TV Viewers' Average Age Hits 50

Ant writes "Variety reports on a recent study that says TV viewership's median age is outside the 18-49 years demographic: "The broadcast networks have grown older than ever — if they were a person, they wouldn't even be a part of TV's target demo anymore." These totals exclude DVR users, and apparently the oldest since they started tracking it. Of course you know what the means ... TV is for old people! The internet has confirmed it.

Comments

"The internet has confirmed it"

[Aussenseiter]

Confirmed it? More like caused it.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[telchine]

>>The internet has confirmed it.

Ah, but what does Netcraft say?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[NotQuiteReal]

Actually - TFA says "broadcast TV". You know, the networks. A lot of the stuff on "cable" isn't worth watching, by any demographic, so of course the audience for Network programming is skewed towards the older, wiser crowd. Even my 18 year old daughter shakes her head at the crap on MTV, for example. (I tell her it WAS cool, in the 80's, but that is dating myself)

I don't watch much TV either, but I do find I would rather watch something like "House" over the crap on MTV now-a-days. Although, the cable channels like Discovery actually win out in the end.

Most "TV" consumed in my house is first encoded to a disk drive, then watched in as close to 44 minutes per hour as possible.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[dgatwood]

Well, it's not just that. The Internet has helped, sure, but the biggest problem the networks face is declining viewership as cable channels do better and better jobs at hitting more specific niches. You have channels for everything from sci-fi to home improvement. The Internet merely takes that one step farther and creates channels for everything from nude archery to watching people's feet as they walk past aisles of clothing at J.C. Penney.

The point is that as the availability of options increases, the interest in individual options decreases, and younger viewers are far more likely to find those new options and take advantage of them than older viewers simply because they are more connected with other people. You hear about things on TV, the radio, email, around work, etc. Retired people have much more limited ways to find out about these things, and thus are much less likely to end up watching the Smurfs With Green Moustaches Drawn On By Monkeys In Tutus Hour. Therefore, the older demographic will be much slower to transition away from legacy technologies like broadcast TV and towards more niche-oriented content like cable channels, towards more on-demand technologies like iTunes, and towards more peer-generated services like YouTube.

I predicted the death of broadcast TV back in 1995. IIRC, I gave it 10-15 years. It may take a little longer, but I suspect I was a lot closer than the folks who read my essay suspected....

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[tomhudson]

MTV, for example. (I tell her it WAS cool, in the 80's, but that is dating myself)

Two points -

1. MTV as never *cool*, unless you define "cool" as being part of the "Under-15-OMFG-Gag-Me-With-A-Spoon!" crowd.
2. If you're "dating yourself", I hope you at least do it in private, so your kid doesn't see you.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[MrSteveSD]

Three things have killed TV.

1. The internet came along with it's wide variety of diversions.

2. TV companies decided to have hundreds of channels of crap, rather than a few good ones.

3. People are watching TV programs online now.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

And I can predict that gasoline will be over $6 in America within 5 to 15 years. Just because you state the obvious in an "essay" doesn't give you any points. Of course broadcast TV is going to eventually phase out. As things go digital all TV will be delivered in an IPTV style -- even switched digital is showing that the money is sending a stream to individual subscribers. Many cable companies are looking into centralized DVR solutions, on demand, etc. Its not hard to see that trend...

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

this is probably true...
I for one bittorent anything that I want to watch and the only time i tune into tv is to watch sporting events occasionally

I just can't stand watching 7 minutes of program and 3 minutes of ads, i've got better things to do with my time than watch commercials

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[maxume]

I'm pretty sure MTV was cool for at least a week. Maybe longer.

Also, the OMFG crowd didn't come about until sometime in the mid 90s.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[clang_jangle]

Actually, I was tuned in to MTV for the very first broadcast and for nearly a year it really was extremely cool. There were so few music videos back then, MTV was desperate and would play anything anyone sent in. New, old, mainstream, underground; it was a real free-for-all type of broadcast, largely formula free and totally unpredictable. Sadly, it just didn't stay that way very long.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

3b. Internet Killed the TV Star

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[markov_chain]

I'm impressed with what the big broadcasters did with Hulu.com. Shows stream with no strings attached, and the ads are extremely short and unintrusive.

Plenty of nerds boast about cutting ads out, but the sad truth is that they pay for the content. It's nice to see an ad scheme subtle enough not to cause people to subvert it.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[clang_jangle]

Smurfs With Green Moustaches Drawn On By Monkeys In Tutus Hour.

Hey yeah, when are they going to show that again anyway? Man, that was teh shizzle!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[plover]

Same here. From that first broadcast on, we used it as "noisy video wallpaper" for our dorm room. It was kind of a crappy hand-me-down TV set, but it was one of the few on the dorm floor, and MTV kept us company for that first year.

Then came the Dark Times, when the DJs became bigger celebrities than the musicians (at least in their own minds.) And about then we graduated, so it was all over anyway.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[ardle]

You had to be there ;-)

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[OakDragon]

TFA says "broadcast TV". You know, the networks.

Quite right. Maybe they're like my parents, who just get network TV on rabbit ears. Once I brought up the subject of satellite TV. My mom said "That'll be the day, when I pay for TV!"

In a way, I admire that. In another way, I like watching "Mythbusters."

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[tomhudson]

You had to be there ;-)

I was.

It (MTV) wasn't.

Except for Weird Al videos. I'll give you that one :-)

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[poopdeville]

The Internet merely takes that one step farther and creates channels for everything from nude archery to watching people's feet as they walk past aisles of clothing at J.C. Penney.

Both of those are fetishes.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[techno-vampire]

Also, the OMFG crowd didn't come about until sometime in the mid 90s.

Trust me, the kids of the 90s didn't invent that type of person. They just gave them their own name. You'll find people like that in every generation. What else do you think bobby-soxers or teenyboppers were?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[flappinbooger]

Awwww, come on, people! This is the best comment in the thread! The first video played on MTV was "video killed the radio star".

Come on, mods!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh-a oh!
Internet killed the video star.
Internet killed the video star.
Streaming-video-on-demand came and broke your heart.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[flajann]

Three things have killed TV. ... 2. TV companies decided to have hundreds of channels of crap, rather than a few good ones.

A few good ones? Back when there were only a few channels, the only good channel was PBS. The rest sucked, but we were too young to realize it. You try to watch some of that awful stuff now and you'll cringe. How did we ever make it out of the 70's?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I predicted the death of broadcast TV back in 1995. IIRC, I gave it 10-15 years. It may take a little longer, but I suspect I was a lot closer than the folks who read my essay suspected....

That's a worthless prediction. Mediums generally don't die because there's a newer one. Radio was supposed to kill newspapers. TV was supposed to kill radio. But newspapers and radio had both changed in response to its "replacement". Their audience did diminish (and are still diminishing) but they aren't dying. If you really want to push it, given that eventually most internet use is at least one stage broadcast wirelessly, the model of broadcasting only changes, but it's still broadcasting.

With the advent of digital TV, we do get more options through the use of subchannels, and the inexpensive and easy to use digital converter box makes them just as easy to get to as the original channels.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[0123456789]

Hulu is actually a little smarter than that. Try running it with an ad blocker, and then without. If you run it without the adblocker, each ad runs for between 7 and 15 seconds. With an adblocker, you get a silent, black screen (with a reminder that it's ad-supported, and a "warning" to switch off your adblocker) for 20 seconds wherever an advert would have been. They're cunning enough to give people a reason to watch it with the adverts.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Kristoph]

Netcraft says the daily heroic killed TV (also relationships, pets, and occasionally a small child).

]{

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[EvanED]

In a way, I admire that. In another way, I like watching "Mythbusters."

If it really is just Mythbusters you miss, you can probably get a season of it on DVD for less money ($30) than a month of the level of cable where you get Discovery (maybe 40-50?).

You have to wait, and if there's a *lot* of stuff you'd watch it may not be the right decision. But it may well be reasonable for many.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Khaed]

MTV might not have been cool, but it wasn't all bad in the early 90s, either.

I didn't watch it religiously, so I only remember the stuff I liked and thus watched -- Aeon Flux, MTV's Oddities, and actual music videos before the R&B/Pop/whateverthehellNickelbackis/rap music videos that are mostly unimaginative crap. (There is *one* rap video, with different jerseys and booty dancers.)

Then they hired that weird annoying scarecrow VJ, and the boyband craze started, and Britney and eight THOUSAND Real World marathons and so on and so forth.

Of course, I was a young teenager, so maybe I just grew out of it. But Aeon Flux and the Oddities (c'mon, The Head needs to be on DVD!) are still cool, for cartoons came up with during cocaine binges. (And anybody that saw one episode of The Head knows what I mean...)

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[linzeal]

All the mediums have something to offer. As a first day XM subscriber to present I can attest that I no longer regularly listen to analog radio, but I do still listen to the local NPR station for local news. The problem currently with broadcast radio media is that too much is syndicated garbage that does not pertain to me or my locale a local radio stations have been waylaid by nationwide conglomerates. The same thing in my eyes is occurring to television and it sickens me. We had 5 local news teams 2 years ago when I still tuned in on the weekends to catch up on local news and we now only have 3. The other 2 just run syndicated talking head shows in the same time slots.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[IntlHarvester]

Also, the OMFG crowd didn't come about until sometime in the mid 90s.

Since we're dating ourselves, he's more or less quoting the 1982 song "Valley Girl".

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

Never had tv except for a couple of years since I left home at 20 - now 59. Can't get NBA unless I subscribe to almost all the channels. No thank you. Got internet for my 50 birthday. Hobby computer guy - surfing, youtube is my recent tv, python programming and playing basket is a damn good life.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't watched live broadcast TV for a while now.
I get home too late to watch the evening news, I then get dinner on, get the kids to bed and then either hit the 'net for news or maybe play a DVD or watch something downloaded (most of the stuff I want is not on broadcast TV here anyway - new DR Who, Torchwood, Battlestar Galactica, Eureka etc. I get these in near HD quality, and simply play them on my TV through my old hacked XBox.

For the kids we usually stick to DVD's as the local video library rents their non-new releases on Mondays and Tuesdays for $1 for 8 days. Plenty of time for us to get sick of Ben 10 and Charlie & Lola, and the kids get exposed to less advertising. Win-Win!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[DogDude]

Keep in mind that people who pay to watch TV are also paying to watch advertising. I can't really imagine why somebody would want to do that.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Maxo-Texas]

Cool is 24 hours a day music videos with 90% mainstream and 10% "learn new stuff"/Bizarre/off the wall".

MTV was indeed cool. Through about 1988. Then it lost it and became crap.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[infonography]

by this you mean that younger would-be TV viewers are turning away from the set and locking on to youtube and cable/Sat

Can cable and Sat be really considered broadcast (meaning Free not as in beer). These mediums are morphing into a subset of the intraweb. Most of the cable like John Stewart etc are tuning in to the web and that is the draw to their audience.

I stopped watching broadcast in the 80s [driven out by Three's Company and who's the boss], I mostly ignore the sat and cable too. Because I have a better screen on my desk then whats under the dust in the living room.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Shemmie]

I'm 26 - recently moved out for the first time. I haven't bothered with a TV, as the one thing I actually adore on TV - House - I'd rather buy the DVD's.

If every show was of that quality... as it isn't, it's a waste of money. I'd rather pay for my ISP and have all the fun of the net.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Innomin8]

It really doesn't surprise me, given all the rubbish they put on TV these days. * Idol Big Brother Dancing with the *s Survivor And many, many others... all absolute rubbish. Then they go and cancel the *good* shows like Firefly, Futurama and countless others, and wonder why noone is watching?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Machtyn]

And just yesterday, my wife was watching Raymond or some such show, and lo the video squished into a box and a text ad was displayed for some bank. I thought and stated, "Great! Now they're advertising to us during non-commercial breaks."

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[omeomi]

so of course the audience for Network programming is skewed towards the older, wiser crowd. Even my 18 year old daughter shakes her head at the crap on MTV, for example.

You know there are more channels on cable that have programming geared towards the "older, wiser crowd", right? MTV isn't the only channel on cable. Channels like The History Channel, Discovery, TLC, The Documentary Channel, and well, CNN, CSPAN, and others provide way more interesting TV than most of the network shows.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[RevWaldo]

MTV was cool when it was putting on stuff like this. (Quicktime)

Stevie Washington, the angry youth!
Born to die!
New York's New York
The turn of the century
All crime!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Hooya]

well, i don't know if MTV was "cool" or not. but i did enjoy "headbangers ball" quite a bit. that was good while it lasted.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[hairyfeet]

Ooh,yeah,much crapola in the 70's. Remember "The Battle of the Network Stars"? The giant turd fest seemed to be on every week and usually consisted of Robert Conrad kicking the crap out of whichever unfortunate celebrities got sent against him. At least they put the girls in jiggly t-shirts. Or Susan Anton? I don't know who she was boning but they seemed to give her a craptastic new show every other week. And my friends wondered why I spent all my time with my nose buried in a paperback sci-fi or horror.

For me good 70's TV consisted of the 6 Million Dollar man,The Bionic Woman,and Battlestar Galactica before they jumped the shark by making it to earth and putting that annoying kid in charge over Lorne Greene. Of course I also watched Wonder Woman but I had no idea if it was any good because I was too busy drooling over Lynda Carter in that outfit to notice. But as always this is my 02c,your source of good 70's cheese may vary.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

http://poptix.net/funny/videostar.swf

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[trytoguess]

There are ads that are 30 seconds though... Also, I seem to be getting a whole lot of ads for feminine products. For god sakes I'm watching Babylon 5! Methinks they should consider the gender demographics for that fanbase.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[ben2umbc]

Keep in mind that people who pay to watch TV are also paying to watch advertising. I can't really imagine why somebody would want to do that.

