• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 8, 2021

This headline may catch your eye: “Peacock is helping MSNBC reach younger viewers.”

Well, stop the presses!

Every legacy TV network -- broadcast or cable -- benefits from streaming platform associations when it comes to gaining young viewers. And not just with new streaming platforms, any digital video media platform can help.

For example, CBS -- typically one of the oldest-viewer skewing TV networks on median age -- has said for years it benefited from digital media, especially for streamer CBS All Access -- now Paramount+ -- to secure a younger audience profile.

TV news networks, in particular, skew the oldest of the old. So, big benefits go to CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, as well as virtually all broadcast news TV programming looking to create or latch onto their bigger parent media company’s streaming platforms.

In a related matter, many believe the old standby measure for news TV advertisers, the 25-54 demographic, should be abandoned by those news networks that use those numbers to tout their market strength.

All networks are challenged by advertisers looking to monetize their media buys with much more data -- business outcomes, specific dollar return on media investment, performance marketing and other measures that show improved business lift.

In part, you can understand this obvious trend. Tomorrow, young media consumers looking at future content on streaming services could “discover” news-related content. For sometime, Vice Media has been one company working hard to bring in young viewers -- via legacy TV networks/platforms or streaming.

Even then, can someone tell me how many 25, 26, 27-year-olds are really watching live, linear TV news networks these days?

Yes, the current TV pricing formulas for longtime advertisers stem from those older, increasingly less-effective demographics scorecards. But that needs to change -- and is changing.

In fact, for years, media executives knew TV news networks audiences are really 55+ if not 60+viewers -- thus resulting in all those pharmaceutical, finance and life-insurance ads.

Idea for a streaming change: Video games, sports TV or movie advertising content would be a nice counter, running alongside a presidential or congressional press conference -- possibly side-by-side video on your TV screen. Your real help is on the way.