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TV Viewers' Average Age Hits 50
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Jul 01, 2008 08:08 PM
from the hey-i'm-almost-that-old-now dept.
from the hey-i'm-almost-that-old-now dept.
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.
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"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:4, Funny)
>>The internet has confirmed it.
Ah, but what does Netcraft say?
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Insightful)
Netcraft says the daily heroic killed TV (also relationships, pets, and occasionally a small child).
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Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Funny)
From what I hear, claim to be a Nigerian prince works just fine?
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:4, Funny)
Two points -
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:4, Interesting)
I was.
It (MTV) wasn't.
Except for Weird Al videos. I'll give you that one :-)
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:4, Interesting)
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."
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Insightful)
I pay so I can skip the ads
I torrent so I don't have to
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Funny)
3b. Internet Killed the TV Star
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Interesting)
Come on, mods!
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:"The internet has confirmed it" (Score:4, Interesting)
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Top heavy population (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Top heavy population (Score:5, Insightful)
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We 'retired people' are on the web too. (Score:5, Funny)
Broadcasters can lick the sweat off of my balls.
Getting any media off of the air is so passé.
Parent
Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too. (Score:5, Interesting)
unless your wirelessly watching that tv show on your cell phone.
Parent
Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too. (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno, have you compared the encoding quality of HDTV OTA channels vs. cable lately?
Parent
Re:We 'retired people' are on the web too. (Score:4, Funny)
I hardly think this is the place to be pitching your new website idea.
Parent
Re:Top heavy population (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Top heavy population (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you one of these boomers? Considering these things non-luxury is a bit of a stretch (especially online dating).
Parent
the digital switch of DOOM! (Score:4, Funny)
They'll take the channels they can get via rabbit ears
6 months, and counting...
Parent
Excellent! (Score:4, Funny)
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! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
So as my parents go off into the good night... (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [eurekalert.org] before downloading my custom top 50 stories unto my Sony Ebook Reader [amazon.com] 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 [wikipedia.org] and Wikinomics.
Where did the content go? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
hope beyond hope (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
So does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Simple demographics (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The entertainment mediums are a changin' (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
TV Show Seasons on DVD (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Average live median age? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Average live median age? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Average live median age? (Score:5, Funny)
My God, they're right! The Internet is replacing television!
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Re:Average live median age? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No, you just don't measure the young viewers (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:100% of the people in nursing homes? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [tvb.org]
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!)
Parent
Re:Technophobia (Score:4, Funny)
what are old people not afraid of?!
Matlock
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