5 ms·

TV is increasingly for old people

60 points by spking 12y ago

themartorana 12y ago
The plethora and popularity of reality TV doesn't say much about our older generations. Sarcasm aside, the relative popularities of Fox News on TV and Vice on the Internet are pretty good examples of what this article is talking about.
- tedks 12y ago
  In my experience, only people above 30 watch reality shows. Virtually all reality shows are for old people. Real Housewives, everything on HGTV, everything on the History and Discovery channel... the only network that's associated with youth that has reality shows I can think of is MTV, but even that is probably more watched by aging men trying desperately to relive their cool days.
  - bronbron 12y ago
    That's funny, my experience has been the complete opposite.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      Yes TOWI, BB etcetera are your younger and lower social class C2, D and E using the NRS system.
  - moggflunkies 12y ago
    Teen Mom, Laguna Beach, Awkward... these shows are for people above 30?
- booruguru 12y ago
  I question the veracity of that statement. Whenever you see a mob of screaming fans surrounding one of the Kardashians they tend to span all age groups. And twentysomethings are always trying to get me to watch the latest E! reality show.
ClayM 12y ago
This should more accurately say "traditional broadcast TV is increasingly for old people". There's still plenty of people watching content in the TV format, they just are not doing it from exactly 8pm to 11pm in the way that they used to.
codeflo 12y ago
Calculating "percent increases" of the median age of a population doesn't make any sense at all.
- nextstep 12y ago
  They likely did that to make the increase seem more significant. A "6 percent increase" to 44.4 years is an increase of only 2.5 years.
- Nacraile 12y ago
  Why not? A relative difference in values is a relative difference in values. "The median of this distribution is a bit larger than the median of this other distribution" sure makes sense to me. Sure, comparing two histograms would be more informative, but also much more difficult to discuss concisely.
Theodores 12y ago
Same in the UK, average age of viewers on BBC is 59-60: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2014/television_services.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2014/telev... I shudder to think what the average age is of broadsheet newspaper readers is...
- walshemj 12y ago
  Well makes the competition for the top jobs easier top Investment Banks and fast track Civil service still expect a rounded renaissance man or woman - its not that long ago that you where advised by school and parent's to say that you read a broadsheet in an interview. I suspect that it helps in Oxbridge and Ivy Entrance interviews as well
- userbmf 12y ago
  http://www.themediabriefing.com/media/project_tmb/image/averageage.png http://www.themediabriefing.com/media/project_tmb/image/aver...
Sambdala 12y ago
> And he’s part of one camp that believes young professionals and students will eventually become cable subscribers. > “We suspect they will trade up,” Skipper said. The implication here seems to be that cable is the premium/preferred product, and people will switch to it once they can afford a cable subscription. That does not at all strike me as being the case in this day and age. The internet, and piracy, created an even more extreme shift in how you can consume video than it did for music. At least when you shelled out a ton of money for a CD, you still had the same experience when listening to the music. When you pay for cable or watch broadcast TV, you then not only have to wait for the scheduled viewing time, but you spend half as much time watching commercials as you do watching the actual program (10 minutes out of a 30 minute block). Then on top of that you have to deal with the famously awful cable companies? I think piracy + netflix have probably irreversibly changed people's willingness to sit through commercials, wait for the scheduled time slot, and put up with the other inconveniences associated with the whole process. I understand some of this has gone away through video on demand and DVRs, but I still have to think that Netflix is superior when it has something and Popcorn Time when it doesn't. It's not even the cost issue either. The cost issue is what got me started downloading music and video when I was a teenager, but nowadays (even though I'd be willing to pay a couple hundred bucks/pounds a month in theory) I've just had too much frustration and annoyance every time I've used a set top box (mostly in hotel rooms these days) to even have it on my radar as something that has the potential to make my life better.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  It's sort of accurate. I mean, I don't know that I will ever subscribe to cable, but if I was a billionaire- sure, why not? Which means the flaw in their theory (for me) is the level of income I must attain is unrealistic.
- bellerocky 12y ago
  Yeah wow, Skipper is holding on to a legacy business that going to get disrupted from top to bottom. How do they not see that incredibly expensive cable subscriptions that provide scheduled broadcasts with filled with patronizing advertisements is somehow better than something like Netflix, YouTube or LiveStream?
bellerocky 12y ago
I don't understand why older people hang on to less optimal way of doing things? I hope I never do this. Being able to watch content at any time you want is better than having to schedule your time around broadcasts. No advertisements is better than having to endure advertisement breaks in the middle of a show. Same with newspapers. You can't share newspaper content easily. You can't click on a word and Google it or look up information about Ukraine's president while reading the news paper. Newspapers take up space in your house and unread newspapers are a huge waste. I get some people like distraction free reading, without a glaring bright screen so the case here isn't as clear cut as with a TV, but the point is valid. Older people, by virtue of having been around longer should be more capable of recognizing the pattern of new innovation leading to improvements, and not get stuck. I just don't get it, and I hope this doesn't happen to me, I'm already nearly in my 40's so we'll see.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Because in a lot of ways a decent smart TV at say 50 inches with iPlayer is lot less fuss than messing about with a pc and a much smaller display an suboptimal sound.
