TV Viewers' Average Age Hits 50 Years Old

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.

Where did the content go?

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.

So does this mean...

So does this mean that today's youth are outside riding bikes, skipping, playing games, building tree forts, etc?

Re:So does this mean...

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

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.

TV Show Seasons on DVD

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:Top heavy population

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.

We 'retired people' are on the web too.

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.

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

Re:Top heavy population

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

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

Re:Average live median age?

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?

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?

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?

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:"The internet has confirmed it"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

3b. Internet Killed the TV Star

Re:"The internet has confirmed it"

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"

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:No, you just don't measure the young viewers

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:100% of the people in nursing homes?

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!)