I pay so I can skip the ads

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[zippthorne]

TLC is not geared toward the "older, wiser" crowd. It's geared towards the people who don't have the patience to watch "This Old House" but think they're interested in home improvements. And endlessly similar hard-tail choppers, for some reason.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

people who pay to watch TV are also paying to watch advertising

So, the implication is... nobody should watch advertising. TV should be:

a) Free, produced for the pure joy of entertaining others.
b) Paid for by the govenment.
c) Just go away.

??? Enlighten us.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[RiotingPacifist]

I pay so I can skip the ads

I torrent so I don't have to

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[RiotingPacifist]

have you heard of these new fangled inventions called DVD-drives?
aww i cant be botherd to continue this crap so ill cut to the chase...your an idiot.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

i torrent because :
- some TV shows are not available in France.
- i want to watch them without poor voice acting.
- i want to understand why some tv show are a hit in France only ( really good voice acting can make a difference ).
- i can.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[pafrusurewa]

I'm impressed with what the big broadcasters did with Hulu.com. Shows stream with no strings attached

Not quite. Works for US IPs only.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[drinkypoo]

MTV as never *cool*, unless you define "cool" as being part of the "Under-15-OMFG-Gag-Me-With-A-Spoon!" crowd.

Went to $hort dogs house, they was watchin yo! mtv raps

But seriously, since the teenagers control so much spending power, that's the only kind of "cool" that matters - since the whole concept is inherently fucking irrelevant in every other way.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[foniksonik]

2 points going for MTV circa 1992...

1) Liquid Television (including Aeon Flux but not including Beavis and Butthead)

2) Ren and Stimpy before it moved to Nickelodeon

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, a message saying basically "you cant watch this because our lawyers screwed up" is really impressive.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

While contemplating the joy of irony I was wondering if you intended to say "you're an idiot"

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[dintech]

Luckily for the advertisers, the oldies are holding all the cash anyway. Now the hard part, how to get the tight-fisted old curmudgeons to let go of it...

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Candid88]

This is the main reason I download torrents. For me, nothing ruins the enjoyment a good TV show like commercials!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[thermian]

I haven't owned a tv for over a decade (I'm 42, so well into the age range that is supposed to like TV).

Its the advertising really. I can't stand it. The time I loved TV was in the seventies. Since then my use of tv has waned, and now died.

Now I buy series on dvd if I decide I like them. Usually this deciding is via encountering them on the internet.

In this way I got to watch five seasons of Stargate without ever having seen an episode before then. It was awesome, much more fun then suffering years of waiting and those damn adverts.

Also, the first time I saw Firefly, all the episodes were in the right order.

My son doesn't share my dislike of adverts, but even so he doesn't watch tv much. He uses his pc for entertainment, as I do.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

# MTV as never *cool*, unless you define "cool" as being part of the "Under-15-OMFG-Gag-Me-With-A-Spoon!" crowd.

Spoken by someone who has never seen LiquidTV, The Head or The Maxx.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[James Youngman]

Your witty put-down would have carried more sting if you could actually spell.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[ydrol]

New, old, mainstream, underground; it was a real free-for-all type of broadcast, largely formula free and totally unpredictable.

Hmm as someone who was into Jazz-Funk, Good Disco (Brothers Johnson/Slave/The Jacksons/McFadden Whitehead) not to mention the early electro (not hip-hop) , there was nothing there for me. It was definitely uncool.

Some may argue Michael Jackson's Billie Jean that was the start of the Demise, but I think the problem lies with the people that chose what acts get signed more than the acts themselves.

Roll on the death of the **AA

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[stupidflanders]

So THEY'RE the ones responsible for keeping shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, Two and a Half Men, The King of Queens, Rules of Engagement, Desperate Housewives, The George Lopez Show, How I Met Your Mother, Reba, The Hills and all that other junk on the air. Dang old people! Get off my lawn! :-p

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[TapeCutter]

The "video wallpaper" remark reminds me of a show that ran from midight to dawn on Friday and Sat night's in Melbourne Australia circa 1978 onwards. A group of us (16-19yo) would congregate in a bungalow and get pissed/stoned while it played in the background. I remeber MTV as 'special' because it was the first station dedicated to music. Australia didn't get cable until the 90's but those type of shows recieved a huge boost from the success of MTV and all the stations started doing it.

Luckily I'm only 49 so I don't watch that much TV but I still occasionally enjoy watching Rage on the ABC. The thing I like about the show is that all the clips are picked by the guest presenter(s) and all the presenters are musicians of one flavour or another so you get clips of everything from eminem to elvis. I found from watching the show that just because a kid is in a "boy/girl band" and has an ego the size of a blimp, does not mean the same person is clueless when it comes to picking video clips.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[drsquare]

I don't see the problem with adds. It pisses me off watching the BBC and having no breaks to go for a piss or make a brew.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

There was a time where MTV showed rock videos and had shows like 'Beavis and Butthead' and 'Sifl and Olly.' Where their target wasn't the pop loving 'tweeners.'

That was when it was cool. Once people realized there was more money in appealing to the 'tweens' who LOVE boy bands and no-talent whores, MTV started down the hill of suck.

What gets me, is that M2 (which, when it came out, they said would ONLY play videos) now has more Real World/Road Rules/Other Shitty Show than actual videos.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Don't forget Trick my Truck, the show that puts lipstick on pigs. "Lets make it look pretty, but just totally ignore the engine with three quarters of a million miles on it."

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

But look at what the Internet has done to the Newspaper. Look at what the MP3 player is starting to do to radio.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[rpillala]

MTV had one good show called Austin Stories from 1997. I watched it again about a month ago and it still holds up. I'm not sure how you'd go about watching without buying it or borrowing from someone who owns it.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[ben2umbc]

Torrents are great, but you can't watch CNN live from a torrent - though sometimes you can watch stuff live on CNN.com, it just doesn't translate well to torrents. My cable bill is never going away - at least its verizon fios.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[fprintf]

All this hating on MTV. There were lots of musical styles back then, as now, and MTV catered to a few of them all at once. By the time headbangers ball came on, they were already carving up the airtime into demographic segments. They realized that the headbangers were only a small segment of those watching, and those of us who didn't like it, were just as happy to see it segregated to 9 pm+. Actually I hated when the regular videos went off and the metal ones came on at night, I thought it sucked.

Anyway, everyone says the MTV sucked after the first year. I don't find that to be true. There was lots to watch, between some of the unique video styles (e.g. Dire Straits Money For Nothing) and some of the early "shows" (e.g. Real World and that game show w/ Ken somebodyorother). It just wasn't so new anymore, so watching MTV became more selective rather than exclusive viewing... e.g. If a really good video, like A-HA, came on, I'd pay attention and watch, but otherwise I'd pay more attention to my homework/fishtank.

fprint
*self-confessed lover of early MTV pop*

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Stiletto]

Um, did you forget the point of the post you were replying to?

How about

d) Supported entirely by advertising dollars
or
e) Supported entirely by cable subscriptions, like the ORIGINAL PROMISE OF PAY TV.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[flajann]

Wonder Woman! Yep, I too was doing a bit of drooling! Remember "Star Lost"?

In the 80's I was drooling over Lala Ward as "Romana 2" -- every geek's dream girl. Richard Dawkins, that lucky dog. Tom Baker is an idiot for not being able to keep her...

There was one story that came out about this family traveling in space (no, not "Lost in Space") that fell down a black hole. Can't recall the name of it to save my life, but it aired on PBS.

Yes, I too kept my nose buried in SF novels -- many. Was always annoyed why my English teachers never considered SF literature. They always gave us boorish stuff to read like "The Good Earth" and "Red Badge of Courage". Though, I did pull one on them once. One English teacher asked us to do a term paper on an English writer, and I chose -- of course -- Authur C Clarke and his story "2001". That was lots of fun.

Today, no one in our family watches TV *at all* -- we don't even have TV service. We just grab what we want to see via BitTorrent, Google Video, or YouTube (though I prefer Google for the better quality and that it's longer than 5 minutes).

Occasionally I'll be stuck in, say, a hotel room or a friend's house, and I'll turn on the boob tube to see if I'm missing anything. Every time I do this I am always astonished at *how much worse* it's become since we defenestrated the TV set years ago. Just firm confirmation that we did the right thing.

And with the strong push to go HDTV, I really don't see the point in that either. Now you'll be able to watch the finest crap in a higher resolution, wide screen format. Of course, there's the few good things coming out on Blue Ray that may make it worth my while to go HDTV, as well as all the cool video games that can take advantage of that format!

Good bye TV!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[MMC Monster]

There is a hell of a lot of stuff on cable that is pure gold.

The Discovery channel, History channel, CNN or MSNBC (depending on your slant), etc.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[justthinkit]

Since this is both wrong and hurtful to pigs, I have to comment despite mod points.

Some TmT episodes have in fact involved engine work. And changing old tires for new on pretty much every truck can hardly be considered lipstick -- more like a boob job or at least a tummy tuck.

And the idea that all of this is being done on a "pig" is insane. Truckers drive a rig for a million miles. We might do that in a lifetime, they do it in 10 or 15 years. Then do it again with their next truck. They also invest tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in their rig. And live in it 24x7 in some cases. So you are saying they don't deserve a seat without rips, dash lights that can actually be seen, and a TV to fall asleep to? Tricking out a trucker's truck was/is an untapped market and a win for the little guys who drive them. If nothing else the show is worth watching for Rhino's artwork.

I think I know who the pig is in this analogy.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[cayenne8]

"MTV might not have been cool, but it wasn't all bad in the early 90s, either."

Actually, if you were a teen back when MTV came on..it WAS cool. I remember just being anxious for when cable would actually be deployed and offered to my neighborhood. Different parts of the city got it at different times. Then, MTV hit...the "I want my MTV" campaign happened, there was a move to get it on cable in our city.

It was a big deal. The early videos broke new ground. It was sad to see, though, many popular groups start to fade away early because either they didn't see the value of the video format, or frankly they were a bit ugly....better heard than seen. That was one of the bad things about MTV. It did, however revive a sagging industry...music became more popular again.

MTV dictated to a large extent...fashion too. Guys started getting earrings...I remember getting mine way back then, and it was still a bit of an oddity. I got lots of stares those first few ears.

It was a big deal, a cool deal. I remember watching the Live Aid broadcasts all day, and borrowing a friends VCR to record different stuff from MTV and some of the things on broadcast tv...I need to dig those tapes out to get the parts off that either were lost or not allowed on the DVDs.

The early VJ's were household names to a large extent.

But, then...for some reason...MTV (and the other spin offs) just quit being about music.

So yes, I guess now, they should play "Internet killed the video star"

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[k_187]

All this hating on MTV. There were lots of musical styles back then, as now, and MTV catered to a few of them all at once.

That's very true, people don't realize that the first concert ever broadcast on MTV was the Charlie Daniels Band.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[weinerdog]

You know there are more channels on cable that have programming geared towards the "older, wiser crowd", right? MTV isn't the only channel on cable. Channels like The History Channel, Discovery, TLC, The Documentary Channel, and well, CNN, CSPAN, and others provide way more interesting TV than most of the network shows.

I'm not sure how long its been since you watched TV, but TLC stopped showing educational programming around the mid-90s, and for the past 5 or 6 years at least has been pretty much exclusively wedding and makeover shows. Discovery has Mythbusters and... well, at least it has Mythbusters. CNN stopped doing journalism years ago and just does gossip and the kind of quality reporting you get in free daily "news" papers. Being in Canada, I don't get the History Channel, but the Canadian equivalent (History Television) has dumbed itself down considerably over the past decade; don't know if there is a correlation in programming. I don't get CSPAN either. Is it as cool as CPAC? I was under the impression that congressional speeches were even more depressing and shook one's faith in democracy even more than parliamentary ones.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Since we're dating ourselves

You must be new here - it's either that, or not dating at all.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Lodragandraoidh]

Ah - but what was the last one?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[flappinbooger]

Very insightful...

It was probably on after Beavis and Butthead back when I was in college from '93 to '97.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[funkify]

I predicted the death of broadcast TV back in 1995. IIRC, I gave it 10-15 years. It may take a little longer, but I suspect I was a lot closer than the folks who read my essay suspected....

Actually it will happen in 2009 with the advent of the federally mandated digital-only signals. What the hell were they all thinking? The effect will be catastrophic to the networks -- most people will NOT be able to receive more than one or two channels for free, many homes will not get any channels at all. Apparently they think everyone is going to run out and pay for their mindless drivel? Pfft.

Even living in a semi-major market (Orlando, Florida) I am able to receive 2 channels through digital, and that's not even all of the time. I went to visit family in Idaho Falls, Idaho, which is not a tiny place, and they have exactly one channel whose signal is strong enough to receive digitally. Most of America is going to be cable, satellite, or nothing, and the way gas prices have gone, it's going to be nothing for a lot of people.

Congrats, US Congress, you killed broadcast TV!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want to watch CNN Anyway?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[jedidiah]

If you think that MTV was never *cool* then you just haven't been around long enough.

MTV was a good idea that quickly deteriorated into nonsense having no relevance to the original concept.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[kalirion]

From what I hear, claim to be a Nigerian prince works just fine?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[jedidiah]

...and this is different from the analog broadcast situation how exactly?