  - penprog 12y ago
    Smart TV and cable are not the same.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      Why your chopping logic and nit picking here
      - penprog 12y ago
        I wasn't trying to be a jerk, I should have explained myself better. Basically using a smart tv is analogous to young people using the internet in this situation because A. You are picking and choosing your content. B. You aren't exposed to advertisers (unless you are using hulu but even then you are picking what show you want to watch) C. You aren't paying a massive monthly subscription. D. It works using the internet, not cable. The article isn't so much about using a TV (the actual device that displays the picture) or a computer monitor as it was about watching "traditional" tv (the content, shown in a scheduled manner)
sparkzilla 12y ago
My kids spend all their time on YouTube. They would rather watch video on their phone than sit down in front of a TV. This has big implications for all media, not just broadcast TV.
- mikegioia 12y ago
  I don't have kids, but I noticed my cousins would all watch TV up until age 12/13 when they were allowed to get phones. As soon as they got phones, they abandoned the TV. Snapchat, instagram, netflix, games, and even hulu are now the only media they consume! I'm honestly excited to see what the TV landscape looks like in 10 years when these kids are 22-25.
userbmf 12y ago
Is this simply because regular TV has advertising and advertisers want to target the people with the most money? There is a huge gap in wealth between generations thanks to debt via housing and education. Are advertisers putting pressure on program makers to make shows that appeal to old people? I'd guess they've done a lot of thinking on this.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  "There is a huge gap in wealth between generations thanks to debt via housing and education" You sound like there's a ton of incentive to make TV channels for teenagers, promote mortgage and colleges on it. Capture all the unserved audience, make $$$s. If that's where all money go in this generation.
majormajor 12y ago
There's some mixing in this thread of "watching via cable programming" and "watching TV/movie content on a TV versus a computer or mobile device." For the former, even among people not paying at all, or not paying for it through the traditional cable company means, big-studio TV content seems more popular than ever (unsurprising since it's higher quality than ever, with still-increasing amounts of money pouring into it). This shift ultimately seems like one that will only hurt the traditional broadcast networks, as well as the cable networks that fill themselves with "passive watching" content versus the stuff that (currently, at least) plays much better in the newer distribution channels. Or maybe stuff like reality will just move online later when that demographic moves online if cable starts to fail. That's probably an area where the "it just works, and it's on, set it and forget" aspect of cable is actually a very large advantage, though. Otherwise, about the only non-large-content-library advantage of cable is that fast forward/rewind on my DVR work way better than on online streaming. Extreme space and budget restrictions seem to be the only reason to give up the latter. The couch or recliner + TV viewing experience is hard to do without (I did it for a couple of years after moving and being short on space, and then couldn't believe I'd done it for so long after getting a TV again).
tcfunk 12y ago
Love when reports use "median" anything...largely a useless statistic. The median age has little to no relationship to the average age of viewers.
- Nacraile 12y ago
  Curiously, you can also argue that the mean is a useless statistic, since it tells you very little about the bulk of a distribution with asymmetric outliers (i.e. age, wealth) Knowing that the youngest person in the oldest half of the TV population is getting older does tell you something interesting, and slightly more specific than what the mean gives you, although I suspect mean and median are fairly close in this case. Of course it would be nice to have mean, standard deviation, median, and maybe a few other percentiles. Better, a full histogram. But median is hardly useless.
jdonaldson 12y ago
You could also say that TV is increasingly for the young. Vice, House of Cards, etc. are great but they're targeting the 20+ crowd. There's an explosion of new shows and programs for kids on cable. Some of them, like Adventure Time, are so well done that I enjoy watching them. In fact, you could call this a bit of a "golden age" for this sort of thing. Watching shows on the internet is great. The acting talent and quality there has really improved. But, I see this less as taking away from cable, and more as taking away from the box office. Kevin Spacey was doing great movies 10+ years ago, and now he's headlining Netflix's service. Honestly, I think these long running tv shows are a better format for a lot of actors. Breaking Bad just can not be done in a 2-3 hour movie, or in a syndicated format where each episode needs to be treated more or less independently (e.g. Law and Order). However, Netflix didn't really start that trend, cable did. Also, cable/tv "owns" the coax cable running through the house: the fastest and most reliable way of moving information around the average US home. There's new technologies like Moca that are going to make a lot of things possible that currently are very flakey with current wireless/alt-ethernet solutions. TV has always been (mostly) about mindless entertainment. I think the shows that are successful outside of a traditional cable package succeed because they were probably inappropriate for the cable programming format anyways. Services like Netflix are filling a new niche, but I don't think they can significantly take away the core value of cable for most people.
- davidgerard 12y ago
  And the DVD box, the predecessor to whole series binges on Netflix. The 2005 revival of Dr Who was, IIRC, funded at least partially based on selling lots of boxes of it later.

