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

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

[peragrin]

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

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: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:"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"

[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"

[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!

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:"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"

[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.