There's something missing on television this year: Shirts. On men.

So far this season, an array of new shows, from Elementary, Arrow and Chicago Fire to The New Normal, Emily Owens, M.D. and Last Resort, has paraded toned male torsos. Popular returning series such as Hawaii Five-0, New Girl and even Modern Family have flashed abs, as well.

And in what may be seen as a pop-culture turning point, CBS daytime game show The Price Is Right just introduced its first male model - and producers promise he'll go topless from time to time.

It wasn't always like this. In the 1970s and '80s, "it was a little like spotting a rare bird. You'd be watching TV, then suddenly there was this hunky shirtless guy," says Cosmopolitan editor at large John Searles. "Now every time you turn on the TV, there's a guy half-naked."

Some people theorize the recession has made the TV industry focus more intently on pitching to women, who watch the most television - and who still pack a lot of purchasing power in their handbags.

"You can tie an outbreak of man-flesh to the economic trends touched off by the great 'he-cession,' " says David Zinczenko, editor in chief of Men's Health, who calls this the least-surprising trend in TV history. "Sex sold when the medium was invented in the '40s, and it will still sell on whatever screens we'll be watching in 2042."

"Women generally watch more TV than men," says Brad Adgate of ad firm Horizon Media, so programmers are pandering to their core audience. He traces the recent trend partly to the social-media buzz created by another shirtless guy, soccer star David Beckham, in a commercial in this year's Super Bowl: "It got a lot of comments on Twitter; all these shows have hashtags, so it's just a way to get them in the conversation socially."

Jay Ryan, a native New Zealander who stars as Vincent Keller on CW's remake of Beauty and the Beast, buys into the marketing theories. "I think that it has to do with the audience demographic becoming heavily female-based. They are the No. 1 shoppers in retail, and TV is made to sell products. So it's only natural (for) male actors having to get their kits off."

As for The Price Is Right's first male model, Rob Wilson, executive producer Mike Richards says: "We're in daytime, and daytime is predominantly female. We've made lot of changes on The Price is Right, in terms of the prizes, to target women more.

"This is kind of an extension of know your audience and know what your audience likes," he says, "and the sound that the women in our audience made when they first saw Rob confirmed that we had done the right thing."

USA Today