Girls are in, women are out.

Found a Xena mention in this AP article:

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Giggle TV: Girls Are In, Women Out

LYNN ELBER AP Television Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Girls are back and television's got 'em.

There's Ally and Dharma and Caroline and Rachel and the girl on ``Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place.''

And the fall TV season is likely to bring more of the same, if Christina Applegate in a new sitcom by the producers of ``Friends'' is any sign. Applegate, remember, is
the sexpot daughter of ``Married ... With Children.''

Sweet young things are in, and sassy older women are suffering.

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Television reflected the changes with such 1970s groundbreakers as the single career woman in ``The Mary Tyler Moore Show'' and the feisty feminist in ``Maude.''
The TV image of women gained complexity with ``Murphy Brown,'' ``Roseanne'' and more.

The women portrayed in these shows were committed to jobs and families and friends and partners. While fallible, they were passionate about their lives and, more
often than not, were the stable center of their world.

Television's new girls are more of a mixed bag. They may have responsible jobs, like attorney Ally McBeal, but they have the emotional klutziness of a teen-ager and
the same level of self-involvement.

They are generally charming, cute as a button and perhaps somewhat representative of young women whose lives are still in flux. Nothing wrong with that; the
women's movement is always at its best when it is inclusive.

And there are unabashedly strong young women in a number of series, including the attorneys of ``The Practice,'' the FBI agent on ``The X-Files'' and the warrior princess Xena.

But spunky, seasoned females are a vanishing TV species, largely because of dollars and cents.

Older women characters are victims of their own maturity in a medium that increasingly seeks younger viewers - the ones favored by advertisers because they
supposedly spend more and are more easily influenced.

Although the range varies a bit depending on the network, the most-wanted viewers fall between 18 and 49.

``Murphy was 40 when the show premiered,'' Ms. English said of her sitcom character. ``She's 50 now. It's not with a little bit of irony that the show ended when
she turned 50, because advertisers think people end when they turn 50.''