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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?
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.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Broadcasters can lick the sweat off of my balls.
Getting any media off of the air is so passé.
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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
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.
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.
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)
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.
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?
my insights may be modded Funny, but at least some of my jokes are modded Insightful
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.
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
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 that today's youth are outside riding bikes, skipping, playing games, building tree forts, etc?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
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!)
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Pointless semantic arguments, uninformed annoying commentary, and disregard of nuanced definitions?
My God, they're right! The Internet is replacing television!
my insights may be modded Funny, but at least some of my jokes are modded Insightful
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.)
I've got your sig, right here.
They'll take the channels they can get via rabbit ears
6 months, and counting...
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
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
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
what are old people not afraid of?!
Matlock
-I only code in BASIC.-