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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.
Confirmed it? More like caused it.
Americans are living longer and having fewer kids. Surprised?
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.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Welcome to the new demographic, at least for the next 25 years.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
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.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.
//de ~ 9cimi
I dunno, have you compared the encoding quality of HDTV OTA channels vs. cable lately?
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
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.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
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.
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.
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