Many of us (probably most of us) have been subscribed to cable for 20 or 30
years for no other reason than the fact that local broadcasts are unwatchable.

Digital makes broadcast TV watchable from where I'm at (outer suburbs). Otherwise
I might be able to get one or two really grainy channel if I am lucky. With Digital,
I can tune into 35 channels with 15 that are actually of some interest to me.

Tuner quality matters though. My $2000 HDTV can't tune into what my HDHomeRun can.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Gilmoure]

Who else would a slashdotter date?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[MMC Monster]

Does hulu still work under Linux? I'm having problems the last couple days.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[jedidiah]

ppppfffft!

There's plenty of good stuff to be culled from the history
of Television. Even the 70's weren't a total wasteland. Some
of it is nice for being "unintentionally funny".

This is the real problem for current station owners.

In a few months of spending as much as I do for my cable
subscription I can accumulate enough stuff to make my own
private independent broadcast channel: JediTV. Stuff that
I like and have re-watched over the years as it comes and
goes from "real" TV stations I can just buy and watch when
I feel like it.

I also don't have to worry about them cutting stuff out to
allow for more commercials. This has escalated in recent
years.

"PBS type stuff" is actually something where the cable channels do it better.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[jedidiah]

Trying to watch B5 on Hulu made me finally get around to buying B5.

If you are at all used to a PVR, then Hulu is incredibly stupid.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[smellsofbikes]

I agree with the general thesis you're proposing here.

Thing is: there are (at least) two different demographics when it comes to media.
1. People like you (and me) who want to watch nude archery and people's feet in JC Penney. In other words, people who watch things because they find those topics interesting.

2. People who like Britney/American Idol/whatever because that's what their friends like, and they're trying to keep themselves educated (for lack of a better word) in what's become a microcultural niche that's important to them.

The latter group clump, and they're the ones the advertisers are primarily after, because they are large, easy markets. They're also more easily served by television, and they self-amplify the buzz about whatever the carefully marketed Next Big Thing is.

If the TV niche -- the combination of advertising, marketing, and show -- can keep that latter demographic, it'll keep making large amounts of money and stay alive indefinitely.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG! you are sooo right!!

crap...

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Gilmoure]

Heh. Wife and I just found Firefly that way. After moving to new house and being told it would be months to get cable in, we got used to picking up DVD series instead of catching as able on tv. Am looking forward to another year or two, when Apple/Netflix/Amazon has their act together on the video on demand dl, for just about all shows. That'll be cool!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Gilmoure]

Here in the U.S., the History channel seems to devote about 90% of programming to WWII/Rome/Egypt. If you want to get sloshed, start taking a shot any time you see a German cross on a tank or plane. Every third commercial will get you hammered.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[God'sDuck]

I got lots of stares those first few ears.

You know, if you sterilize the needles, you get fewer stares and go through fewer ears...

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[niktemadur]

I only remember the stuff I liked and thus watched -- Aeon Flux, MTV's Oddities...

Don't forget Liquid Television, 120 Minutes, and the fact that on weekdays they showed episodes of Monty Python as well as The Young Ones, back when non-music shows were the exception and not the rule.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[kentrel]

Hulu is not available in the UK. Anyone know of a work around or an alternative site?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[niktemadur]

Then came the Dark Times, when the DJs became bigger celebrities than the musicians (at least in their own minds).

Jesus H Christ, the original fuckin' VeeJays!
Martha Quinn
Nina Blackwood
JJ Jackson
A Puerto Rican guy with the ever-cool latino afro
Some white guy somethingorother

Curious that the music was segregated, while the hosts were not.
Just about the only elements missing from that roster are a Soviet Russian and an old Korean guy.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[ssstraub]

That's what the "pause" button on your DVR is for.

You don't have to pay for cable/satellite to use a DVR.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[niktemadur]

It WAS cool, in the 80's, but that is dating myself

True story from a friend of mine:

"So my nephew came over to the house, and my mother suggested him and me pass that Saturday afternoon skateboarding. I thought it was a no-brainer, but then my nephew protested - "But all my uncle knows are eighties moves!" And that hit me like a ton of bricks, the moment I truly realized, for the first time, that I was getting old and wasn't cool anymore." Endquote.

However, life has a way of balancing things out, that bratty little nephew's all grown up now, and all he knows in 2008 are nineties moves. So how does it feel, huh? How are you coping with your post-adolescence obsolescence? You little prick. Now get off my lawn!!!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[niktemadur]

As someone who was into Good Disco (Brothers Johnson/Slave/The Jacksons/McFadden Whitehead)...

Dude, how can you possibly say this and neglect to mention Chic in the same breath?
Blasphemy, I say. Call in the Spanish Inquisition!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[fyrewulff]

Both Trick My Truck and Pimp My Ride (done by the same people) do engine work in addition to the body renovations.

They started making a bigger deal out of it in PMR recently because people kept constantly asking about it.

There was even a PMR episode where instead of renovating the car, they got the guy a new one because he was studying to be a mechanic and they wanted him to keep it as his 'thesis'. (They've had to get a completely new car a couple of other times. Those just aren't as interesting, but I thought it was cool that they did that nonetheless)

The annoying thing about new Pimp My Rides is the GAS guys have barely any personality, and for some reason the hands-free cameras they are using have horrible sound. They're also starting to show less and less of the actual process :(

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[slapout]

"everything from sci-fi to home improvement"

There's a sci-fi channel? Which one is it? All I can get is one that plays crappy B movies.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[fm6]

It's true the Internet has stolen most of TV's younger audience. (Then again, I'm over 50, and the Internet has seduced me away from TV too. But I'm not significant, statistically or otherwise.) But that doesn't mean that TV is going to change its programming to cater to older viewers. It might very well have the opposite effect. Because older viewers don't buy stuff, so selling their eyeballs isn't very profitable.

When I was a kid, there were a lot of westerns on TV. Some of them got good ratings. But starting in the early 70s, the networks started canceling them, because their main audience was pre-boomer types who had relatively little disposable income. So all those westerns got replaced by shows that catered to a younger, hipper crowd. Ratings declined, but advertising revenue grew.

The networks must be tearing their hair out over the loss of younger viewers to the Internet. They'd sell their families into slavery to get them back. So expect a lot of pandering-to-youth programming. Won't work of course. Internet programming is more popular because it's more creative and risk-taking. Networks just don't know how to do those things.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[fm6]

Netcraft says that all TV comes out of a proxy server in Holland.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[jemtallon]

I disagree - the History channel is more than 10% FUD and fear-mongering now. It seems every time I flip to it there's a special on how the world will end in 2012, how super-volcanoes could destroy 1/4 of the US, or whether bigfoot really exists.

The only thing that keeps me coming back is the occasional "Cities of the Underworld" episode. And once in a while I feel like an Egypt or Rome special and they do deliver on those, as you noted.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Gilmoure]

Ah, I tend to get my catastrophe porn from Discovery Science. Love me some asteroid hits!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[greyhueofdoubt]

Don't forget Valley Girls? Whose bizarre inflections have spread across America? So you can't tell if a teenager is asking a question or making a statement?

Hearing it makes my brain cringe? I can't imagine what it would be like? For a non-english-speaker to parse valley girl talk? Effectively?

-b?

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[greyhueofdoubt]

>>the networks face is declining viewership as cable channels do better and better jobs at hitting more specific niches.

That's kind of interesting because to me, that's an example of the long-tail theory in action. There was a slashdot story just a few days ago about how the long tail theory didn't work.

I wonder if those people looked at cable tv in their research.

-b

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[niktemadur]

Or Susan Anton? I don't know who she was boning but they seemed to give her a craptastic new show every other week.

Susan Anton! Now that's a blast from the pre-historic past. BTW, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm 90% sure on this one, she was boning (wait for it...) Dudley Moore.

6 Million Dollar man,The Bionic Woman,and Battlestar Galactica before they jumped the shark.

Yeah, but what about Buck Rogers In The 25th Century? It did have that craptastic R2D2/C3PO ripoff in Twikki ("iri bidi bidi bidi bidi - hey Buck!") and his wise sidekick toted around like a Flava Flav accessory, but that Erin Gray chick was smoking hot.

Then there was The Incredible Hulk, simultaneously thrilling and poignant, always walking away at the end of the episode, with those haunting piano chords.

As you mentioned Robert Conrad, but only in association with TBOTNS, I'd like to think something slipped your mind here, besides daring you to knock this Duracell battery off my shoulder - what about Baa Baa Black Sheep? Take that concept, transport it from WWII South Pacific into outer space, and there you have Apollo and Starbuck, with Cylon fighters filling in for Japanese Zeros.

Finally, for the grownup crowd, Columbo was the cream of seventies television. Peter Falk molded one of television's truly great characters right there.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[An ominous Cow art]

Liquid Television was good. I was never much of a fan of Beavis and Butthead either, but I did like Daria quite a bit.

The only other attractions MTV had for me was Weird Al, Monty Python, and The Young Ones.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[An ominous Cow art]

I'm your age, and advertising is killing TV for me as well. I use a TiVo, so I don't see actual commercials (I even look away while fast-forwarding; I have no interest in even being aware what brands are being pushed). But the product placement and #$%%ing popups about other shows are pissing me off so much that I'm not going to bother replacing my analog cable box with a digital one whenever they stop transmitting the analog signal, which I think is going to happen Real Soon Now.

I used to say that I was going to hold out and not cancel my service until the Simpsons were finished, but I'm not going to make it that far.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[master_p]

I download every show I want to see, when I want to see it.
Come on, TV execs, can't you see that TV programming is a thing of the past! just put out your programs in a server so as that we can download them!!!

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Doctor Faustus]

And The State. I never really got into Kids in the Hall, because The State was on at the same time, doing the same kind of humor, better.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust me, the kids of the 90s didn't invent that type of person. They just gave them their own name. You'll find people like that in every generation. What else do you think bobby-soxers or teenyboppers were?

Trust you?! You are obviously above 40.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yah it is pretty sad the opinions about cable/satellite around here consist of people who have never really got to enjoy the product, but rather read about the service on blogs or at a friends house for majority.

They really have no idea that there are so many good channels out there with lots of educational informationa.
Who cares about MTV as it has gotten crappier and you can use your channel changer to watch something else; don't be so bitter/jealous of what others like to watch on a channel.

A $3/month rental fee for DVR that I can exchange anytime in-store for free if it breaks is filled with content I can select at anytime to watch in between a busy schedule.

Here is a list of my comedy and educational choice of stuff recorded on my DVR.
The Universe - The History Channel
Man-Made - National Geographic Channel
RENO 911! - Comedy Central
In The Shadow of the Moon - Discovery Channel
Tuna Cowboys - National Geographic Channel
2008 AVN Adult Movie Awards - Showtime
Jay Leno/Letterman/Kimmel - All late night shows I cannot stay up for

Cables On-Demand service sweeps the rest though as it makes having a DVR basically obsolete as the cable companies store it all for streaming service at anytime.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[dgatwood]

Broadcast TV, unlike radio, has nothing to offer over alternatives, though. Radio is still around because you can listen to it in your car easily. The number of home radio listeners in the U.S. is rapidly declining in the face of competing technologies.

Broadcast TV... very, very few people watch in cars, and once analog TV goes away, doing so really won't be practical because of the antenna requirements. After analog TV goes away, there will be virtually no one watching TV except through cable. Even now, barely over 10% of TV households in the U.S. lack cable or satellite service. A large percentage of those people are in fringe reception areas and will not even be able to receive HDTV signals because instead of degrading gracefully like analog signals do, digital TV below a certain signal level just plain can't be decoded. HDTV is the beginning of the end for OTA TV, and good riddance.

The way I see it, we've been wasting hundreds of megawatts of power on these transmitters for no good reason for several years. It would be cheaper for the stations to shut down their transmitters, become cable-only/satellite-only stations, and buy DirecTV service for every person who complains than to continue maintaining the broadcast TV infrastructure (nationwide, about $4.2 billion annually to cover one DirecTV set per affected household versus some $61 billion annually in electrical costs for the transmitters by themselves, not counting equipment maintenance costs, keeping a licensed engineer on staff to maintain it, etc.)

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[dgatwood]

The latter group clump, and they're the ones the advertisers are primarily after, because they are large, easy markets. They're also more easily served by television, and they self-amplify the buzz about whatever the carefully marketed Next Big Thing is.

Flip side, they're more easily targeted by cable TV than broadcast TV, and the networks are getting little real advantage from maintaining all those legacy broadcast TV stations. Frankly, the OTA TV is a money sink for them, and that's one reason they're struggling. Their license agreements with the OTA stations make it much harder for them to expand to new delivery mechanisms, etc.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[StikyPad]

They'll probably lose a good portion of their assets when they start dying off.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Sique]

There is a) digital terrestrial TV and b) satellite TV. My last count on my sat receiver showed ~1100 channels. Cable may carry ~200 channels (analog cable 30), so Cable is no alternative for me. ;)

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[IntlHarvester]

most people will NOT be able to receive more than one or two channels for free, many homes will not get any channels at all

Your anecdote for mine - Here channels that used to be half-fuzz come in crystal clear on DTV. Plus there's a whole bunch of extra PBS stations on the digital band. DTV is a huge improvement over analog for me. (And, its silly to handwave about "most people" based on two datapoints. Get some real statistics to back you up.)

