I see old people…
Reese Schonfeld crunches the numbers and sees lots of grey hairs…
To mix a mammalian metaphor “the young audience” is Moby Dick to everyone in the news business. We search, we hunt, we test audiences, we run focus groups and still well less than 10% of the cable news network audience is under 18. In primetime MSNBC has Olbermann, maybe it helps a little but not much. Headline News has gone tabloid — Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck, still under 10%. CNN’s gone young with Anderson Cooper, under 35’s make up 7.5% of their primetime viewers. Fox sticks with O’Reilly, Hannity & Colmes and Greta; 4% of their audience makes the 18-34 cut. Newspapers are just as bad. They’re constantly adding new columns, new features, new sections in hopes of harpooning younger readers.
If I were still in the news business I’d do my best to make news and break stories. I’d substitute intelligence for sensationalism and pseudo-sentimentality. I’d love to compete against Grace, Beck and O’Reilly. My only hope for resurrecting the horse is to feed it new, different, original information — the kind of stuff people talk about the next day at the water cooler.
It’s a shame that the olders, like myself, are the main ones who actually “DO THINGS” to make a difference and the 18-34’s are the ones who do the best at spending $$$$$, resulting in the Networks prefering that demographic. Well maybe not Everyone. The best judge of who the target audience is, is the ads. The shows who push meds and “Depends” aren’t going for teens and yups. Those, sadly, are few and far between due to the “spending” vs “saving” factors. I guess I’m the only one who thinks shows like Survivor My Sweet Sixteen aren’t doing anything to inform or make the world better. GOD…am I old.
Comment by Roger — March 21, 2007 @ 10:15 am
“In primetime MSNBC has Olbermann, maybe it helps a little but not much.”
Really. So why was it he provided data for everyone else he mentioned, EXCEPT Olbermann? What is the percentage of Countdown’s viewers that are under 18?
Comment by Missy — March 21, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
That’s a lot more of that percentages that people writing about the media love… but people who are in the know, don’t use. Who cares what KO’s “young percentage” is, if his actual demo number is lower?
I don’t care if he (or anyone else) has 100% of their numbers from “the demo!” If at the end of the day it’s lower than the competition, it’s still not as (allegedly) profitable as someone else.
Comment by ImNotBlue — March 21, 2007 @ 6:10 pm