Is 18-49 Passé As Top Demographic?

Advertisers, TV Webs Still Covet It, But Should They?

(CBS)  "What makes this an historic year for us," Moonves beams, "is that, for the first time in three decades in regularly scheduled programming, CBS is now in first place in adults 18-49. … That's right: 18-49, the demo the other guys said was the only one that mattered. Who woulda thought?"

"All advertisers covet this younger demographic," says New York advertising executive Brad Adgate of Horizon Media, "and I think the networks are just trying to go out and get these young viewers."

The reason, he says, is that younger viewers are hard to find. They watch two hours less TV a day than the over-50 crowd: "They're going to movies. They're playing video games. … They're listening to their iPods, and so on and so forth. … So, if a broadcast network can prove that they can get somebody in their 20's and 30's, they're going to generate a lot more revenue under the business model of television."

How much more revenue?

Take "The Simpsons," Bowen suggests. The show ranked 68th in total viewers last season, according to Nielsen Media Research. But the median age of a Simpsons viewer is only 29, much younger than most primetime shows. The result: the Fox network can charge more for a 30 second commercial than half of this year's top ten shows get.

And it's not just the big networks.

"A cable network like MTV, which is not necessarily the highest rated cable network, gets a much higher rate for their advertising because their core viewers are teens and young adults," says Adgate.

But, Bowen points out, there is a growing body of evidence, study upon study, that indicates the business model of television is wrong; that if advertisers really want to reach consumers with the most money to spare and spend, they need to aim older. They need to go after the 77 million-strong baby boomer generation, more than half of whom are in their fifties.

"You know," Adgate comments, "an American turns 50 every 7 seconds. And you know, they do have a lot of money."

"But," says CBS' Kahl, "Madison Avenue hasn't moved along with the baby boomers. They have the most disposable income. They control over a trillion dollars of discretionary income every year. But Madison Avenue has not really moved along with it."

It hasn't gone unnoticed, Bowen notices: The AARP began running magazine ads in an effort to draw attention to what it sees as demographic discrimination.

"These days," the ads say, "doctors don't pronounce you dead, marketers do."

"You're either 18-to-49, or you're dead to most marketers," says Matt Thornhill, president of The Boomer Project, a marketing research and consulting firm in Richmond, Va. "You don't exist. Or if you exist at all, you exist to wear denture adhesive or to drive a Cadillac. And that's about it."

He says the assumption that the over-50 crowd has rigidly-set buying patterns that advertisers can't influence is a myth: "Boomers are, as a group, less brand-loyal than younger consumers. So there's plenty of opportunity for increased sales and increased business by continuing to target this segment. They are a long way from dying."

Still, notes Bowen, the 50-and-older crowd that accounts for fully half of all discretionary spending is the focus of just 10 percent of all advertising. And, if change is coming, it's coming very slowly.

"If suddenly 50-plus of advertisers paid a premium to reach 50-plus," says Adgate, "you'll see the networks start to put on shows, more and more shows like "The Golden Girls."

That was a popular '80s sitcom about four retired women.

Asked by Bowen if, in this day and age, he would green-light a program like "The Golden Girls," Kahl responded, "If we thought there was a chance we could get some younger viewers as well, we would certainly do it. But in this day and age, it would be tough."

Says Annenberg's Kaplan, "Any programmer at any network who wants to put on a show that doesn't have an obvious appeal to 18-to-49 might as well submit their resignation."

And what does birthday girl Sheila Leslie think?

Not surprisingly, this brand new 50-year-old believes the network programmers, especially, need to rethink what they're doing.

"Maybe," she remarks, "it's backwards that they're hearing what the advertisers say and gearing their programs to that younger group of people, when they really should be switching it around and aiming more toward people in their 50's."

People, Bowen says, just like Sheila Leslie, who is not going willingly, or quietly, into the invisible age.