Oxygen Looks for Bad Girls

By Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 12/3/2006 11:26:00 PM

For its new reality series, The Bad Girls Club, the Oxygen cable network is encouraging its female target viewers to post video of themselves being “bad.” But the network may regret its decision to let the “bad girls” run the show.

Rather than vet the clips for objectionable content, Oxygen will let the community of users police itself, à la YouTube or Wikipedia.

Cynthia Ashworth, Oxygen’s senior VP of marketing, says the show and its site have a tongue-in-cheek vibe that will deter users from posting inappropriate content. By the word “bad,” Ashworth says, “we mean having fun and maybe pushing the envelope.”

The show, from Real World production company Bunim/Murray, follows seven young women who live together and strive to abandon their “bad-girl ways.” There’s Ripsi, a spoiled rich girl with “anger issues”; Jodie, a straight-laced office worker by day, “sexy social butterfly” by night; and Leslie, an adult entertainer looking to leave the life.

But Ashworth isn’t worried about Oxygen’s getting burned by letting the girls go wild.

“When we say ‘bad girl,’” she says, “we don’t mean ‘prison bad girl.’”