I think the bigger risk for the networks is that the "TV in every room" people won't buy converters for all their sets and therefore will not soak up as much advertising.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[hairyfeet]

Oh,I thought about mentioning Buck Rogers,if for no other reason that the hotness that was Erin Grey,but IIRC it came in at the very tail end of '79,so I always thought of it more as an early '80s show than I did a '70s show. And I wanted to smack that damned twikki SO hard just to get it to shut up! However I did think at the time that they had one of the coolest opening shots I had ever seen. And a piece of trivia: The Buck Rogers fighter was originally cooked up for Battlestar but the producers didn't like it so they came up with the Viper instead

The Hulk and Baa Baa Black Sheep was shown in reruns every afternoon on my local ABC affiliate so I loved to watch those,and I agree that the ending theme was some seriously haunting music. And while I always enjoyed Columbo,personally I enjoyed The Rockford Files more. I especially liked his sleazy informant Angel,who always wore the ugliest '70s attire that existed. Man,this brings back memories,I may have to see if I can find a few episodes of the above shows just to watch for old times sake. I just got done watching the pilot for Airwolf,which was one of my big '80s favs,so I might as well go a little farther on the wayback machine. And as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Burning1]

You dated yourself the moment you said "my 18 year old daughter." *grin*

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[niktemadur]

Believe it or not, I've never heard of it, and the moment I read your reply (thanks for the tip), my curiosity level immediately went up around nine notches. (sigh) The State is not out on DVD... yet.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[CrazyTalk]

I'm in the same age bracket as you - I still watch TV, but havent watched commercials in years. When a commercial comes on, I just change the channel and watch something else for a few minutes.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Anonymous Coward]

What's TV? I watch all my shows online from content networks. (Fox, CBS, Youtube, etc.)

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[niktemadur]

Airwolf! Holy cow, you're bringing up titles I haven't heard of in decades.

You're absolutely right about The Rockford Files, I'd completely forgotten about that one. A factoid you probably already know, the show's creator was none other than David Chase, who later shot into the stratosphere with The Sopranos. I never actually saw any episodes of The Rockford Files, so this post-Sopranos empty period in life sounds like a great time to start.

But hey, this is Slashdot, not the Nick At Nite forums, so signing off... (pfffft)

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[hurfy]

Alright you guys....get out of my netflix queue

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[hairyfeet]

If you like a good P.I. drama,you really can't go wrong with Rockford. I really liked how,unlike a lot of the other P.I. shows where the detective would fight 20 guys and never get a scratch and always had a fistful of cash,Rockford was just an ordinary guy. He would show up to a job limping or with a black eye from losing a fight,he was always dealing with creditors bugging him about late payments,etc. And his informant Angel is a great example of truly horrible '70s fashion sense. Blue wide necked leisure suits,lounge lizard outfits,etc. The only one who wore louder clothes was huggy bear on Starsky and Hutch,but at least he did have that pimp style. Angel just had no taste. IMHO the '70s was the golden years for cop/P.I shows. Manix,Columbo,Barretta,Kojack,McCloud,etc.

And as for the other poster,I did NOT steal your netflix queue,that is my life we're discussing here. Sadly just the other day I went to pick up my oldest nephew and all the girls were preening over him and telling him how hot he looked in all his cool "retro" gear. I look over and he has my David Lee Roth Eat 'Em And Smile tour '86 shirt on,along with my skin tight parachute pants with all the zippers,and my Judas priest Screamin' For Vengeance Satin Jacket on with the sleeves rolled up. It took every ounce of strength I had not to walk up to those teeny boppers and say "He is NOT retro,he just stole all my clothes!"

Speaking of ripoffs, while there was plenty of crap on '70s TV,IMHO the writers were willing to explore the genres more and take more risk. I haven't watched TV in ages because if it isn't another lame reality show,it is yet another Law & Order or CSI ripoff. They just seem to beat the dead horse a lot harder today than they did then. The other sad thing is they don't give a show any time to develop an audience.If it doesn't go blockbuster out of the gate they kill it before it really gets a chance. The few shows I have watched (Brimstone,Tru Calling) got dumped before the writers could really even get them off the ground. I especially thought Brimstone could have been great if they just would have given it a chance to breathe. But that is my 02c,YMMV And I am really enjoying this trip down TV memory lane. I can't believe I still remember this stuff. I'll take "Useless crap that is only good for being a contestant on Jeopardy!" for $200 Alex,LOL.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[NotQuiteReal]

The suggested option "d" was not listed, because that is how things are now (ad supported).

For those who would like to just "torrent" everything, they are just leaches living off the willingness of others to endure the ads. Otherwise, the reductio ad absurdum conclusion is the original answer "c" - there would be nothing to download if "everyone" did it... unless all ads become product placement ads, embedded into the content.

Option "e" is viable - I think. Isn't that how Showtime, HBO, etc work? However, maybe "pay tv" costs more than you think it should. Personally, I do not purchase "premium" channels, but it is an option; You pay for TV, and don't have (many?) commercials...

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Christophotron]

So, the implication is... nobody should watch advertising.

No, the implication is that no one should PAY to watch advertising. Simple concept, isn't it? Pay good money --> no advertising. But that's not how it works with most Cable TV ("premium" channels excluded).

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[rootooftheworld]

This is the main reason I download torrents. For me, nothing ruins the enjoyment a good TV show like bad commercials!

fixed that for you.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Candid88]

No, it was correct before. I don't like any commercials. Or, in other words: I find all commercials 'bad'.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[rootooftheworld]

ditto, try music channels - some are real nice

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[rootooftheworld]

my theory was that you havent seen any 'good' ones, so you think all are bad. pretty much same here in BG, most are dead obnoctious, but some i actualy like to watch, like a music video. thing is, ironicaly these are for liquor, and i dont know the Fsckin' Communication Cocks's policy on that. though i could be wrong, just my $0.02.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[cangrejoinmortal]

try tudou.com not quite the same, but good enough,

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[Candid88]

Some commercials are funny, I don't deny that. Given the right time & place, I do find them funny and enjoyable, just like music videos.

That doesn't mean though that I don't find it really annoying to have to watch them when I'm in the middle of a good movie or TV show. Nothing kills the mood and atmosphere of a movie or show like a commercial.

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[rootooftheworld]

agree

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

[ncc74656]

Keep in mind that people who pay to watch TV are also paying to watch advertising.

O RLY?

(Never mind that I skipped commercials with a TiVo before that, and with a pair of VCRs before TiVo...)

Top heavy population

[MacDork]

Americans are living longer and having fewer kids. Surprised?

Re:Top heavy population

[LostCluster]

Not to mention, retired people don't like to pay for excessive things like extra TV signals. They'll take the channels they can get via rabbit ears and read the newspaper.

Re:Top heavy population

[morgan_greywolf]

Not to mention, retired people don't like to pay for excessive things like extra TV signals. They'll take the channels they can get via rabbit ears and read the newspaper.

You do realize that current 50-somethings and 60-something aren't in that category, right? In the past, older people didn't pay excessive things because they grew up with the Great Depression and World War II, and were taught not to be wasteful.

The 50 and 60 somethings of today are Baby Boomers -- the so-called "me" generation. Most of them are so self-absorbed, that they can't imagine a world without luxuries they've taken for granted for many years, including cable TV and, at least for some, the Internet.

`

Re:Top heavy population

[Anonymous Coward]

You consider the internet a luxury in our modern world? Broadband, maybe.

Just one example, some old folks have a very difficult time doing the grocery shopping. The internet allows them to order it online and have it delivered. Yes, for you or me that might be a luxury service, but to old folks it allows them to be independent longer than they might otherwise be.

The Internet can also allow oldsters to keep in touch, date, or otherwise be social. Loneliness is a killer.

Surely you don't consider telephone service a luxury? Well VOiP can be cheaper than a standard phone and even if not, the combined cost of internet access and VOiP is certainly not much more than a standard phone line. Add long distance (not necessarily a 'luxury' for older folks with family out of state), and the savings are guaranteed.

Re:Top heavy population

[Your.Master]

Are you one of these boomers? Considering these things non-luxury is a bit of a stretch (especially online dating).

Re:Top heavy population

[dreamchaser]

I think you meant to be funny, because it sure wasn't insightful. The 50-60 demographic (baby boomers) have more disposable income than most any two of us combined and enjoy their creature comforts quite a bit. They have HDTV and cable and broadband for the most part.

Even the older demographics mostly have a lot of those things. Again, I *hope* you were trying to be funny, because the alternative is ignorance.

Re:Top heavy population

[Anonymous Coward]

You consider the ability to socialize a luxury? That is a bit of a stretch.

You want to know who you are talking to? Fine. I'm not a boomer, but I'm probably older than you. I grew up well below the poverty level, so I know exactly what things are needful. I've also worked with older folks, so I know what special needs some of them have.

You might think of the internet as just your personal playground, but for us grownups (and no, I'm not a boomer, not that old yet) it's a tool that can provide many things that are necessities, not luxuries. (If it provides a few luxuries too, all the better.)

While online dating may be a luxury for you (to use your weakest counterpoint), for someone who would otherwise not be able to meet people, it can be a life saver. People do die of loneliness. No, that's not a medical term, but it's true the same way it's true that people die of old age.

Re:Top heavy population

[Anonymous Coward]

are you a cop?

Re:Top heavy population

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you don't consider telephone service a luxury?

No, I've always found it more of an annoyance. Peace and quiet is a luxury.

Re:Top heavy population

[rugatero]

You consider the ability to socialize a luxury? That is a bit of a stretch.

It is a luxury when you don't have to leave the house to do so.

Baby boomer or otherwise, you certainly seem to be a fine example of one who can't imagine a world without luxuries they've taken for granted, as described above.

Re:Top heavy population

[porcupine8]

I think perhaps there is a false dichotomy going on here. The world is not divided into "luxuries" and "needs." A third category that immediately comes to mind to describe many of the things you're talking about "convenience." My grandparents are around 80, and do not have cable or the internet. I wish they did, because yes, it would make life easier for them in many ways. But they have no interest in learning new technology - they still claim to be unable to operate their DVD player, despite having written instruction left there by my sister and owning hundreds of unopened DVDs.

The internet and cable are definitely not "needs" to them - they are getting by without it. You're right, though, "luxury" is taking it a bit too far, because I think the internet WOULD allow them to stay independent than they may be able to without it. It would definitely be a convenience, though.

Excellent!

[overshoot]

So since I don't watch the boob tube [1] I must not be old, right? (Looking at driver's license and checking the date.)

So how come the AARP keeps pestering me and the stores offer me the "seniors discount?"

[1] Thanks very much, $HERSELF's boobs here are still very worth watching.

Re:Excellent!

[tomhudson]

... because everyone knows TV is for old people and Koreans.

Actually, I read the article, and I've only seen one of the shows they talk about - Scrubs ... and even that, I haven't watched in a year.

What I found interesting was that Faux News has the oldest viewership - that explains John McCain, in a weird sort of way. they're just serving up material for their target demographic - the Polygrip set.

Re:Excellent!

[dubbayu_d_40]

Sorry grandpa, your /. id confirms you're freaking ancient.

Re:Excellent!

[moosesocks]

So since I don't watch the boob tube

Obligatory

Re:Excellent!

[ColdWetDog]

Sorry grandpa, your /. id confirms you're freaking ancient.

Well, you're no spring chicken, mister six-figure UID

Re:Excellent!

[jaraxle]

/looks at /. id

I'm only 30 you insensitive clod!

~jaraxle

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Average age for the other news networks is hardly different:

Fox News: 48.7
CNN 47.1
MSNBC 46.5

These numbers are for all day-parts and are a bit younger than the article, but the point is all newscasts and news channels have a similarly old demographic, it has nothing to do with political leanings.

WTF IS A TV?

[joocemann]

You mean that thing with the buttons and goofy controller? My GRANDMOTHER gets her media from one of those!

Re:WTF IS A TV?

[kalirion]

Controller? Why, when I was your grandmother's age, I had to walk 50 miles through 12 feet of snow, to the nearest TV station to tell them to switch the channel. And there were only three channels, and one of them was Fox News. Your kid grandparents these days have it good.....

Re:WTF IS A TV?

[Anonymous Coward]

You were lucky.

TV is for watching the Red Sox...

[kclittle]

and the Celtics, or $(your_fav_sports_team) and $(your_fav_russian_ladies_tennis_player). Oh, and Weeds on SHO.

Re:TV is for watching the Red Sox...

[sayfawa]

I concur. As soon as I can get reliable and reasonably high resolution games on the net the tv is going out the window.

Re:TV is for watching the Red Sox...

[Ira Sponsible]

What TV show has Celts wearing Red Socks? oh. Spr0ts. Nevermind. I guess I still have no reason to watch TV

Re:TV is for watching the Red Sox...

[LostCluster]

And all those Red Sox and Celtics road games on the Boston superstation, WSBK TV38...

Hey, wait a second. Those all moved to NESN and what's now known as Comcast Sports Net New England (formerly Fox Sports Net New England, formerly SportsChannel New England).

It used to be you had the option of seeing the home games on those two as pay channels for $20-$30 a month, 1/15 or so took them up on that. Now everybody with expanded basic service gets them, but the bills went up $3-5 a month as a result.

1. Have sports team
2. ??????
3. Profit!

Re:TV is for watching the Red Sox...

[dubbayu_d_40]

PHB alert - no mention of BSG...

Re:TV is for watching the Red Sox...

[moexu]

Actually, a TV is just a display for console gaming. I can't remember the last time I actually sat down and watched a complete show. Too many advertisements and I'd rather play Mass Effect.

We 'retired people' are on the web too.

[crovira]

Broadcasters can lick the sweat off of my balls.

