Oxygen Gets All Sexy On Us

It happens to the best us us. We come up with a great idea. Get all high and mighty about how we're not going to be like everyone else. We promise not to sink into the gutter and use all the tired, old tricks to attract attention. We vow to be virtuous and laud ideals and intellectualism over insipidness. Then it happens. No one watches us. No one's heard of us. Our primary competitor towers over us and we are lost in a sea of television stupidity. Do we continue to stay the course? Do we try to beat them? No, sadly, we throw in the towel and join them.

After playing second fiddle to Lifetime for so long, Oxygen just can't stand it any longer and is pulling out the trump card of last resort: sex. Rather than rise above the misty-eyed success of Lifetime with higher brow offerings, Oxygen network has joined the titillation crowd with offering like "Talk Sex With Sue Johnson" and its new series, "Campus Ladies," a show that will somehow make the scenario of middle-aged, suburban women going back to college and frolicing with undergrad hotties funny.

Oops. Wait. There we go again, completely missing the point. Of course "Campus Ladies" will be a hit. What middle-aged soccer mom (Oxygen's entire viewing audience) wouldn't want to fantasize about leaving their lazy, balding, beer-gutted, good-for-nothing, recliner-sitting, remote-wielding, slothful, excuse-for-a-husband behind and fantasize about life with a bunch of ripped, six-packed college hottie adonis'? There's no denying the Nielsen-friendly power of a little harmless, drool-inducing fantasy.

Upstart New York Boutique agency Toy will assist Oxygen in getting the word out about its new, sex-driven direction. The agency is producing everything from billboard to print to, yes, logo-imprinted toilet paper distributed to bathrooms in bars near college campuses where, presumably, middle-aged women cruise for college hotties. While the campaign aims for male-type humor, we think Toy didn't quite finish the thought in one of the campaign's online banners that shows a woman wishing she had "a frat boy with rock hard abs."