60 points by spking 12y ago

The plethora and popularity of reality TV doesn't say much about our older generations. Sarcasm aside, the relative popularities of Fox News on TV and Vice on the Internet are pretty good examples of what this article is talking about.

tedks 12y ago
In my experience, only people above 30 watch reality shows. Virtually all reality shows are for old people. Real Housewives, everything on HGTV, everything on the History and Discovery channel... the only network that's associated with youth that has reality shows I can think of is MTV, but even that is probably more watched by aging men trying desperately to relive their cool days.
- bronbron 12y ago
  That's funny, my experience has been the complete opposite.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Yes TOWI, BB etcetera are your younger and lower social class C2, D and E using the NRS system.
- moggflunkies 12y ago
  Teen Mom, Laguna Beach, Awkward... these shows are for people above 30?
booruguru 12y ago
I question the veracity of that statement. Whenever you see a mob of screaming fans surrounding one of the Kardashians they tend to span all age groups. And twentysomethings are always trying to get me to watch the latest E! reality show.

ClayM 12y ago

This should more accurately say "traditional broadcast TV is increasingly for old people". There's still plenty of people watching content in the TV format, they just are not doing it from exactly 8pm to 11pm in the way that they used to.

codeflo 12y ago

Calculating "percent increases" of the median age of a population doesn't make any sense at all.

nextstep 12y ago
They likely did that to make the increase seem more significant. A "6 percent increase" to 44.4 years is an increase of only 2.5 years.
Nacraile 12y ago
Why not? A relative difference in values is a relative difference in values. "The median of this distribution is a bit larger than the median of this other distribution" sure makes sense to me. Sure, comparing two histograms would be more informative, but also much more difficult to discuss concisely.