Getting any media off of the air is so passé.

Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo...no WiFi for you, eh? ;)

Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too.

[peragrin]

unless your wirelessly watching that tv show on your cell phone.

Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too.

[markov_chain]

I dunno, have you compared the encoding quality of HDTV OTA channels vs. cable lately?

Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too.

[Chuck Chunder]

Broadcasters can lick the sweat off of my balls.

I hardly think this is the place to be pitching your new website idea.

Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too.

[theheadlessrabbit]

in Korea, only old people do that.

the young people are RECORDING broadcast television on their cellphones while they are watch something else, and they do this while they are on the subway.

and yes. i really have recorded the starcraft channel on my cellphone, while watching the other starcraft channel. its a cultural experience i will never forget.

Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting any media off of the air is so passé.

Yeah, it's much cooler to pay for programming aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, screw those hicks living in rural areas without cable.

Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too.

[Hatta]

They're both full of compression artifacts. With HDTV you just get the compression artifacts in higher resolution.

Average live median age?

[telso]

I thought Slashdot was bad using average in the headline and median in the story, but then I RTFA:

[T]he five broadcast nets' average live median age [...] was 50 last season.

Re:Average live median age?

[mr_matticus]

The average of the medians of the five broadcast networks is 50 (i.e. each network had a respective median age of 48, 49, 50, 51, 52 [made-up numbers], which averages to 50). There is nothing wrong with TFA.

Re:Average live median age?

[Xtifr]

Seems reasonable to me. There are five networks. Each has a median age of live viewer. The average of those five medians is (was) 50.

Am I missing something?

Re:Average live median age?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Slashdot was bad using average in the headline and median in the story, but then I RTFA:

I would have thought that on slashdot of all places this wouldn't have to be explained. The word average can reffer to mean, median or mode. While the media, and as a result, most people with average math skills (or less), often talk/write as though the only definition of the word average is mean, all three are correct. (and as such neither the article nor the summary did anything bad)

Re:Average live median age?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh. That would be the average of the five medians, each reported by a different network. We have now established that this is a well-defined statement.

Why take the average of medians, rather than the median? Well, why not? If the medians themselves don't show signs of over-dispersion or outliers (which may be the case since the networks all shoot for the mostly same demographics), the average is a legitimate summary statistic.

The gripe about slashdot is of course valid. :) Especially if the distributions for each network have a long-ish tail toward the younger ages, which is quite plausible.

Re:Average live median age?

[ucblockhead]

From what I gather RTFA, what they mean is that the took the median ages for each of the five networks and averaged them together. In other words, "average live median age" is actually correct as the figure is indeed the average of the median ages for each network. (The headline of the article is confused though as this says nothing about the average age of viewers.)

Re:Average live median age?

[flynt]

OK, I'm sick of this. Some pedant who probably doesn't know UMVUE from UMP always chimes in when someone mentions the words 'average' and 'median' within 1000 syllables of each other.

I have a Master's degree in Statistics, a BS in mathematics, and work as a statistician.

There is really not strict mathematical definition of 'average'. There is a concept of averages as measures of central tendency. However, I've just consulted three of my theoretical statistical inference texts, and not a single one of them has an index entry for the word 'average'. They of course have index entries for 'mean' and 'median'.

Both mean and median are types of averages, neither inherently 'better' than the other. You won't find the word 'average' used in much technical literature because of this. You specify your statistic more precisely than that.

So the next time you see the word 'average', don't freak out about it. If someone doesn't specify what they mean, ask them, that's an important question, and something you should think about. You're just arguing semantics and come off as uninformed, if not a bit annoying.

Re:Average live median age?

[srjh]

The median is an average. Average is actually rather loosely defined, and the arithmetic mean that everyone seems to think it is synonymous with is only one of a number of definitions.

Re:Average live median age?

[lazyDog86]

That's interesting. So maybe you can help with this: what does the MODE button do on my remote? Make the programming even more average?

Re:Average live median age?

[dcollins]

"I thought Slashdot was bad using average in the headline and median in the story..."

"Average" is a category of statistics which can include the mean, median, mode, etc.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average

Re:Average live median age?

[lazyDog86]

Pointless semantic arguments, uninformed annoying commentary, and disregard of nuanced definitions?
My God, they're right! The Internet is replacing television!

Re:Average live median age?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Fuckin Average

Re:Average live median age?

[beaverbrother]

The best definition for average is probably "typical". It is an idea rather than a precise measure. Usually, though, it does mean "arithmetic mean" so you are right in that regard.

Re:Average live median age?

[oaksey]

Microsoft Excel has a pretty strict definition of "average".

Re:Average live median age?

[Eil]

It's surprising that you, with your impressive multiple degrees and whatnot, do not appear to be aware that the lay-person's definition of "average" is synonomous with your definition of "mean".

Re:Average live median age?

[Belial6]

That is because 'average' was handled in the 3rd grade. Go head... Look at grade school text books. They explain what an 'average' is, and how to find one.

Re:Average live median age?

[xant]

It changes to the channel which has the most shows on it.

Re:Average live median age?

[xant]

This isn't technical literature. Most people are saying "mean" when they say "average". That's because, for most people (at least, most Americans, I know math education is better in other countries) "mean" is the only kind of average they have learned.

This is not trivial, and should not be dismissed. In a given context, we can agree on what the word "average" means. Refusing to agree on it is just an artificial barrier to discussion.

Re:Average live median age?

[noidentity]

The word average can refer to mean, median or mode. While the media, and as a result most people with average math skills (or less), often talk/write as though the only definition of the word average is mean, all three are correct

Which average are you referring to when you mention math skills: mean, median, or mode?

Re:Average live median age?

[V!NCENT]

I don't know high or how low the level of education is where you live, but I learned all that stuff in high school. So I don't really know why you pull of the "I have a Master's degree in Statistics, a BS in mathematics, and work as a statistician"...

Re:Average live median age?

[Lost Race]

He's trolling for applied math groupies.

I'm an <insert math credentials> and I found "average live median age" amusing too. It must be some sort of context-specific jargon; to me it looks like a rather silly string of words. It makes me wonder about the average dead minimum age.

Re:Average live median age?

[story645]

Nope, they cover median and mode when they cover mean. I think it's just that means get calculated more often than the other two, so they stick in people's minds as the only way to calculate averages.

Re:Average live median age?

[tutori]

Replacing? You must be new here.

Re:Average live median age?

[Myrddin Wyllt]

A lot of 'average' figures quoted in the media are actually medians; I'm thinking especially of house prices and salaries, as these have unrepresentative outliers on the high end which would skew the mean as a measure of central tendency.

I can't remember ever hearing these figures described as 'medians' in a news report, so I suppose a lot of people who equate 'average' with 'arithmetic mean' just assume that is what is being stated.

Re:Average live median age?

[HeadlessNotAHorseman]

I was always taught (in Australia) that average is the exact same thing as the mean. It never crossed my mind that "average" could mean something else to someone else. I suppose if we measured it we would find that the mean meaning of average is mean, if you know what I mean.

Only old people?

[lightversusdark]

Yes, but in Korea only old people watch TV.

So as my parents go off into the good night...

[linzeal]

We will be seeing the advent of decentralized media taking over. I myself use a cable companies DVR to watch some shows like the Venture Brothers and sometimes the Daily show. Honestly though with the lack of interaction for the television I find myself boring of it within an hour or so. I cannot stand news television that they sometimes leave on at the bar I frequent down from where I work. For one I have carefully made sure that my RSS feeds exclude any mention of sports, celebrity gossip or the like as I do not consider them news.

I usually get up in the morning and read news.google.com first to see if the world has blown up and than peruse the RSS feeds from Eureka Alerts before downloading my custom top 50 stories unto my Sony Ebook Reader which I recently upgraded to from my old Palm M500. On the light rail I read the news like people used to read newspapers, completely on most days unless a slew of unwanted stories is downloaded. I find reading things that may not interest me at first can become a pretty enlightening experience and I am now as of a few months ago becoming more familiar with new economic movements such as crowdsourcing and Wikinomics.

Welcome to the future

[Gothmolly]

Welcome to the new demographic, at least for the next 25 years.

Where did the content go?

[LostCluster]

Anybody notice something missing from the broadcast (over-the-air) channels from the last few years?

10-20 years ago... you would find nearly half of your local NBA, MLB, and NHL games on broadcast, and as time went on the other half (mostly home games) would show up on HBO-like pay cable. Now, nearly all the games not on national TV are found on one basic cable network at least partly owned by the team. And cable bills went up a few dollars a month when that network moved from pay to basic status or got started in the first place.

News coverage has been cut back too. The idea of having a studio in every country we had friendly relations with has gone by the wayside. Longform presantations of things like the political conventions have been shifted to basic cable networks.

There used to just be "The People's Court" for court shows. Now there's enough syndicated judge-personality shows on broadcast to fill an entire daytime lineup. Cheapest to produce wins, the only thing cheaper is Jerry Springer and his knockoffs.

It's said what our seniors are getting for television signals these days, no wonder why those of us that can afford it get cable or DBS.

Re:Where did the content go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Most of the programming on the over the air networks is pure crap. I stopped watching network TV years ago when they started with this "reality" show crap. I hate those! I'm amazed that it's the old people watching them. I always thought it was the stupid kids? I guess they're not as stupid as I thought. ;)

The only show I watch on the networks now is House on Fox. The rest of my TV viewing is on cable. Network TV is dead to me. Of course it's not like I even watch that much TV anymore. I can go days without turning it on.

Re:Where did the content go?

[dwye]

News coverage has been cut back too. The idea of having a studio in every country we had friendly relations with has gone by the wayside. Longform presantations of things like the political conventions have been shifted to basic cable networks.

Well, when I started watching, we had a war on every night, as part of the 15 minute network news, covered by the one in-country correspondent.

In other words, "having a studio in every country we had friendly relations with" never was, and never could be. For example, the London Bureau covered all of NATO, and shipped a camera man and correspondent out only if there were riots or Olympics. Having a separate studio in Holland or Belgium or even Paris would have been ridiculous - they don't produce that much US-interesting news (unless Europeans really care about McGreevey or Spitzer's downfalls, I doubt that they would think that anything but DC and LA produce much, in the USA, and LA only produces gossip, at that. If they do care, they're on crack). It was too expensive to have more, even for CBS at its apogee.

There used to just be "The People's Court" for court shows. Now there's enough syndicated judge-personality shows on broadcast to fill an entire daytime lineup. Cheapest to produce wins, the only thing cheaper is Jerry Springer and his knockoffs.

That's Morton Downey, Jr. and his knockoffs, sir. Actually, by MD,Jr's time, it was Phil Donahue and his knockoffs, as he had stopped putting Carl Sagan or other intelligent guests on, by then, and was doing Men Who Wear Skirts and the like.

So, anyway, you obviously would prefer more soap operas and game shows hosted by unknown radio DJs or ex-Big Band singers?

No, you just don't measure the young viewers

[Rurik]

These totals exclude DVR users

That sums it all up. The younger generation have quickly adapted and taken advantage of time shifting and DVRs. The older generation is less likely to use new technology for watching television. Therefore, the studies are now skewed towards the higher age. Even my three year old knows to fast forward through commercials on our HTPC.

Re:No, you just don't measure the young viewers

[Anonymous Coward]

No. From the fine article:

When live-plus-7 DVR viewing is factored in, the nets (except CW and Univision) drop by a year -- which still reps the oldest median age ever for the nets.

Re:No, you just don't measure the young viewers

[woot account]

Really? I've never used a DVR, and I'm 20 years old. I think that qualifies me as "the younger generation" based on what you're saying. And, just now, asking a couple friends of mine that are within a couple years of my age, they haven't ever used a DVR either (plural of anecdote != data, but you get my point). It's a funny thing: if you record a shitty television show and watch it some other time, it's still just as shitty.

Re:No, you just don't measure the young viewers

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw man, he went and made up a whole bunch of insightful observations and you had to go and piss on his parade with facts.

Re:No, you just don't measure the young viewers

[TheRaven64]

I'm 26 and I haven't used a DVR for a few years. I tried setting one up a few years ago, and then came to the conclusion that, if the studios didn't want to sell me the content in a format that I wanted then I wasn't going to jump through hoops to get it. I might rent the DVDs when they come out, but I just can't be bothered with broadcast television anymore. I have more interesting things to do with my life than spend 25% of my relaxation time watching adverts.

Re:No, you just don't measure the young viewers

[Rurik]

Don't worry, I'll come up with more ;) And shame on the submitter for misrepresenting the article (which is on a domain blocked here).

OK... how's this. The study also doesn't include typical DVD sales and other methods of watching television shows (such as online through NBC.com, etc). Again, this is newer implementations of standard TV watching that older generations are slow to adopt. I, personally, don't have the patience to wait week by week for a show, so I'll wait until it comes out on DVD and watch it all in a month. I think the more tech-savvy are more accustomed to watching a show through an online site, on their dual display, while working.

Re:No, you just don't measure the young viewers

[Cro Magnon]

I'm the opposite. I'm dangerously close to 50, but I DO use a DVR. There are still a few non-shitty shows worth recording, though not very many.

Viagra

[Anonymous Coward]

That explains all the Viagra ads!

Slightly misleading

[ulash]

The demographics quoted in the article and the targeted demographics of TV programs do not need to overlap. As noted the "old people" demographic quoted by the article excludes the people using DVR as well as people who watch TV programs on the web. Those are the same programs that are shown on TV (and hence it would make sense that the target audience is not just the "old people").

