Gender in television?

While reading Lynne Joyrich's article on the perceived genderfication of television, i found myself constantly asking myself whether her examples really did represent a subtle pass towards feminization or if it was just a too far reaching analysis. While the note about televison catering towards women in the case of soap operas, wrapping them in as a passive audience, made some sense, the critique of the out-dated televison show Max Headroom fell short for me.

While the arguement that the choice of a woman and a child as assitants was interesting to me, and perhaps could represent a leaning in a gender-oriented direction, the notion that a fat man watching tv and then exploding- represented the feminine nature of televison threw me off.

I would certainly agree that roles portrayed by women and men within the context of television shows do show a bias in terms of sexuality, i do no think that it is the medium of televison in itself that causes this or adds to it. I am not entirely familiar with programming pre-1990, because i wasnt watching tv at that point, i feel that many modern shows behave in the same way that cinema does. And the ones that dont, (game shows, reality shows, sit coms) do represent a voyeuristic intent, but still do not come across to me as inherently feminine. Hopefully someone can point out what I am missing about this analysis.