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One thing that I haven't seen discussed is that the average age of a CNN viewer is 64. Building a streaming service around an elderly audience seems like it'd b

One thing that I haven't seen discussed is that the average age of a CNN viewer is 64. Building a streaming service around an elderly audience seems like it'd be tricky. That doesn't mean that it is impossible -- Fox News has done it reasonably well with Fox Nation and Fox News viewers have an average age of 68 (just like MSNBC). But was this programming built for their elderly audience, or was it supposed to be an attempt at picking up a new, younger audience? Who was this for? You watch a program like CBS Sunday Morning and it's clear they know who their audience is. Each week, they feature who passed away. They feature anniversaries of things like the Godfather and other stuff that their audience will like to reminisce about. A comedian talking about aging gracefully. Etc. But I don't think CNN did any of that with CNN+. (Source for age claims: https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/05/24/msnbc-rashida-jones/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/05/24/msnbc-rashid... )

hdesh 5y ago
Great analysis, thanks. A question is: Do the younger audience rely on streaming platforms/news channels to get their news? Anecdotally, everyone I know in the young age group relies on social-media or web-based portals for their news.
- brimble 5y ago
  "Elder Millennial" checking in. Since moving out on my own (quite a while ago, at this point) I've never had cable at all. Nor have any of my friends, who span from about my age down to the oldest edge of Gen Z. Nearly all my news is radio in the car (NPR—ugh, but at least sometimes they rebroadcast BBC News and that's decent) or from web sites. Practically all video news I watch is either raw footage, or (similarly) C-SPAN. John Oliver on HBO Max if it's late and I've had a few and I'm bored—that's about it for actual "news programs", if that even counts. [EDIT] I take back part of that—I think one guy has cable. He's into football. He's also the only right-winger in my circle. Maybe a coincidence? Wouldn't be surprised if a fair bit of his "vaccine hesitancy" (to put it in mild, friendly NPR terms) came from watching Fox News, now that I think about it.
  - kansface 5y ago
    Podcasts have completely replaced NPR for me. I’d highly recommend it.
    - brimble 5y ago
      Something about most podcasts make them really hard to listen to, for me. Not sure why. Among all media I find them uniquely difficult to follow. My attention wanders and I end up missing most of it. Radio-news-style programs are fine, for some reason. All I can figure is it's got something to do with the pace, and the way the hosts speak. I can even tune into weird religious talk programs on the radio, and mostly be OK, but podcasts as a medium just rarely work for me. Which bums me out, because I'm assured there are tons of good ones, but I just can't handle them. Similar formats with video are fine (on e.g. Youtube).
      - sephamorr 5y ago
        I used to feel similarly about audio but have figured out the right settings for acceleration (1.2-1.4x) and silence trimming in pocketcasts to increase the informational content and keep it interesting - it works for me now. (that and finding the most interesting content for me)
        brimble 5y ago
        I'll try that! Dan Carlin's works are some of the ones I find easiest to follow, but still too difficult, so maybe I'll try it on him first.
  - weberer 5y ago
    Fox News is pretty pro-vaccine. I just looked through their website and couldn't find any stories against vaccines themselves. Several stories saying they're safe and effective. https://www.foxnews.com/health/us-covid-19-vaccine-boosters-ready-september-rollout https://www.foxnews.com/health/us-covid-19-vaccine-boosters-... https://www.foxnews.com/health/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-more-than-90-effective-kids https://www.foxnews.com/health/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-more-... https://www.foxnews.com/health/covid-19-vaccination-kids-severe-illness https://www.foxnews.com/health/covid-19-vaccination-kids-sev...
- bombcar 5y ago
  I'm not significantly "young" but I get most my "news" from links in telegram chats and places like this. If it's huge news, I'll hear about it (you can't avoid it) and if it is not huge news, why do I care?
- Pxtl 5y ago
  The only "news" I get from modern streaming is the Youtubes of Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert and Last Week Tonight on HBO/Crave, I get the rest of my news from Twitter (where I follow various local journos and CBC). Which I know isn't ideal and I should pay for a proper news source but the state of "print" journalism in Canada is really, really bad right now since all the non-government-run services are being bought up by ideological conservatives.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    I secind late night shows to get news. They have a bias that is totally clear (and one I share, most of the time), are well curayed and researched (so I don't to have news all day) and are presented in a non-so-serious way (making digestion easier). In additiok to that we have dogital subscriptions to NYT, WP and physical ones for Wired and our local newspaper. Anytheing else is the non-subscription stuff from reliable news papers. I did reduce news consumption a lot so since the Ukraine war started. Oh, and not to forget: HN.
