A little over a year ago, I wrote this:

One of the more mixed explanations {for why TV shows tend to take place in “hip” locales} is the notion of targeted demographics. The notion that the young demographic is more valuable than older viewers. To be honest, I think that this is something that marketing departments convince themselves of more than anything. A justification for their own preferences. People that go into entertainment and marketing want more than anything to be hip and with it and I think are more interested than that than they are in selling their product. Even when there is no advertising, such as movies, studios released one anti-war flop after another and continue to have a bias towards Rated-R movies over Rated-G movies even though the latter typically do a lot better in theaters and have more ancillary sales such as toys and cheap straight-to-video follow-ups. I’m actually wondering if the credit card crunch might encourage advertisers to target consumers that actually have money over those whose credit cards are now being cut up.

Honestly, I used to put this in the same category as my belief that Osama Bin Laden has been dead for several years and that Peak Oil bring right around the corner is a myth (I hope I’m not as wrong about the second as I am about the first). I believe it, but in the “conspiracy theory” sense and not out of any special knowledge. People smarter than me have been saying that I am wrong and while, ordinarily I listen to such people on subjects in which I have no expertise, I just can’t get on board (ahem, until they show the body). Everyone needs to believe something considered to be kooky.

It turns out, my belief about TV ratings may not be so kooky afterall:

From then on, the 18 to 49 cohort was the “coveted” demo, and it cost a premium to buy. Eighteen to 34 was even pricier. Older Americans? “Viewers over 55 haven’t factored into ad rates,” says theWall Street Journal, “which made them without value to the networks.” The numbers tell the story: A 30-second ad on Fox’s young-skewing Glee costs $47 per thousand viewers, while a spot on CBS’sThe Good Wife, 60% of whose audience is 55-plus, costs about half that.

But now the jig is up. “Reliance on the 18 to 49 demographic,” Ad Age reports Poltrack saying, “is hazardous to all media and marketers.” It may be just a coincidence that CBS, which these days runs about even with Fox in overall prime-time viewership, is now being killed by Fox in 18 to 49. But it’s no coincidence that 80 million baby boomers are aging out of the desirable demo. To sell air time to reach the fastest-growing part of its audience, the industry needs a new metric.

For years they’ve been saying that the most desirable demographic is “young and affluent” (often citing 18-34 rather than all the way to 49). While this is true, it’s something of a limited demographic. Most young people lack disposable income. Wealth comes with age. The ability to just go out and buy stuff may be the habit of the young, but is more likely to be within the capability of the old. And then there’s the part of the theory that says advertisers should target them when they’re young so that they can build long-term brand loyalty. The problem is that product loyalties change over time. So it’s more of a theory than anything.

So I found (and find) it to be a very self-serving theory since the “desirable” demographic just happens to be the demographic that they would want to target anyway, even without financial considerations. Hollywood used to say for years that they only make smutty stuff because that’s what the audiences demand, meanwhile it was movies rated G not only having huge profit margins but also being more reliably profitable. When’s the last time a kiddie movie suffered the fate of Waterworld? And, of course, in the Bush years the studios were making one anti-war movie after another with big name actors and anemic returns. And power to them for making stuff that they believe in! But they tend to use self-serving metrics (target demographics in the case of TV, prestige/awards in the case of movies). When there is so much ambiguity, you define the rules however you want.

In the case of TV ratings, however, there was another motive:

“CBS’s ratings hold was impregnable {between 1955 and 1976}, but only if one measured the whole audience. It was the genius of Leonard Goldenson, the head of ABC, which routinely finished in third place well behind CBS and NBC, to change the rules. Unable to compete in the big sweepstakes, Goldenson created a smaller one that he could win. ABC, he told advertisers, was getting younger viewers than CBS and NBC, which meant that advertisers with products appealing to that segment would be wise to buy time on ABC. That was akin to a football team saying that it had lost the game, but it had gained more yards…. The network had managed to make itself seem successful despite its consistent third-place finishes. It was all smoke and mirrors.”

As some of you may recall or vaguely be aware, CBS was culturally dismissed at the time because a lot of its success hinged on such shows as Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction (they also did the Andy Griffith Show, but that one I think got a pass). So ABC was apparently the one that declared that the rules had changed and suddenly their ratings didn’t suck anymore.

I commented in the past that the long-struggling NBC should consider targeting shows at underutilized audiences. The networks have historically been historically uninterested in older viewers and, for that matter, boring family viewers (though economics has partially overruled them on the latter). In years past, the network had quite a bit of success with shows like the Golden Girls and its spinoff, Empty Nest. In addition to the age factor, there is a dearth in irksomely formulaic family sitcoms (TBS has more of them than CBS and NBC combined) and conservative dramas like Seventh Heaven and Touched By An Angel, not to mention Walker, Texas Ranger. Shows that the networks want to make end up spawning copycat after copycat, while other shows tend to pull in good ratings and yet never seem to make network execs say “We need to make one of those shows!” It remains a niche for NBC to fill. Including, but not limited to, previously ignored demographics.

{h/t OTB}