100% of the people in nursing homes?

[smchris]

Lots of reasons the demographic is skewed. Does the internet have over 50% penetration in the over 50s yet? I would think a very small percentage of people over 40 were exposed to BBS/internet service when still at home with their parents not to mention the nonexistence of those fancy Star Trek communicator cell phone thingies. So what is there besides TV to feel comfortable with if you don't grow after childhood?
   

Re:100% of the people in nursing homes?

[dbcad7]

Alright, I got 2 more years to hit the demographic.. but I am 8 years over 40 .. the internet of course goes back farther, but the internet with the WWW came into being in the early 90's.. I think I first hooked up onto the net late 93 or early 94 IIRC.(old people and their memory problems).. but for at least 10 years before that I had occasion to have accounts with.. The Source, Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, and Genie at various times.. before any of these became true "internet" providers... now I am probably somewhat rarer in my age group, but people in my group started to catch up by the late 90's.. and actually in the past 5 years or so, computers have become so cheap, there just isn't any excuse not to have one.. I guess it depends how far beyond 50 your thinking.. would not be surprised if 50-55 met the 50 % easily.

Re:100% of the people in nursing homes?

[ratboy666]

An interesting point -- but who created the internet and home computers for you?

Yep -- we are all now in our 50's and up.

But we didn't grow up on TV either -- the first TV in our family was used to watch the moon landing in '69. But there was no "cable"; we could only receive three stations. Wasn't worth watching, most of the time (except for exceptional events, like the moon landing).

The previous generation (take my mother-in-law - she's in her '70s) didn't see a TV until their late twenties/early thirties -- it certainly isn't a formative part.

Still, census disagrees with me a bit -- TV penetration in households in the USA was nearly complete by 1960 (I guess our family was a hold-out):

http://www.tvb.org/rcentral/mediatrendstrack/tvbasics/02_TVHouseholds.asp

It may be that viewers born 1960 (and before) to 1970 (ei. those who did NOT start with cable) view TV programs as an "event" rather than as disposable entertainment, which may drive that demographic to watch first airings.

(Ob: Now get off my lawn, you damn kids!)

Re:100% of the people in nursing homes?

[maxume]

What? My mother is approaching 70. She uses the internet, email, has a digital camera, a cell phone, drives a car, etc.

Your notion of old is very young.

Re:100% of the people in nursing homes?

[gyrogeerloose]

I don't think it's all that unusual for us old farts to be long-time Internet users. I'm well into the demographic and have a similar history to yours when it comes to being online. I had a dial-up Unix shell Internet account in the early Nineties, back before the WWW became popular. Same deal with my wife before we met.

BTW, my father, who's in his eighties, uses the 'net every day.

Re:100% of the people in nursing homes?

[smchris]

It's the soc degree in me. Anyone under the mid-sixties with a college degree has very likely had to use email and at least cruised the intra/internet at work. Whether they bother at home is another question. But I always remind myself that not everyone has a college degree or at least an office job.

Under Forty-ish seems about right for the average milestone of "growing up at home with computers". I first connected to CompuServe at 300 baud Thanksgiving weekend of '86.

Technically, I had my toddler mind warped by TV in LA in '52-53 so I'm postmodern but I went without for something like three years when my mother moved back to North Dakota so 1960 sounds reasonable for national saturation. Which means that for the nursing home crowd TV really still is that new thing that displaced the (mostly tube, mostly non-portable) radios they listened to as kids.

Can't expect people to make _two_ techno leaps. It's like asking someone in his 40s to IM instead of email.

Re:100% of the people in nursing homes?

[ksd1337]

An interesting point -- but who created the internet and home computers for you?

Al Gore, of course! (I'm not sure about computers, though.)

Re:100% of the people in nursing homes?

[dwye]

It may be that viewers born 1960 (and before) to 1970 (ei. those who did NOT start with cable) view TV programs as an "event" rather than as disposable entertainment, which may drive that demographic to watch first airings.

I, who precede that (by months :-) watch first airings so that I can catch the next Firefly *before* it disappears because no one else is watching it, waiting for the DVD. Also, so I can brag about catching the next Hellzapoppin (canceled during the first commercial break of the first episode)(like saying that you caught Plan 9 in the theaters, which I couldn't have).

Alas, still waiting for that second Nielson diary.

answer to programming puzzle

[Anonymous Coward]

Paul McCartney. Optimal for the 50-55 yr old demographic, but still capable of reaching 30 yrs in either direction.

Yaar, Matey

[fyoder]

The young folk are in fine fettle fer sailin' the high seas of the internet always on the lookout for free IP booty. Not for them tuning it at some specific time each week only to have their program interrupted constantly by commercials. And if it isn't usually a rerun anyway, I'll be a... oh, something a pirate would think was particularly unpleasant -- I'll be an extortion attempt by the RIAA, arrr, nasty that be fer true.

Now excuse me while I check me torrents. All legal stuff, mind ye, no skulduggery on the part of an honest salt like me, heh, heh.

Technophobia

[Haoie]

That must have some hand in this.

Re:Technophobia

[Ethanol-fueled]

Just technophobia? Pfft, what are old people not afraid of?!

Re:Technophobia

[theheadlessrabbit]

what are old people not afraid of?!

Matlock

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as an average-aged TV viewer I -- *ack* *gasp* *clutches chest*....

hope beyond hope

[fermion]

We keep hoping for shows like I Love Lucy, Charlies Angles, and BJ and the Bear. We keep hoping for another powerful women, not child girl, like Erin Grey. Young whipper snappers never saw TV when it was fresh and full of possibilities, after the slate of scripted network time wasting, and before the decline to unscripted networked time wasting. When the ideas were recycled from radio, not cannibalized from itself. It is no wonder that a generation raised on Seinfield and Friends would have no love for the one eyed beast. How could even Buffy engender the mythic loyalty of Bewitched.

TV probably died in the year 2001. It is to be expected that, just like radio, it will hang on with it's one bony hand until it relegated to the backwoods of cheap motel rooms, where internet acess is not available.

Fat Chance!

[anti-human 1]

If old people were in fact the biggest demographic, there would likely be at least one station that plays nothing but Matlock and Walker, Texas Ranger. AARPTV or something.

Re:Fat Chance!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Murder She Wrote and Columbo.

Re:Fat Chance!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called CBS.

So does this mean...

[camperdave]

So does this mean that today's youth are outside riding bikes, skipping, playing games, building tree forts, etc?

Re:So does this mean...

[gregbot9000]

You mean outside getting lost, raped, kidnapped and murdered? I hope not, it's a scary world out there. They should be siting down nice and safely, watching shows free of sex or violence, letting TV raise them like it did me. Now if you excuse me I think Law & Order: SVU is on.

Re:So does this mean...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yes they are. And it's time for my hourly walk to the front porch to shake my fist and yell "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

Re:So does this mean...

[tepples]

So does this mean that today's youth are outside riding bikes

With these gas prices, not just youth are riding bikes.

skipping

Skipping school?

playing games

Pokemon and Neopets.

Re:So does this mean...

[jez9999]

Obligatory Simpsons reference:

Rod and Todd watch a religious kid's cartoon program.

Father sheep: What's wrong, Jeremiah?
Jeremiah: It's not fair. My brother Joseph has a sin to confess. I
wish I had one too.
Father sheep: Oh, don't you see? You _do_ have a sin to confess -- the
sin of envy.
[sheep baa their laughter]
Todd: It's all well and good for sheep, but what are we to do?
Homer: Boring! Let's watch something else.
Rod+Todd: Aw...
Ned: Now, boys, Mr. Simpson is the guest. He gets to decide
what to watch.
Homer: Yeah...
[Homer flips through channels which all seem to be blank]
Hey, what gives? I thought you had a satellite dish.
Ned: Sure doodily-do. Over 230 channels locked out!

Simple demographics

[Jeff Hornby]

Given that the trailing edge of the baby boom turns 48 this year, I would have to guess that this statistic is a result of the demographic bulge. So the reason that these numbers are starting to skew higher is that there is now a higher percentage of the general population over 50.

In other words, move along there's nothing to see here.

Re:Simple demographics

[Anonymous Coward]

There's another post-1980 population bulge called the "echo-boom" though. While it is true that some developed nations like Japan and Germany have very top-heavy age demographics, other developed countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand have more of a coke-bottle shaped age distribution.

Re:Simple demographics

[tool462]

Agreed. I'm sure this is a useful or interesting statistic for advertisers and such, but I'd be more interested in a weighted distribution. I.e., are a disproportionate number of 50+ y.o. TV watchers?

Re:Simple demographics

[jez9999]

In other words, move along there's nothing to see here.

Certainly not if you're watching broadcast TV.

Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Internet"

[digitalextremist]

It has been said over and over, "The revolution will not be televised." This is an encouraging point in history, showing the success of the movement of humanity toward a real opportunity to grow. The 'Revolution' is not a war, or a movement in the sense we previously held. Humanity itself is a movement, like economies are moving money, humanity is the body with the veins that are the economy, and the internet is a new economic platform for that inherent motion we _are_ -- So the 50 year old demographic means that the generations after them are "somewhere else" which is all we need for the future to be viable. Let the spin doctors run, let the propaganda flow. Life isn't primarily in those spheres today.

Baby Boomers - love the tube and are therefore

[KozmoKramer]

Fact: Baby-Boomers love the tube and are therefore more obedient hosts for the parasite known as corporate America.

Fox news anyone?

Simpsons did it!

[Monkey_Genius]

Homer: I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me -- no matter how dumb my suggestions are.(Pulls out a "nuts and gum" mixture, starts chomping.)

the digital switch of DOOM!

[Scrameustache]

They'll take the channels they can get via rabbit ears

6 months, and counting...

Re:the digital switch of DOOM!

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll take the channels they can get via rabbit ears

6 months, and counting...

Rabbit ears and a converter.

TV Viewers'...

[SanguineV]

"TV Viewers' Average IQ drops to 50 "

There, fixed that for you.

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

The return of Matlock.

counter example:

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I'm 50 and I don't watch TV at all...

Re:counter example:

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess: in fact, you don't even own a television, right?

Excluding DVRs

[nrozema]

Isn't calculating the average age of TV viewers while excluding DVRs kind of like calculating inflation without including the cost of fuel or food?

See? No inflation here!

Miami Vice, et. al...

[maz2331]

There isn't any REAL content on broadcast any longer that compares even with that of even the early 80s.

Desperate Housewives? Gimme a break.

When they can show South Park and real Soprano's episodes, I may tune back in.

Re:Miami Vice, et. al...

[IntlHarvester]

Nice rose colored glasses, but "Love Boat" and "Laverne & Shirley" were hardly the pinnacle of popular entertainment.

The best network programming is probably as good or better than ever. But there's 1000x more filler content and it's mostly terrible.

The entertainment mediums are a changin'

[Yold]

  All my friends (myself excluded), spend 80-90% of the time they could be watching TV, playing video games. Hell, my boss who is in his mid-thirties, and well educated, spends his would-be-watching-tv time playing video games too. Same with many of my co-workers.

  And then there are people like me (read cheapskates), who only have extremely basic cable because it comes at next to nothing w/ cable modem service. Netflix on-demand, for like $9 a month, gives me a plethora of documentary programming, and some decent movies, fills in the gaps that free television websites (southparkstudios.com, adultswim.com), do not provide.

  What I have been saying for the last couple years is that cable companies should allow people to pick 10 networks, and be able to watch any of the content at any time, and stream it over the internet. Hell, I'll even provide the computer, it is easy enough to hook one up to a television nowadays. Some cable companies do it now with set-top boxes, but WTF do I want Style Network, Lifetime Network, and 20 other shitty channels just to be able to get their "premium" tier of service (on-demand). At a cost of like $80 a month w/ a cable modem. I'd gladly pay half that for what I just mentioned.

Re:The entertainment mediums are a changin'

[metlin]

You still have basic cable.

I've not owned or watched television in over 5 years.

I do buy season DVDs of a handful of shows (could be counted on one hand) and watch or buy the occasional movie DVD, but I can't ever see myself watching broadcast TV in any form.

Well, I may, if they showed uninterrupted shows with no ads whatsoever, and perhaps a ton of documentaries and the like.

Ditto for my girlfriend. TV is a waste of time, and you don't realize that unless you actually get away from it. I look at folks who're addicted to having it in the background, or run their lives according to a show (those that don't have DVRs that is). In some sense, it is saddening, but in another, it is also amusing.

I'd rather go out and climb mountains, party with women and build my lego gadgets, than write off my life to the idiot box.

Re:The entertainment mediums are a changin'

[Alioth]

It's not unusual for people in their mid 30s to be gamers instead of TV watchers. Don't forget, those in their mid 30s were the *vanguard* of gamers - they grew up with the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro etc. - the Spectrum alone had over 8,000 titles available by the late 80s.

Re:The entertainment mediums are a changin'

[hansamurai]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694

Re:The entertainment mediums are a changin'

[Lodragandraoidh]

Whoa there young whipper-snapper...the real 'vanguard' of gamers are the 40-somethings that paved the way via arcade games (pac-man, asteroids, tron, Q-bert et al). You were getting our hand-me-down computers in the late 80s. :P

Re:The entertainment mediums are a changin'

[grolaw]

Harlan Ellison had a better term than "Idiot Box:" "The Glass Teat."

TV Show Seasons on DVD

[mykepredko]

Except for sports (which we use an antenna), nobody in my family has watched live TV for several years. We get Internet for our news (usually more in depth) and for TV shows we wait until the end of the season and then when the season's DVDs come out, read the reviews on Amazon and talk to friends.