throwaway894345 5y ago
This is kind of crazy. I always think of CNN (at least in its recent form), MSNBC, and Fox as the most unhinged, sensationalist, rabidly partisan of the mainstream networks. I didn't realize they also had quite old audiences--I wonder if this is just a coincidence or if there's some generational or age-related reason? EDIT: To all the people saying that younger people get their "unhinged" through social media and other platforms, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation.
- mountainriver 5y ago
  I think partisan and sensational is just a human thing. Those particular networks are definitely a generational thing
- brimble 5y ago
  Generational. Younger generations get their unhinged "takes" from Twitter and podcasts.
  - diogenescynic 5y ago
    I wonder which is worse being uninformed or misinformed. I feel like both are pretty bad, but somehow the misinformed seem worse because people are often unable to reject or form a new idea once they latch onto something.
    - adamdusty 5y ago
      What's wrong with being uninformed, especially when it comes to "news"?
      - u2077 5y ago
        I agree, very rarely do I actually need to know so-called “news” when you turn off the TV, the sky is no longer falling and the world is (mostly) fine. Everyone has a bias and skews stories, also, creating fear probably increases viewership. If the media always said everything is fine, less people would watch IMO.
ajross 5y ago
FWIW: Fox Nation is much smaller in scope. It's basically a bunch of opinion shows (barely more than podcasts, honestly) designed to feed into a cyclic link sharing ecosystem that already exists and is somewhat starved for "legitimate" content. Basically these are links that people who are being fed Breitbart and InfoWars stories click on, because they're "serious news" they can't otherwise get on the internet. (Also, IIRC most of their revenue is still advertising from freely distributed content, not subscriber fees.) CNN+ was instead trying to do all this from the ground up, while competing with a much more robust existing ecosystem. Centrists and lefties already have Slate and Vox and Politico and of course all the existing "print" media sites to fill their "legitimate" news needs. What was CNN going to give them that they didn't already have?
- Vaslo 5y ago
  Vox, Politico, and definitely slate are not centrist
krona 5y ago
Maybe this partly explains why some of the CNN+ YouTube clips were getting orders of magnitude more views than the channel itself.
- barbacoa 5y ago
  YouTube artificially promotes CNN content. I suspect their content on YouTube would have similar number of views to CNN+ otherwise.
crate_barre 5y ago
It’s the median, not the average. And I think for CNN the median is definitely lower than that, but for FoxNews it’s about right.
bena 5y ago
Of course they want a new, younger audience. Because in order to be 64, you first have to be 63. It's not like you wake up one day and say, "Well, looks like I have to watch news all the time". These habits accrue over time. Especially as you get older and you get more involved and have less to do.
- brewdad 5y ago
  I'm a solid middle generation GenX. I rarely watch cable news anymore. When I was younger and had actual cable, I'd channel surf and often end up on one of the news stations if nothing else was on. I still have access to the same channels through YoutubeTV but it's far less conducive to channel surfing, so now if there's nothing on I want to watch, I turn off the TV or pop over to Netflix or whatever. The old habits are pretty much gone.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    I pull up a few news sites twice a day and read a few articles, but I don't watch anything and I rarely listen to anything either. The written articles are usually more informative and contain less partisan stupidity. I can't do podcasts, because I'll inevitably tune them out, hear something important to the presentation, and then spend my afternoon rewinding. Also, the need to be sensationalist is vastly stronger for podcast creators than it is for major media orgs whose networks have cable contracts.
  - bena 5y ago
    Regardless of what you do, you're not only a sample size of one, but it doesn't mean they're not going to try. The person I responded to was musing that CNN was doing this to try and crack into a younger audience. And it's like: no shit. They want to either find ways to integrate into more youthful demographics or get more youthful demographics to integrate them into their habits. Joe Camel wasn't made to appeal to adult smokers.
bastardoperator 5y ago
The 64 year olds used to say TV rots your brain, apparently it's true!
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hdesh 5y ago

