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Shows that could at least be touted as exploring—some would say exploiting—the new role of women may have been inevitable. To a degree, programming follows the headlines. When television convinced itself that youth was in a prerevolutionary state during the late '60s, shows like Mod Squad tried to cash in on the excitement. When the blacks and other ethnic minorities asserted a claim on the nation's attention. Sanford and Son was sure to follow. Once the feminists started gaining attention, how could a producer fail to concoct something like Charlie's Angels?
So far, perhaps, so obvious. But no show that attempted to follow a social trend has exploded out of the starting block as this one has. If Angels starts a programming trend, as most industry sources think it will, very few imitators can expect to gain the same instant acceptance. Much of that was obtained by close attention to programming—sensible scheduling against the competition and sharp promotion. In these areas even his competitors agree that Fred Silverman is a master. Says Mike Dann, former CBS program chief: "He is compulsive about spots and ads. You can add 15 to 20 share points to a show by good promotion." Silverman is no less punctilious about the refinements of scheduling. Says Dann: "Before I saw Charlie's Angels, I knew it could be a big success. Pretty girls against The Blue Knight and Quest. If it was up against Police Woman and M*A*S*H it would not be a runaway hit."
The show also benefits from the lateness of the hour at which it airs and by the change in the audience that occurs around 9 p.m. Kids begin surrendering control of the dial, and women become the dominant force in program selection and the largest segment of the audience—60%. How it is that in all the years this pattern has persisted no one thought to angle a few of these shoot-up shows toward women is one of TV's mysteries. But Silverman, who was placed in charge of daytime programming at CBS when he was just 25, learned at an impressionable age to cater to the ladies. Typically, each Angels episode makes sure at least one co-star strips down to a bikini in the first ten minutes, the better to keep males in a state of gape-jawed passivity and expectation thereafter. But the show also spends a more-than-usual amount of the weekly $300,000 budget on things women enjoy observing—"fashions and hair styles," as one of its producers says.
If this be women's liberation, make the most of it. Beyond the fact that the Angels do manage to remain pleasant and feminine while performing roles until now reserved for men, the show offers very little to please a woman whose consciousness has been raised even a degree or two by the movement. Says Journalist Judith Coburn, a feminist: "Charlie 's Angels is one of the most misogynist shows the networks have produced recently. Supposedly about 'strong' women, it perpetuates the myth most damaging to women's struggle to gain professional equality: that women always use sex to get what they want, even on the job." She thinks the program is "a version of the pimp and his girls. Charlie dispatches his streetwise girls to use their sexual wiles on the world while he reaps the profits."