Cost wise, over the course of the year, the season sets for a dozen shows (say $50 average each for sake of argument) is less than the cable/satellite options which have the specialty channels with CW, HBO, SHO & SciFi shows as well as the network shows. Having the DVDs allows very comfortable time-shifting and being able to re-watch of shows.

I know quite a few people do it this way (with some swapping of sets although with the recipient usually watching an episode or two and then buying a set for themselves if they like the show).

Maybe it's *my* demographic, but it works and the content owners are being paid for their product.

myke

Re:TV Show Seasons on DVD

[grolaw]

I never saw Firefly - Joss Weadon's oat-opera in space until I was turned onto it by a friend and bought the DVD's. Since then, my wife and I have accumulates all of Whedon's work - Buffy & Angel. We have all of the Brit detective and court series from Poirot to Morse to Life on Mars to Rosemary & Thyme to the incomparable Horace Rumpole.

Now my wife and I are following director's careers - I started early with Akira Kurosawa - and have followed Clint Eastwood's excellent work. Ridley Scott, Kubrick and at least a dozen others are part of our collection or soon will be when all of their work is released.

Yeah, I'd have to agree, that cable or broadcast hold little of value- until the election conventions and post-convention coverage.

Re:TV Show Seasons on DVD

[Eli Gottlieb]

Naw, my brother and I (both Gen Y) do that too. I honestly haven't watched network television since the Fox Kids lineup went off the air, thus resulting in all my favorite children's cartoons getting eliminated or sold to some Disney Channel spin-off that you get only with an expensive cable package.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if, somewhere out there on the network, someone had organized RSS feeds telling people how to download/torrent successive episodes (even whole seasons/series) of specific shows. When a new episode gets released they'll just add another entry to the feed, pointing to the latest link on The Pirate Bay.

Me too

[commodoresloat]

Yeah I don't watch much TV either so clearly I'm not old ... Plus I enjoy all the youthful trends, such as ... piloting motorcoaches and ... collecting animal waste!

Or not.

[Valdrax]

I'm 50 and I don't watch TV at all...

Given your mastery of statistics, I'm surprised.

the Internet has nothing to do with it

[Eil]

TV is for old people! The internet has confirmed it.

This has bum-fuck nothing to do with the Internet. What this is really saying is that the older generation is (perhaps wisely) more likely to tune into free local broadcast programming rather than shell out a huge monthly fee for satellite or cable programming.

Re:the Internet has nothing to do with it

[story645]

Except, of course, for all the old people who shell out for satellite feeds from their home countries. I miss English television.

Re:the Internet has nothing to do with it

[ashitaka]

I was wondering whether to mention this as it does represent a small but significant demographic especially in large-immigrant countries. We have IPTV but barely watch anything other than the programs from Japan on TV Japan for which we pay a $15/month extra fee over and above the regular fees.

I would like to find an Internet-based alternative to get all these shows which would take away the need for the IPTV and we wouldn't miss it. Problem is, my wife thinks that a TV is the only way to watch TV so at some point I'd have to put together a PC-based DVR that acts just like a TV.

Ah the ol Ame^Universal TV

[indi0144]

I grew tired of watching local and cable TV [cable and Satellite have the same channels so both fall into the same category here] Mostly because of the few ones that I used to see went to heck:

History Chanel: Continuously rewriting the history and portraying the American history as the only one as if the rest of the word haven't existed for the past 5000 years or so.

Discovery Channel: We talk about science, and how science can be useful on things like concluding that Jesus does not even existed or simulating mombo-wombo-natural disasters that will fuck your life style, be afraid, be very afraid, because if we can simulate it it's gonna happen!

MTV: Fuck yeah we teach your clueless teenagers to be docile, retarded and weak, we failed in previously generation because we promoted guts and resistance against the establishment-whatever, now with our contents just leave them alone with something sharp and a my chemical romance lyric written on a paper bag, they'll know what to do.

I can get going and going wit all the other basic channels but I hope you get the idea. The focus and objectives of every channel comes very close against common sense and rationality, and no, am not a conservative kind of person or a freakin moral fundamentalist I'm all against that.

I for one prefer to stream or btorrent my stuff: House, Weeds, Southpark, Family Guy, I'm a lite drama - comedia type. I just watch like 40 minutes of "tv" in a whole day. Besides live sports or really important local news.. I don't see myself buying a TV if I can't connect it to the PC and see my stuff. I really dislike TV - TV is DYING AT LAST how can I help to making it happen asap?? oh yeah the internet. /rant

Re:Ah the ol Ame^Universal TV

[Anonymous Coward]

The History Channel moved its international history programming to its sister netword, History International, years ago.

Dumbest Slashdot comment ever!

Network Television?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Is that some kind of P2P network?

TV killed themselves with Reality TV

[Hackerlish]

That, and thirty versions of CSI. Do they really expect us to watch that? The news is 30 minutes to spin, and they lied their asses to us during the Iraq War. If there are good shows, you can get them on the net. There's just no reason to watch TV anymore.

From the recliner...

[RealGrouchy]

Oh, good. Maybe this will finally get them to make some more episodes of Matlock.

- RG>

It's the Baby Boomers

[inKubus]

This graph should illustrate the point. Baby boomers are of course, the TV generation. They were there when it all started. Frankly, there are just so many of them compared to us (over 80 million, I believe), they skew the results of everything. And they always have.

We will be paying for these people's meals in the next 20 years. I hope you're ready to work long hours for not much of anything because that's the reality.

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[dave1791]

> means that the generations after them are "somewhere else" which is all we need for the future to be viable

"Somewhere Else" meaning YouTube, Mysace and Facebook right?

Excuse me while I go dig my personal bunker...

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[digitalextremist]

There are plenty of people getting into lame media in new places. But the idea here is not a MILITARY revolution. It is a revolution in the sense of going around and around, moving, being actively in motion. Right now humanity is DEAD, which would make us having a life REVOLUTIONARY :)

TV is becoming unpopular with young people

[Anonymous Coward]

For many in the younger generation, it has been replaced with the Internet as an entertainment medium. And also, a lot of young people have negative opinions of television as a brainless waste of time, which it really is.

Maybe the avg age in the US is closer to 50?

[deltavivis]

According to this the over 50 crowd is the fastest growing sales group for video games:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Story?id=4132153.
So maybe the average age of internet users is also closer to 50? The most likely thing we're seeing here is that the whole country is just getting old.

'Target Demographic' Spends Money

[im_thatoneguy]

The important part of the target demographic isn't the quantity of viewers, it's the quantity of buyers.

Advertisers don't care if they show it to 10,000,000 people and 50,000 follow up with a sale or 500,000 are shown and 50,000 follow up with a sale. A Sale is a Sale. Sales per $ of advertising is one of the most important metrics. If they have to direct marketing past 60% of the audience which isn't interested that's fine--they weren't going to buy anything from them anyway.

Network television reaches an absurdly large number of people. There is no reason to shift the target demographic because a small percentage of a huge group of people aren't interested.

Let's say you're presented with the option to buy ad space on Channel A which is 50% 18-49 or Channel B which is 100% 18-49 which do you pick? No way to choose. Maybe Channel A has 10million viewers and Channel B only has 3 million viewers. You're still going to more high volume buyers on channel A even though the percentage is less.

Percentages mean nothing without comparable volumes.

Since this is the median age...

[Angostura]

All it takes is a single 110 year old watching TV to make this particular average jump up. We need to know about mode and the mean too.

More than 99.999% of the population have more than the average number of legs, when you are talking about the mean.
The median number of legs is one.
The mode is two.

Re:Since this is the median age...

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking through this mini-thread I don't think the original poster ever figured out the definition of "median".

Given 9 people, 8 with the normal 2 legs and 1 amputee, you compute the mean as follows:

Put the numbers down in ascending order:

1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2

Take the MIDDLE ENTRY in this list. It's the 5th number (the 4th occurrence of the number "2").

That's the median.

It doesn't freaking matter about amputees, cojoined twins, etc! These are a very small number of people whose observations will be at the very beginning and very end of the sequence. In the middle are a huge number of 2's, and the median will ALWAYS be 2 unless it is a very non-random sample.

You don't compute medians (or means, for that matter) based on "possibilities" (unless that is specifically your intent, but that would be very unusual). You base it on population observations.

We really need to drop some of the math general education targeted towards calculus and whatnot that very few people use, and replace it with some statistics classes!

Re:Since this is the median age...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to review your definition of the median.
Here's an example with sample 9 people, one of whom has no legs, and two of whom have one leg.
Number of legs sorted from lowest to highest:
0
1
1
2
2: This is the middle value, therefore the median average
2
2
2
2

So the median is 2. Now extend that to a more representative sample (more people, and I would assume more than 70% of people have 2 legs.)

Here's the wikipedia article on the median if you're still unclear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median

Hope that cleared things up.

-Steve

Uh...

[Moraelin]

While online dating may be a luxury for you (to use your weakest counterpoint), for someone who would otherwise not be able to meet people, it can be a life saver. People do die of loneliness. No, that's not a medical term, but it's true the same way it's true that people die of old age.

Uh... _if_ you're dying of loneliness, here's a crazy idea: go out. Go to a pub. Talk to people.

I realize that this is basically the disparaging "go out and get a life" comment, but I'm not saying this to everyone. If you're perfectly comfortable with sitting alone in a dark room with a computer, fine. I'm not gonna tell you to stop doing that. It would be hypocritical anyway.

But, ffs, if you've already decided that you're lonely and that meeting people would save your life, i.e., that lack thereof would literally kill you one way or another, then solve your own problem already. Evolution, or God, or whatever you believe in, gave you that big brain, use it. If you're thirsty, you go drink some water. If you're hungry, you go eat. If you're _that_ terminally lonely, go out and meed some people.

And on the subject of the internet, we had ways to satisfy all those needs, long before the internet. When people were hungry, they just went and ate something, even if ordering pizza by Internet wasn't yet an option. Ditto for dating. Long before internet chat and internet dating, people already had perfectly good ways to avoid being lonely. They'd just go out and talk to someone.

That's what makes it a luxury, and not a basic need. Food is a basic need. Ordering pizza per internet is just a luxury: it spares you some effort and time, but that's all. Talking to someone, well, if you're that terminally lonely and lack of it would literally kill you, I guess it would count as a basic need. Finding them by Internet is a luxury. Again, it spares you some effort and time, but that's all.

If anything, the Internet created the problem it supposedly solves. Before the Internet and people being glued to their computer for days, there would be more of them out at the pub or the park, for you to meet. So for each hour you spend browsing potential dates on the Internet and planning a date next months, guess what? Previously you'd be outside actually talking to someone in person, right now.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Internet is evil. Anyone who wants to butt in with, "OMG, but I'd rather stay on the internet than go to the pub and get bored talking about the weather," fine! If you don't want to meet people, don't. Nobody's telling you to, if you're comfortable with what you're doing. But anyone claiming they'd die of loneliness with it, has already excluded themselves from the "OMG, I'd rather stay here and read tech stuff than meet people." They already claimed they'd rather meet people. So they can jolly well go out and actually meet people. Lots of them.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you missed the part about some oldsters not being able to just go out and do those things.

"Internet killed the video star"

[Timo_UK]

This way it fit into the tune!

Re: House, MD

[TaoPhoenix]

I just watched the entire first three seasons of House MD on the DVD sets. Took me about a month. Between the 20 hours commercials not watched and the time saved by not wrenching my schedule to "be sure to watch it", I figure I gained a year on my life.

The cheapest TV-size monitor is a TV

[tepples]

You'll need a TV to watch those DVDs.

have you heard of these new fangled inventions called DVD-drives?

Unless you're talking about those portable DVD players with a 7 inch screen, you will still need some sort of monitor to connect to your DVD player or desktop PC. It's going to be hard to fit more than one person around the monitor unless the monitor is the size of a TV, and the cheapest monitor the size of a TV is a TV.

Re:The cheapest TV-size monitor is a TV

[TheRaven64]

I didn't replace my TV when it broke, and for a bit less than I paid for it when it was new (well, ex-rental), I got a projector (with a new bulb). My old TV was 28", my new projector takes less space in the room and gives me a picture a couple of metres across. I no longer pay a TV license, because I don't have anything that can receive broadcast TV. For about the same annual price I have subscribed to a postal DVD rental service and use the BBC iPlayer. I generally have something to watch when I want to, and never see adverts.

Re:The cheapest TV-size monitor is a TV

[One Childish N00b]

Are you some sort of fucking idiot? He's clearly got a monitor, he wrote the freakin' post!

Re:Median number of legs...

[Panaqqa]

Uh, the median number of legs is two. Take a set that includes the number of legs each human has and sort it into ascending order. The value right in the middle will be 2.

But you are correct in your assertion that 99%+ of the population have more than the average number of legs. When you include amputees and other unfortunates the mean number of legs would be somewhere around 1.997, and when most people think of average they are really thinking of the mean.

Long-form video is for big screens

[tepples]

It's going to be hard to fit more than one person around the monitor unless the monitor is the size of a TV

Are you some sort of fucking idiot? He's clearly got a monitor, he wrote the freakin' post!

It only takes one person sitting around a computer to write a post on Slashdot, so he probably has a monitor large enough for one person. Long-form video such as feature films and TV series is designed to be viewed on a much larger screen than even the "big" iMac's built-in monitor. One can use a TV or (as TheRaven64 pointed out) a projector.

Re:Long-form video is for big screens

[jedidiah]

OTOH, a "big" living room TV used to be 19".

