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

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?

[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: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:"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"

[ardle]

You had to be there ;-)

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:"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"

[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 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.