The Media Generation Gap

(AP)

The 'generation' – a slippery unit of time that once was shorthand for the age difference between parents and children – is getting crunched. And if the media isn't causing it, there's no more obvious way to recognize it.

Exhibit A? Last night's showing of "Charlie Brown Christmas."

Exhibit B? Just about everything else on TV.

Yes yes, I overstate. But to make a point. Doesn't it seem like the younger the audience, the more that media options are chopping kids into 3-year demographics? Like, the 13-year old kid who watches "The Hills" on MTV has it all over his or her 9 or 10 year old sibling watching "High School Musical." (Forget about Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death," are we Niche'ing ourselves to death?)

Not all that long ago, there was a canon of Things Everybody Read. And then there were the Three Network TV Choices. So everybody, with the one TV in the living room, was starting from the same point. (Don't worry. I, like Tony Soprano, know that 'Remember when' is the lowest form of conversation – and media commentary.)

But now you can barely keep up with the things you want to be watching or reading or knowing about, let alone the things that you feel like you should -- or that other people are.

That's why "Charlie Brown Christmas" and just a handful of other things strike this writer as so unique: they bridge the generation gaps – from the old definition to the current hypersped-up concept.

Almost everybody knows that Charlie Brown buys that jacked-up Christmas tree and almost everybody knows that Snoopy sells out. (Hardcore fans like me sense some special connection between Pig Pen and Frieda, with her "naturally curly hair.")

But universally-known things like this are few and far between. There's only a few cross-generational media products/events nowadays. Harry Potter and American Idol are the 21st century version of The Cosby Show and Star Wars. (Or, reaching back further, "Roots.") Which means that ignoring them puts you in peril, when it comes to finding common ground with other Americans.

Or, as Chuck Klosterman admitted in Esquire when he said he didn't care about Harry Potter:

The bookish kids reading Harry Potter novels may not go on to control the world, but they will almost certainly go on to control the mass media… And like all generations of artists, they will traffic in their own nostalgia. They will use their shared knowledge and experiences as the foundation for discourse. So I wonder: Because I don't understand Harry Potter, am I doomed to misunderstand everything else?

I am constructing my own generation gap on purpose. By making this decision in the present, I will be less able to manage the future. My thoughts about entertainment aesthetics will be outdated, and I will not grasp the fundamental lingua franca of the 2025 hipster. I will not only be old but old for my age. I will be the pterodactyl, and I will be slain. It is only a matter of time.

But are Klosterman and I any different than the "Leave it to Beaver"-era parents who couldn't stand rock and roll and tuned out? Barely. There comes a time when some people just mentally check out of keeping up with the latest and greatest. And they sit back and watch what they know and like – or the next best thing.

What happens, though, when you get off the bandwagon when the rest of your demographic is still aboard? Maybe the media generation gap is composed of not just an "age gap" but also an "interest gap" as well. (See also: countercultural media options, alternative music/TV.)

Whatever it is, the niche'ing and fragmenting ends up helping us appreciate the common bonds a bit more now in the 1,000 channel universe. Linus and his blanket; Marie Osmond fainting – or 'fainting' – on "Dancing with the Stars" and, yes, even the aforementioned "Sopranos."

Call them the TV 'uniters.'