The world won't come to an end if you are forced to watch TV
on a screen that would only make a somewhat respectable sized
computer monitor.

I bet a lot of non-slashdot types are still stuck with TV's of that vintage.

The only reason that my original 19" that I had hooked up to my ST isn't
still in service is cause the wife made me throw it out (too ugly).

Re:Long-form video is for big screens

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet a lot of non-slashdot types are still stuck with TV's of that vintage.

You are discounting the general public's love of television--which is often their only source of entertainment--coupled with their uncanny inability to grasp the concept of a budget.

My wakeup moment came when I drove a laborer home to his trailer. The guy was living completely hand-to-mouth for food and rent, but he still had a wall-sized TV.

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could just mean the general population is older. The "boomers" make up the largest percentage of the population and they're almost all over 50 now.

Age 50 years old

[edittard]

In other news their average height is over five and a half feet tall, their average car goes at 95 mph speed, and their average weight is over 150 pounds heavy.

Um... obvious?

[hoppo]

Some may not remember, but the era from the late 40s through most of the 50s was known as the "Baby Boom." Fertility rate during that time remains unequaled in US history. As a result, we've got quite a lot of people in this country who are over the age of 50. We can probably expect the targets of many products and services, not just television, to skew much older in the coming years.

Re: House, MD

[initdeep]

funny, i do that and am watching the current season
its called a dvr.

i use it to watch most of my programming

I do however, avoid TNT, and TBS like the plague as i'm tired of watching 1/3 height in show advertising for another upcoming show.

no television in the Star Trek utopia

[peter303]

Gene Rodenberry had a number of things in his Star Trek utopia like no money, no racism, no inter-human wars. But most curious to me was no television, but Gene didnt explain why. Instead we find people entertaiing themselves in the first two Star Trek series by going to cafes, plays, concerts, playing cards and reading. Maybe he thought TV was pandered to the masses and was too low-brow.

Re:no television in the Star Trek utopia

[grolaw]

And, every book, play and television show was available on the computer.

The Tablet-computer that Jake Sisko used to write his stories in DS9 presumably had access to the entire collection of literature of all Federation Planets - and a substantial body of that work exists as plays and teleplays - justas it does here on Earth today.

Where did the sets and set-pieces come from for the Holodeck in TNG? Conan Doyle's Holmes - or, at least Moriarty featured in one episode. Also, Patrick Stewart's character liked "hard-boiled" detective narratives - they must have been drawn from prior art....

Re:no television in the Star Trek utopia

[dwye]

The holodeck programs were written by professional artists (see DS9, and Quark's setup). OTOH, since the Voyager people wrote their own, one could generate generic buildings and people of appropriate periods from pre-existing libraries. I expect that the libraries had a link to the computer's historical database, as well, so that just as a starship crew could synthesize their own Nazi uniforms (as in ST:TOS), so could the holodeck for its programs.

Re:no television in the Star Trek utopia

[grolaw]

Quark's rented Holodeck had Chief O'Brien's personal stories in place - battles with invading hordes from the north in ancient Celtic times - one episode shows O'Brien and Bashir dressed in bearskins and leggings with broadswords - entering the bar and O'Brien and Bashir have a Scotch and an Ale, respectively, over a fallen friend - and then were about to reenter the holodeck when the story started - it was the teaser to begin an episode and never mentioned again.

Then there were Worf's battle programs....what professional would dare write a Klingon battle simulation? You might offend a Klingon and get killed. Nope, I'm certain that Worf wrote his own battle programs.

Geez I'm showing serious trek-geek here....

adult-diaper and prostate commercials evening news

[peter303]

The "geezer commercials" during the evening news are gross and enough to drive younger views away while eating dinner.

Easy Fix:

[grolaw]

Dump Faux News. Change the networks' news divisions back to what they were - investigative agencies with journalists (fancy word for a person who went to college and learned how to research and write about the news - few exist in captivity and fewer still are seen on TV) placed in "bureaus" around the globe.

Avoid "imbedding" journalists (actually, no Journalist would put up with being "imbedded" - but six-figure salary Reporters are not so concerned with facts - just their pay) and while we are at it - dump 100% of the commentary - left, right and center. That's what EDITORIAL PAGES are for.

Anybody who wants to know what one type of Journalism looked like - the First Person Interview - need only check out this University of Texas archive from the late 1950's: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/film/holdings/wallace/

Edward R Murrow was embedded a few times

[Anonymous Coward]

during WW2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_R._Murrow/ "Murrow flew on Allied bombing raids in Europe during the war, providing additional reports from the planes as they droned on over Europe (recorded for delayed broadcast)".

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a journalist who would agree with you that Murrow wasn't a "Journalist".

Do you understand what an embedded journalist is? Its nothing more than the latest term for what were termed "war correspondents" in your grandparents' day. There's a nice list of prior conflicts' respectable embedded journalists you can peruse at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_correspondent#Notable_war_correspondents/

Re:adult-diaper and prostate commercials evening n

[my_left_nut]

Don't forget about the AARP, "I've fallen and I can't get up", and "male-enhancement" ones as well.

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[Eli Gottlieb]

Would you mind explaining that in English instead of Hippy?

Re: House, MD

[stdarg]

I had Tivo for a while and loved it, but now that I ditched cable for Netflix, I realize it's really cool to watch an entire season of a show in a short period of time. That adds even more to the experience than does skipping commercials.

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[digitalextremist]

Humanity is focused on external objects, believing them to be outside, and separate. Events are seen as happening "to" us. The television mindset heightens this. We sit, the box "there" plays, we sit. This is not participation in life, it is observation of an "outside world." In the same way, when we are in a stance, post "scientific revolution" where we poke and prod "matter," we are separated from it in our perceptions, and imprisoned in this "otherness" - we are severed from our source and origin. Humanity is severed from itself in the same way because we talk of this class, and that class, we do statistical analysis and yet we do not actually participate in the lives of these "individuals." Yes, we are each our self, but self itself is not disidentified from itself, which is in all of us. Returning to the point so I can get in more trouble with "you people" I will say that the internet, this post for example, is lightyears ahead of TV because when I disagree with someone on TV, they are able to speak in a -R-XR-XR-X way (permissions 555 if we were in a *nix system) or if I were watching a lame talk show it would perhaps be -rw-rw-rw- (666) but here, we each read, we each write, and we each may execute the awareness we participate in online, making it a 777 situation, that is, active, moving, and participating with the alleged outside world, as our unified inside experience. It returns us to motion. We are not intended to have kings, presidents, etc. All the little people being connected and empowered is far more efficient and natural for humanity, as we are not separated from the origin of the universe, and that origin is not limited in power allotments possible, managerial, ethical, or otherwise. However, when we view ourselves as objects, we sever ourselves from this source of actions and being.

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[digitalextremist]

I forgot the best example. "Hippy"? What is "Hippy" (I know what you mean, and why you use it to get ranking, but what good does it to do place me apart from you, except to minimize the motion of a thread?) Humanity is in the same pattern you exemplify here, my counterpart.

Re:Median number of legs...

[Angostura]

Uh, a human can have 2, 1 or 0 legs - when you include amputees etc.

So the median is, by my calculation - 1.

Re:Median number of legs...

[Panaqqa]

Looking at the set of the number of legs each human has, the median number of legs is 2.

Looking at the set of all numbers of legs it is possible for a human to have, the median is 2 also. You must also consider, in addition to amputees, those deformed with extra legs, in which case 3 and 4 are also possible (4 in the case of a "parasitic twin"). So the median is still 2.

Re:Median number of legs...

[Angostura]

Ah, well - if you are going there, there are examples of conjoined triplets, so the median is actually 3. But I wasn't going there.

Re:Median number of legs...

[Panaqqa]

Of course, a pathologist whose specialty is orthopedic pathology might have dozens of legs in specimen jars. Having 50 legs in this case would be possible, if having legs was not qualified as "having legs that are part of the person's body".

In the case of conjoined triplets, one could say, I suppose, that each of the three actually has 6 legs. But since prior to something going wrong in utero the legs (or clusters of cells that would later differentiate into legs) actually belonged to one of the people specifically, this is arguable. In fact it is why I used the example of a parasitic twin rather than a conjoined twin. In the case of the parasitic twin (a subset of conjoined), the second human did not actually develop, except for a few body parts external to the body of the host twin.

wtf is "get off my lawn, you damn kids!" ?

[quenda]

Now get off my lawn, you damn kids!

WTF is this? Its driving me mad. Something from an old TV show? An advertisement?
    Yeah I googled - a zillion references and no explanation. Please someone explain this idiom for us non-merkins.

Re:wtf is "get off my lawn, you damn kids!" ?

[ratboy666]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=get+off+my+lawn

American Cultural Reference -- not sure of origin. Take the first meaning above; I am just a cranky old man...
tongue in cheek.

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[Eli Gottlieb]

"Hippy" (also spelled "Hippie") is a word describing a subculture that you resemble an extreme, straw-man example of. Hippies believe that mainstream society is somehow trapped in an inadequate state of existence, one that can be alleviated by ad-hoc spirituality (because hippies almost universally perceive the mainstream religions of their homeland as part of the "problem"), general love for all people and things, and often the use of recreational drugs. Hippies tend to say things like:

Humanity is focused on external objects, believing them to be outside, and separate.

As though any statement could be valid when applied to humanity as a whole, and (and this is what people don't like about hippies) as though all non-hippies live and believe in the same inadequate, possibly downright evil, way.

Hippies also tend to make statements (deeply influenced by the experiences they have taking LSD) like this one:

In the same way, when we are in a stance, post "scientific revolution" where we poke and prod "matter," we are separated from it in our perceptions, and imprisoned in this "otherness" - we are severed from our source and origin. Humanity is severed from itself in the same way because we talk of this class, and that class, we do statistical analysis and yet we do not actually participate in the lives of these "individuals." Yes, we are each our self, but self itself is not disidentified from itself, which is in all of us.

In which the hippy identifies itself and its perceptions with the universe at large (often there is an attitude that "all is one") rather than admitting that hallucinogenic drug trips cause hallucinations, viz: detachment of the mental and sensory experiences from reality.

In fact, your statement exemplifies hippy attitudes by disdaining mainstream or "square" things, like science, for the bizarre philosophy that you can't even explain (when asked to do so) in language a layman can understand, most likely because you either learned it from someone who used LSD or gained the philosophy from using LSD.

Note that LSD is not the only "hippy" drug: cannabis, magic mushrooms, and most other forms of non-addictive hallucinogen are in use among hippies, though LSD remains the best known to outsiders.

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[digitalextremist]

Continuing to make assumptions is the thing I would disdain. Was science itself attached? Was science born in the "scientific revolution?" Does sensory experience == reality? Is there such a thing as a "lay person" except in a collective understanding which just might be a non sequitur? Does not your post Beg The Question, in the logical flaw sense, while claiming that it what I am doing? Many people of academic distinction, renowned integrity and vast contribution to humanity, who were not altering their brain chemistry in any way, are sad for you.

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[digitalextremist]

*attacked -- Was science _attacked_

Re:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[digitalextremist]

Let me try this again from another angle. Your post creates distance. It makes assumptions and asserts superiority without basis, except in a way which nudges your neighbor for support, purely on sharing the same mind stuff. The message I am support to get from you is to be absorbed because you hold the power of popular understanding, and my response is supposed to be one of reaction to your challenge of my allegedly disconnected conceptions.

Beyond your dismay over my alternate perspective, the human race does not feel well right now. Your post does not move forward, but it discusses the non-reality of motion itself, or at least wishes to distance itself from a fellow human being. That is the precise problem I was pointing out. It is not my fault that people previously relegated to a term spoke of love. Perhaps they knew of what they spoke of, perhaps not. But love is something more important than taking offense to your assumptions, and that is what is absent 'out there.' This is evident in your immediate profiling of another being as intellectually corrupted with 'external' substances.

TV is for oldies

[LinuxLuver]

My kids (15 and 19) watch very little TV. They tend to watch DVDs or YouTube....if they watch anything at all. I haven't worried about their TV watching time for years.... They are too busy doing things themselves to sit around watching anyone else. Whereas.....it's us oldies (50 this year) who turn it on to see the news and curse every night because there is so little news on the news....Old habits die hard.

The Thalidomide of the 21st Century

[nightcats]

Robert Bly (he's a poet, geeks) called television "the thalidomide of the '90's." Flash will be it for the early decades of this millennium. We will, as I mention here be peeing into our Depends while we Twitter toward death:

In another 20 years, we will be reading about the Youtube-drunk oldsters fading away before the VR chipset-in-the-brain prime dogs.

TV Viewers' Average Age Hits 50 Years Old

[dysonapr]

So why are the programs aimed at 3rd graders?

Re:Median number of legs...

[Angostura]

Now no-one else is reading this thread, I can safely admit you are completely right and my feeble defence has failed. ... I'm still going off to Google for parasitic triplets though. You never know.

Re:Median number of legs...

[slider3618]

I think he is computing the median number of legs based on what approximately 50% of the population refers to as their "3rd leg" or, occasionally, "the one-eyed monster".

Re:Median number of legs...

[Panaqqa]

Perhaps you are right. Taking that into account might result in "a leg over" (if one is lucky), and failing to take it into account could cause one to "get off on the wrong foot". But considering this is Slashdot, the former calculation could hardly be called a standard deviation.

Re:Median number of legs...

[Panaqqa]

Hmm, so much for no-one else reading this thread.

Perhaps this debate has legs.