• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, January 8, 2004

In a desperate attempt to convince viewers (and advertisers) not to believe their own eyes that cable provides better programming than the broadcast nets, The Television Bureau of Advertising (TBA) has circulated a list of television's top shows in 2003 (as ranked by Nielsen Media Research).

With an expression like a kid denying he hit his younger brother, the TBA takes pains to note that all of the top 100 most watched programs were broadcast shows and nayh-nayh, the highest-ranked cable show on Nielsen's total list was No. 258.

This all sounds pretty impressive and almost enough to make you toss the cable box out the window until you take a closer look at the top 100 list. If you take out all the sports (6 of the top ten); specials (like the Oscars and Golden Globes); news interviews tied to major breaking events; one-timers created to prop-up sagging sweeps rating (i.e.: "Andy Griffith Reunion") and popular show redundancy (i.e.: different episodes of "Friends"), the list pretty effortlessly boils down to about 15 different broadcast shows.

Sadly, nowhere in the top 100 are shows like 24, West Wing, or NYPD Blue. The blood-soaked-if-you-don't-like-Chicago-we'll-throw-in-Africa ER doesn't show up until No. 78. Even having a helicopter crush the evil Dr. Romano apparently didn't perk up the ratings (although students in Madison, WI celebrated with the usual night of rioting and car burning, a time-honored U of W tradition).

With the possible exception of various iterations of CSI and Law & Order which festoon the list like leftover Xmas ornaments, nearly all of the other shows of the 15 most-watched skew to the young and trashy: reality or "talent" shows.

Clearly, the networks still think advertisers won't buy anything not watched by adults 18-34. Yet, as Broadcasting & Cable points out, "the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are getting older, while the generations growing up behind them are smaller in number and more ethnically and culturally diverse, posing a key challenge for advertisers, who have always put their marketing emphasis on attracting younger consumers. In the future, marketers won't be able to afford to let the boomers slip away because there aren't enough younger consumers to sustain the spending level."

Ted Nelson, an ad executive whose agency handles some General Motors business, noted to The Christian Science Monitor that "someone turns 55 every 7.5 seconds." As a group, he noted, the boomers bring "the greatest purchasing power in the history of mankind."

The problem is not limited to TV. The average newspaper reader is over 60. In magazine publishing, with the exception of a few niche titles that are not wildly successful, an aging readership is cause for panic, launching countless redesigns where the excuse "we want to make it more accessible" is universally understood to mean "we want to appeal to younger readers." (When "more accessible" starts meaning "larger typeface for aging eyes," we will have turned the corner.)

Baby boomers sit like an elephant in the room waiting to be fed a peanut, but everyone in advertising still asks "What elephant?" The usual and unacceptable rationale for not marketing to boomers is that they don't want to admit they are growing older (let's blame it all on Mick Jagger), and anything that reminds them of aging is somehow offensive. This, despite the endless geriatric product pitches that accompany the evening news.

As an aging baby boomer, let me reassure the ad industry that I am wide open to product pitches. My body and mind remind me daily that I am no longer 29 (or even 39), so I'm not kidding myself. What I do mind is spots where people my age always appear happy and healthy, as if they hadn't a care in the world.

Just once I'd like to see someone squinting in effort at a menu or cursing because those first steps in the morning are painful, or telling their kids, "No, you are getting too heavy for piggy-back rides." Or someone staring silently into the garden wondering where the time went.

The next cohort to abandon the networks won't be young men; it'll be us old farts.