Great analysis, thanks. A question is: Do the younger audience rely on streaming platforms/news channels to get their news? Anecdotally, everyone I know in the young age group relies on social-media or web-based portals for their news.

brimble 5y ago
"Elder Millennial" checking in. Since moving out on my own (quite a while ago, at this point) I've never had cable at all. Nor have any of my friends, who span from about my age down to the oldest edge of Gen Z. Nearly all my news is radio in the car (NPR—ugh, but at least sometimes they rebroadcast BBC News and that's decent) or from web sites. Practically all video news I watch is either raw footage, or (similarly) C-SPAN. John Oliver on HBO Max if it's late and I've had a few and I'm bored—that's about it for actual "news programs", if that even counts. [EDIT] I take back part of that—I think one guy has cable. He's into football. He's also the only right-winger in my circle. Maybe a coincidence? Wouldn't be surprised if a fair bit of his "vaccine hesitancy" (to put it in mild, friendly NPR terms) came from watching Fox News, now that I think about it.
- kansface 5y ago
  Podcasts have completely replaced NPR for me. I’d highly recommend it.
  - brimble 5y ago
    Something about most podcasts make them really hard to listen to, for me. Not sure why. Among all media I find them uniquely difficult to follow. My attention wanders and I end up missing most of it. Radio-news-style programs are fine, for some reason. All I can figure is it's got something to do with the pace, and the way the hosts speak. I can even tune into weird religious talk programs on the radio, and mostly be OK, but podcasts as a medium just rarely work for me. Which bums me out, because I'm assured there are tons of good ones, but I just can't handle them. Similar formats with video are fine (on e.g. Youtube).
    - sephamorr 5y ago
      I used to feel similarly about audio but have figured out the right settings for acceleration (1.2-1.4x) and silence trimming in pocketcasts to increase the informational content and keep it interesting - it works for me now. (that and finding the most interesting content for me)
      - brimble 5y ago
        I'll try that! Dan Carlin's works are some of the ones I find easiest to follow, but still too difficult, so maybe I'll try it on him first.
- weberer 5y ago
  Fox News is pretty pro-vaccine. I just looked through their website and couldn't find any stories against vaccines themselves. Several stories saying they're safe and effective. https://www.foxnews.com/health/us-covid-19-vaccine-boosters-ready-september-rollout https://www.foxnews.com/health/us-covid-19-vaccine-boosters-... https://www.foxnews.com/health/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-more-than-90-effective-kids https://www.foxnews.com/health/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-more-... https://www.foxnews.com/health/covid-19-vaccination-kids-severe-illness https://www.foxnews.com/health/covid-19-vaccination-kids-sev...
bombcar 5y ago
I'm not significantly "young" but I get most my "news" from links in telegram chats and places like this. If it's huge news, I'll hear about it (you can't avoid it) and if it is not huge news, why do I care?
Pxtl 5y ago
The only "news" I get from modern streaming is the Youtubes of Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert and Last Week Tonight on HBO/Crave, I get the rest of my news from Twitter (where I follow various local journos and CBC). Which I know isn't ideal and I should pay for a proper news source but the state of "print" journalism in Canada is really, really bad right now since all the non-government-run services are being bought up by ideological conservatives.
- hef19898 5y ago
  I secind late night shows to get news. They have a bias that is totally clear (and one I share, most of the time), are well curayed and researched (so I don't to have news all day) and are presented in a non-so-serious way (making digestion easier). In additiok to that we have dogital subscriptions to NYT, WP and physical ones for Wired and our local newspaper. Anytheing else is the non-subscription stuff from reliable news papers. I did reduce news consumption a lot so since the Ukraine war started. Oh, and not to forget: HN.

