In 1974, Ms. Magazine decided that it could reach an even wider audience if they produced a television program.
[2] Ms. collaborated with Dallas' public broadcast station, KERA-TV, to create one pilot episode of Woman Alive!,[1] and went on to collaborate with New York City's public broadcast station, Channel 13, for the following two series produced in 1975 and 1977.
The pilot episode consisted of several short documentaries, comedy sketches, interviews, and entertainment pieces, including: A short documentary about Pat and Charles Sackrey, Texas natives interviewed at their new home in Haydenville, Massachusetts about their attempt to improve their relationship; A consciousness-raising group in Des Moines, Iowa, which included Louise Noun; An interview with Gloria Steinem at the offices of Ms. Magazine; A round-table discussion amongst members of the National Black Feminist Organization, narrated by Steinem, about their historic first convention; A satirical comedy sketch by feminist comedian Lily Tomlin wherein she plays a television psychologist addressing the case of a distraught husband; and Melissa Manchester performing the songs "Home to Myself" and "O Heaven.
Sandra Hollin Flowers wrote that the central episodes—Massachusetts and North Carolina—did not include the “broader representation of that ‘diversity’ we were supposed to have seen.” And the NBFO segment was “totally insufficient”: “There is a great deal more relevance to NBFO … than Woman Alive!
moved to WNET in New York and became a realized television series with ten thirty-minute episodes.
[3] The New York Times reviewed this series, remarking that it was not militantly feminist in nature but rather appealed to a broad audience of American women, and while the New York Times remarked that Woman Alive!