TV's Missing Men Still Flocking To Games?

Thanks to Ad Age for its article discussing the young male demographic's move away from television and towards videogames. The article notes: "Some 32 million 18- to 34-year-old males constitute the mother lode for a vast array of marketers. That's about one-quarter of the total U.S. male population", and goes on to quote an advertising executive as suggesting: "Games have bigger viewership numbers than The Sopranos." Also of note is a referenced Codemasters survey, which "...found that 32% of gamers were over 30 and 47% were in their 20s. It was the latest data to confirm that video gaming, once almost exclusively associated with teenagers, has become a mainstream interest that is dramatically altering the pattern of media consumption by men."

Comments

I'm not surprised

[Quixotic Raindrop]

It seems to me that the generation that is now in its 30s and late 20s is the generation that the phrase "video gaming, once almost exclusively associated with teenagers" used to describe. All that happened is that while the media wasn't paying any attention, the home console video game generation grew up. Or, at least, grew older. Does this really surprise anyone?

Explains the shift towards female-oriented TV

[redelm]

If men are MIA, then TV writers and producers have to go after women to keep their eyeball score (ratings, share) in the profitable range.

I've noticed a shift towards programming to attract female audiences over the past ~10 years. There always has been some, just as there is some directed programming for males. But the shift is not just in female oriented networks (Lifetime), but also in mainstream broadcast programming. Some of this gets extreme. - pardon the commercial reference.

We interupt this First Person Shooter.....

[orthogonal]

"Games have bigger viewership numbers than The Sopranos."

Let me correct this statement: games have a larger number of players than "The Sopranos" has viewers.

In case you're an ad-man, or have an MBA, let me clearly state: gamers are not viewers.

Anyone remember the whole premise of cable-tv channels? That you'd pay for the channel upfront, and so avoid commercials?

Now this is only true for the so-called "premium" channels, so called because to view them you must pay an additional premium over and above what you pay for the basic cable service. Indeed it seems like most cable channels not only feature ads, but sell their entire late night time to infomercials. (Of course, I may be wrong; I only watch cable on vacation, because I won't buy lots of channels with lots of ads.)

So beware this discovery of games by Madison Avenue: prepare to find the games you've paid for to interrupt your play for commercials, or to sacrifice playability to product placements.

Re:Have Them Join Us

[Incoherent07]

I've noticed that the mass media in general has NO idea about anything concerning video games. They consider them a curiosity, a destabilizing element in our country's youth, or simply a pastime that's not worth reporting on. By and large, they're not much better with computer-related stories, unless it's on the business end.

Why is it that scientific stories generally have "science correspondents", weather reports are made by actual meteorologists, and even political stories are made by people who watch politics closely, but video gaming stories are reported by whatever clueless hack happens to be open at the moment?