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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[James Youngman]

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

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"

[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"

[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"

[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?

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

[Your.Master]

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

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.

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.

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[xant]

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

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.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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: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:Technophobia

[Ethanol-fueled]

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

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.)

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!

the digital switch of DOOM!

[Scrameustache]

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

6 months, and counting...

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'

[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.

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:Technophobia

[theheadlessrabbit]

what are old people not afraid of?!

Matlock

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.

'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.

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: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.

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:Hip-Hop and Alternative Culture Before "Interne

[Eli Gottlieb]

Would you mind explaining that in English instead of Hippy?