Theodores 12y ago

Same in the UK, average age of viewers on BBC is 59-60: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2014/television_services.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2014/telev... I shudder to think what the average age is of broadsheet newspaper readers is...

walshemj 12y ago
Well makes the competition for the top jobs easier top Investment Banks and fast track Civil service still expect a rounded renaissance man or woman - its not that long ago that you where advised by school and parent's to say that you read a broadsheet in an interview. I suspect that it helps in Oxbridge and Ivy Entrance interviews as well
userbmf 12y ago
http://www.themediabriefing.com/media/project_tmb/image/averageage.png http://www.themediabriefing.com/media/project_tmb/image/aver...

Sambdala 12y ago

> And he’s part of one camp that believes young professionals and students will eventually become cable subscribers. > “We suspect they will trade up,” Skipper said. The implication here seems to be that cable is the premium/preferred product, and people will switch to it once they can afford a cable subscription. That does not at all strike me as being the case in this day and age. The internet, and piracy, created an even more extreme shift in how you can consume video than it did for music. At least when you shelled out a ton of money for a CD, you still had the same experience when listening to the music. When you pay for cable or watch broadcast TV, you then not only have to wait for the scheduled viewing time, but you spend half as much time watching commercials as you do watching the actual program (10 minutes out of a 30 minute block). Then on top of that you have to deal with the famously awful cable companies? I think piracy + netflix have probably irreversibly changed people's willingness to sit through commercials, wait for the scheduled time slot, and put up with the other inconveniences associated with the whole process. I understand some of this has gone away through video on demand and DVRs, but I still have to think that Netflix is superior when it has something and Popcorn Time when it doesn't. It's not even the cost issue either. The cost issue is what got me started downloading music and video when I was a teenager, but nowadays (even though I'd be willing to pay a couple hundred bucks/pounds a month in theory) I've just had too much frustration and annoyance every time I've used a set top box (mostly in hotel rooms these days) to even have it on my radar as something that has the potential to make my life better.

sliverstorm 12y ago
It's sort of accurate. I mean, I don't know that I will ever subscribe to cable, but if I was a billionaire- sure, why not? Which means the flaw in their theory (for me) is the level of income I must attain is unrealistic.
bellerocky 12y ago
Yeah wow, Skipper is holding on to a legacy business that going to get disrupted from top to bottom. How do they not see that incredibly expensive cable subscriptions that provide scheduled broadcasts with filled with patronizing advertisements is somehow better than something like Netflix, YouTube or LiveStream?

bellerocky 12y ago

I don't understand why older people hang on to less optimal way of doing things? I hope I never do this. Being able to watch content at any time you want is better than having to schedule your time around broadcasts. No advertisements is better than having to endure advertisement breaks in the middle of a show. Same with newspapers. You can't share newspaper content easily. You can't click on a word and Google it or look up information about Ukraine's president while reading the news paper. Newspapers take up space in your house and unread newspapers are a huge waste. I get some people like distraction free reading, without a glaring bright screen so the case here isn't as clear cut as with a TV, but the point is valid. Older people, by virtue of having been around longer should be more capable of recognizing the pattern of new innovation leading to improvements, and not get stuck. I just don't get it, and I hope this doesn't happen to me, I'm already nearly in my 40's so we'll see.

walshemj 12y ago
Because in a lot of ways a decent smart TV at say 50 inches with iPlayer is lot less fuss than messing about with a pc and a much smaller display an suboptimal sound.
- penprog 12y ago
  Smart TV and cable are not the same.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Why your chopping logic and nit picking here
    - penprog 12y ago
      I wasn't trying to be a jerk, I should have explained myself better. Basically using a smart tv is analogous to young people using the internet in this situation because A. You are picking and choosing your content. B. You aren't exposed to advertisers (unless you are using hulu but even then you are picking what show you want to watch) C. You aren't paying a massive monthly subscription. D. It works using the internet, not cable. The article isn't so much about using a TV (the actual device that displays the picture) or a computer monitor as it was about watching "traditional" tv (the content, shown in a scheduled manner)

sparkzilla 12y ago

My kids spend all their time on YouTube. They would rather watch video on their phone than sit down in front of a TV. This has big implications for all media, not just broadcast TV.

