Lifetime Draws Viewers With Lit Adaptations

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 8/4/2008

TV movies have long been known for high melodrama and kitschy plots, and Lifetime, the cable net aimed at women, has not always avoided that image with its original movies. But recently, the network has drawn unexpectedly strong ratings for its original movies, a result an executive there credits to an effort to acquire more high-profile books.

In April, the network’s adaptation of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter garnered its highest ratings since 1995. Although reviews of the film were mixed, the movie got an Emmy nomination and helped boost the Penguin paperback to a top perch on the New York Times paperback list.

Shannon Twomey at Penguin saidKim Edwards’s book, a bestseller for two years, went to #1 the week after the movie premiered on April 20. Twomey also said that Lifetime worked closely with Penguin on cross-promotion, creating a special page on the network’s Web site that included an interview with Edwards. "They were very cooperative and looked for ways to get the movie and book placed together," Twomey said.

While the network’s focus on material with a strong female perspective hasn’t changed, Tanya Lopez, senior v-p of original programming, said that in the last year Lifetime has increased its budget to buy "bigger books."

Although Lifetime certainly hasn’t abandoned its attention to true stories, its literary acquisitions include some unexpected titles, such as a forthcoming adaptation of John Updike’s Terrorist, along with ones by brand-name authors—James Patterson’s Sundays at Tiffany’s.

The network is looking to work with Patricia Cornwell to promote the two titles it acquired by her—At Risk and The Front—in April. Lopez said Lifetime had been "courting" Cornwell for some time. "We talked a lot about how we would support her books... and that was why she agreed to go with us."

Lopez noted that Lifetime, which does about 40 original movies a year, helped bump book sales for Jodi Picoult’s The Tenth Circle, which aired in June. (The network supplied art for a tie-in back cover.) "We drive [book] sales," Lopez said definitively, noting that publishers are working more closely with the network to ensure reprints are ready when the films air.

That Lifetime wants better material hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. "Agents are bringing me different things," Lopez said. "[We’re] getting earlier looks... and calls offering a heads up. Every time we have a success, it’s validating the fact that Lifetime is really in the literary world and the book business."