys doing stupid stuff, like so much honey and sugar set out to draw flies. It sounds like an easy mix to put together, but it's not.

For one thing, young men are smarter than flies - although I admit sometimes it's close - and for another, the seemingly simple formula for male programming can easily blow up in one's face. Witness the XFL. When the networks try to attract women, however, things couldn't be simpler. Put some chicks on the screen talking about their feelings or, better yet, their feelings about their mothers, and women come running to the TV. Witness Oprah. Yet when...