mikegioia 12y ago
I don't have kids, but I noticed my cousins would all watch TV up until age 12/13 when they were allowed to get phones. As soon as they got phones, they abandoned the TV. Snapchat, instagram, netflix, games, and even hulu are now the only media they consume! I'm honestly excited to see what the TV landscape looks like in 10 years when these kids are 22-25.

userbmf 12y ago

Is this simply because regular TV has advertising and advertisers want to target the people with the most money? There is a huge gap in wealth between generations thanks to debt via housing and education. Are advertisers putting pressure on program makers to make shows that appeal to old people? I'd guess they've done a lot of thinking on this.

guard-of-terra 12y ago
"There is a huge gap in wealth between generations thanks to debt via housing and education" You sound like there's a ton of incentive to make TV channels for teenagers, promote mortgage and colleges on it. Capture all the unserved audience, make $$$s. If that's where all money go in this generation.

majormajor 12y ago

There's some mixing in this thread of "watching via cable programming" and "watching TV/movie content on a TV versus a computer or mobile device." For the former, even among people not paying at all, or not paying for it through the traditional cable company means, big-studio TV content seems more popular than ever (unsurprising since it's higher quality than ever, with still-increasing amounts of money pouring into it). This shift ultimately seems like one that will only hurt the traditional broadcast networks, as well as the cable networks that fill themselves with "passive watching" content versus the stuff that (currently, at least) plays much better in the newer distribution channels. Or maybe stuff like reality will just move online later when that demographic moves online if cable starts to fail. That's probably an area where the "it just works, and it's on, set it and forget" aspect of cable is actually a very large advantage, though. Otherwise, about the only non-large-content-library advantage of cable is that fast forward/rewind on my DVR work way better than on online streaming. Extreme space and budget restrictions seem to be the only reason to give up the latter. The couch or recliner + TV viewing experience is hard to do without (I did it for a couple of years after moving and being short on space, and then couldn't believe I'd done it for so long after getting a TV again).

tcfunk 12y ago

Love when reports use "median" anything...largely a useless statistic. The median age has little to no relationship to the average age of viewers.

Nacraile 12y ago
Curiously, you can also argue that the mean is a useless statistic, since it tells you very little about the bulk of a distribution with asymmetric outliers (i.e. age, wealth) Knowing that the youngest person in the oldest half of the TV population is getting older does tell you something interesting, and slightly more specific than what the mean gives you, although I suspect mean and median are fairly close in this case. Of course it would be nice to have mean, standard deviation, median, and maybe a few other percentiles. Better, a full histogram. But median is hardly useless.

jdonaldson 12y ago

You could also say that TV is increasingly for the young. Vice, House of Cards, etc. are great but they're targeting the 20+ crowd. There's an explosion of new shows and programs for kids on cable. Some of them, like Adventure Time, are so well done that I enjoy watching them. In fact, you could call this a bit of a "golden age" for this sort of thing. Watching shows on the internet is great. The acting talent and quality there has really improved. But, I see this less as taking away from cable, and more as taking away from the box office. Kevin Spacey was doing great movies 10+ years ago, and now he's headlining Netflix's service. Honestly, I think these long running tv shows are a better format for a lot of actors. Breaking Bad just can not be done in a 2-3 hour movie, or in a syndicated format where each episode needs to be treated more or less independently (e.g. Law and Order). However, Netflix didn't really start that trend, cable did. Also, cable/tv "owns" the coax cable running through the house: the fastest and most reliable way of moving information around the average US home. There's new technologies like Moca that are going to make a lot of things possible that currently are very flakey with current wireless/alt-ethernet solutions. TV has always been (mostly) about mindless entertainment. I think the shows that are successful outside of a traditional cable package succeed because they were probably inappropriate for the cable programming format anyways. Services like Netflix are filling a new niche, but I don't think they can significantly take away the core value of cable for most people.

davidgerard 12y ago
And the DVD box, the predecessor to whole series binges on Netflix. The 2005 revival of Dr Who was, IIRC, funded at least partially based on selling lots of boxes of it later.