throwaway894345 5y ago

This is kind of crazy. I always think of CNN (at least in its recent form), MSNBC, and Fox as the most unhinged, sensationalist, rabidly partisan of the mainstream networks. I didn't realize they also had quite old audiences--I wonder if this is just a coincidence or if there's some generational or age-related reason? EDIT: To all the people saying that younger people get their "unhinged" through social media and other platforms, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation.

mountainriver 5y ago
I think partisan and sensational is just a human thing. Those particular networks are definitely a generational thing
brimble 5y ago
Generational. Younger generations get their unhinged "takes" from Twitter and podcasts.
- diogenescynic 5y ago
  I wonder which is worse being uninformed or misinformed. I feel like both are pretty bad, but somehow the misinformed seem worse because people are often unable to reject or form a new idea once they latch onto something.
  - adamdusty 5y ago
    What's wrong with being uninformed, especially when it comes to "news"?
    - u2077 5y ago
      I agree, very rarely do I actually need to know so-called “news” when you turn off the TV, the sky is no longer falling and the world is (mostly) fine. Everyone has a bias and skews stories, also, creating fear probably increases viewership. If the media always said everything is fine, less people would watch IMO.

ajross 5y ago

FWIW: Fox Nation is much smaller in scope. It's basically a bunch of opinion shows (barely more than podcasts, honestly) designed to feed into a cyclic link sharing ecosystem that already exists and is somewhat starved for "legitimate" content. Basically these are links that people who are being fed Breitbart and InfoWars stories click on, because they're "serious news" they can't otherwise get on the internet. (Also, IIRC most of their revenue is still advertising from freely distributed content, not subscriber fees.) CNN+ was instead trying to do all this from the ground up, while competing with a much more robust existing ecosystem. Centrists and lefties already have Slate and Vox and Politico and of course all the existing "print" media sites to fill their "legitimate" news needs. What was CNN going to give them that they didn't already have?

Vaslo 5y ago
Vox, Politico, and definitely slate are not centrist

krona 5y ago

Maybe this partly explains why some of the CNN+ YouTube clips were getting orders of magnitude more views than the channel itself.

barbacoa 5y ago
YouTube artificially promotes CNN content. I suspect their content on YouTube would have similar number of views to CNN+ otherwise.

crate_barre 5y ago

It’s the median, not the average. And I think for CNN the median is definitely lower than that, but for FoxNews it’s about right.

bena 5y ago

Of course they want a new, younger audience. Because in order to be 64, you first have to be 63. It's not like you wake up one day and say, "Well, looks like I have to watch news all the time". These habits accrue over time. Especially as you get older and you get more involved and have less to do.

brewdad 5y ago
I'm a solid middle generation GenX. I rarely watch cable news anymore. When I was younger and had actual cable, I'd channel surf and often end up on one of the news stations if nothing else was on. I still have access to the same channels through YoutubeTV but it's far less conducive to channel surfing, so now if there's nothing on I want to watch, I turn off the TV or pop over to Netflix or whatever. The old habits are pretty much gone.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  I pull up a few news sites twice a day and read a few articles, but I don't watch anything and I rarely listen to anything either. The written articles are usually more informative and contain less partisan stupidity. I can't do podcasts, because I'll inevitably tune them out, hear something important to the presentation, and then spend my afternoon rewinding. Also, the need to be sensationalist is vastly stronger for podcast creators than it is for major media orgs whose networks have cable contracts.
- bena 5y ago
  Regardless of what you do, you're not only a sample size of one, but it doesn't mean they're not going to try. The person I responded to was musing that CNN was doing this to try and crack into a younger audience. And it's like: no shit. They want to either find ways to integrate into more youthful demographics or get more youthful demographics to integrate them into their habits. Joe Camel wasn't made to appeal to adult smokers.

bastardoperator 5y ago

The 64 year olds used to say TV rots your brain, apparently it's true!

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