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Along the way, the network, available on OSN in Bahrain, says, they may even learn to avoid becoming victims.
Investigation Discovery’s line-up includes a slew of shows that prey on women’s fears of murderous husbands or mystery assailants out to abduct them or their children.
A recent ad campaign for the new show Fatal Encounters imagines a murder victim’s thoughts from beyond the grave: “If I hadn’t opened that door, I might be alive today,” says the advertisment.
The network’s audience is about 60 per cent female, though network president Henry S Schleiff says it is the only female-skewing network that men might enjoy alongside their wives and girlfriends.
It’s really about the mystery,” he said. “And women, in particular, are very intuitive, and they love the puzzle solving. And they love the idea of using their intuition – so do guys – but they love the idea of sort of saying, ‘I knew it wasn’t the person who you thought did it, and that the evidence pointed to. I knew all along it was someone else’.”
The network’s nickname, ID, couldn’t be more fitting. It is both an abbreviation and a succinct explanation of exactly what the investigators – onscreen and at home – hope to do to the bad guys.
ID serves as a sort of safe zone for its armchair detectives, where not even the most delicate sensibilities are in danger. It wisely avoids depicting the violent acts described on its shows, said Marla Backer, an analyst at Hudson Square Research.
"You don’t see a tremendous amount of graphic violence, and there’s a reason for that,” she said. “They know the channel skews female, and they want to keep it that way.”
She credits ID with identifying a ‘clearly underserved’ and compelling genre.
