Chew on this for a moment: if you’re watching network television, you are probably a geezer…sorry, Baby Boomer! Variety reports that the median age of viewers of all the broadcast networks has gotten older than the traditional 18-49 target demographic for the first time ever. The average American TV viewer is now 50 years old. And that number is skewed lower only because CW and Spanish-language network Univision score in the mid-30s. The average CBS viewer is 54 years old (CBS has always had the oldest audience anyway), but even ABC, which programs to families and kids, has a median age of 50.
But that’s not to say that geezers…er, boomers are resistant to the lures of New Media. Around 20-25% of homes in the U.S. now have DVRs, and that number is expected to rise to about 50% by 2011 as cable companies push the technology onto their customers. The DVR paradigm is familiar enough to long-time television watchers, who long ago got used to using VCRs and remote controls, that technophobic middle-agers and seniors readily accept and embrace the functionality. But the DVR has been a double-edged sword for television content providers from the word “GO”; they’ve had a very hard time coming up with a way to prevent people from fast-forwarding through the commercials on recorded programs. In the beginning, when DVR users were in the minority, the networks were somewhat resigned to this, but with half the homes in America using DVRs, it’s now front-and-center. Posting at Zatz Not Funny, Mari Silbey takes a realistic look at what is about to happen to DVRs and how we use (and won’t be allowed to use) them.
Almost in the same breath, though, Dave Zatz posts about one of the newest features included in the recent TiVo software upgrade: shopping on Amazon.com through your TiVo. From almost the earliest days of the web, prognosticators have told us that the day would come where something like this would happen, and it has finally come to pass. This may, in time, develop into an economic model that would reduce the reliance on advertising as the only tradable resource for television content providers and television service providers, but might have to go through a few iterations until it turns into something that will attract people to try it. If TiVo does well enough with it now, I would expect the cable companies to drum up something similar for their own offerings within a year or two, but then I think it would take a while to be anything beyond a novelty to most people. Eventually, someone will figure out the way to tie programming directly to online shopping, and it will catch on with the more digitally-literate younger demos.
Let’s twist that idea around for a second. Let’s say you’re watching television and you’re NOT a geezer. You’re a hip 20-something who only watches TV ironically, quipping snarky comebacks to the pictures on your set, while you quaff energy drinks with your equally hip, snarky buddies (and your grandma, who owns the TV). You see some commercial for a product you would never buy in a million years, like life insurance or gutter covers, but it has the COOLEST music you have ever heard and you want to add that track to your iPod so you can sample it for your DJ mix for the rave you’re going to next week. Well, this site identifies all the cool music being used in the latest batch of commercials on TV and gives you download links where you can purchase the tracks. You, of course, will simply bookmark the page and then go download pirated copies of all those tunes from your favorite BitTorrent site, but geezers like me might actually pay the 99 cents or whatever to download them.
Moving on to other media-related links…NBC announced yesterday that Jay Leno’s last night as host of the Tonight Show will be May 29, 2009 to make way for Conan O’Brien. Conan’s replacement, Jimmy Fallon, will start hosting “Late Night” segments on the Internet beginning in the fall. If you are 50 or over, you will probably neither know who Jimmy Fallon is, nor how or why you would watch him on the Internet. In fact, you might not even know that Jay Leno has been hosting the Tonight Show for 16 years, because you’re usually in bed well before 11:30. Oh, and Johnny Carson is dead.
NBC also announced their programming schedule for Super Bowl Sunday for 2009. Their Super Bowl programming will begin at 8:00 a.m. with a special edition of the Today Show, even though the game does not kick off until 8:00 p.m. O.M.F.G.
Relatedly, yesterday the Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the FCC’s decision to fine CBS for the infamous Janet Jackson “wardrobe failure” during the halftime show at the 2004 Super Bowl. The court called the exposure “fleeting” (which it was to anybody without a DVR or the Internet) and said that it was an unwilling act on the part of CBS, which had no idea about Jackson’s plans. NBC immediately announced plans to expose its own boob during the halftime show, but Tim Russert is already dead, so they’ll have to find a replacement.
