
TV is increasingly for old people - spking
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2014/09/05/tv-is-increasingly-for-old-people/?hpid=z15
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Sambdala
> And he’s part of one camp that believes young professionals and students
> will eventually become cable subscribers.

> “We suspect they will trade up,” Skipper said.

The implication here seems to be that cable is the premium/preferred product,
and people will switch to it once they can afford a cable subscription. That
does not at all strike me as being the case in this day and age.

The internet, and piracy, created an even more extreme shift in how you can
consume video than it did for music. At least when you shelled out a ton of
money for a CD, you still had the same experience when listening to the music.
When you pay for cable or watch broadcast TV, you then not only have to wait
for the scheduled viewing time, but you spend half as much time watching
commercials as you do watching the actual program (10 minutes out of a 30
minute block).

Then on top of that you have to deal with the famously awful cable companies?

I think piracy + netflix have probably irreversibly changed people's
willingness to sit through commercials, wait for the scheduled time slot, and
put up with the other inconveniences associated with the whole process.

I understand some of this has gone away through video on demand and DVRs, but
I still have to think that Netflix is superior when it has something and
Popcorn Time when it doesn't.

It's not even the cost issue either. The cost issue is what got me started
downloading music and video when I was a teenager, but nowadays (even though
I'd be willing to pay a couple hundred bucks/pounds a month in theory) I've
just had too much frustration and annoyance every time I've used a set top box
(mostly in hotel rooms these days) to even have it on my radar as something
that has the potential to make my life better.

~~~
bronbron
It's worth considering that he's with ESPN, and sports is an unusual case.

Television shows and movies don't have nearly the timeliness factor sports
broadcasting has. If I see guardians of the galaxy a week after it comes out
it doesn't really matter, but there's very little point in watching 'the game'
even a day after the fact (unless there's some exceptional reason to).

So in some regards, they do have kind of a stranglehold and are holding out
hope that they can capitalize on that. It's funny talking to cable subscribers
< 40, because (obviously anecdotal) the majority of the reasons given are 'how
else am I going to watch sports?'

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bryanlarsen
I recognize that I'm in the minority, but tape delay is the only way that I'll
watch sports. I don't really mind the commercials, but fast forwarding through
them let's me watch a 3 hour game in 2 hours -- that's significant. It also
makes it easier to avoid the dreadful commentators like Don Cherry.

That doesn't really change your point though. I typically start watching after
about an hour -- I'm highly unlikely to watch the game if I've already seen
the score in the newspaper.

Paying >$100 a month to watch a couple of games a month sure is expensive,
though. It'd be cheaper to watch them live, if watching them live wouldn't
require plane tickets most of the time...

~~~
gdilla
And watching live sports is often a social experience - big games are fun to
watch with friends and family. Sometimes it's just fun to watch with strangers
who are also invested in the game's outcome. I've never had cable, but often
I've gone to bars alone to watch a big game like a gold medal hockey game or
the world series; Grab a few beers, order a pizza or something, and it's a lot
of fun.

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bellerocky
I don't understand why older people hang on to less optimal way of doing
things? I hope I never do this. Being able to watch content at any time you
want is better than having to schedule your time around broadcasts. No
advertisements is better than having to endure advertisement breaks in the
middle of a show.

Same with newspapers. You can't share newspaper content easily. You can't
click on a word and Google it or look up information about Ukraine's president
while reading the news paper. Newspapers take up space in your house and
unread newspapers are a huge waste. I get some people like distraction free
reading, without a glaring bright screen so the case here isn't as clear cut
as with a TV, but the point is valid.

Older people, by virtue of having been around longer should be more capable of
recognizing the pattern of new innovation leading to improvements, and not get
stuck. I just don't get it, and I hope this doesn't happen to me, I'm already
nearly in my 40's so we'll see.

~~~
sfk
I think having a dedicated TV with cable _is_ optimal:

    
    
      1. Computers and Internet are for work (HN being an exception), TV is for
         entertainment. It makes sense to keep things separate, even physically
         separate.
    
      2. If I watch TV, I do *not* want to be bothered about thinking what to watch.
         I reserve these kinds of decisions for work or for things that actually
         matter.
    
      3. If another person makes the program for me, I'm likely to be exposed to
         interesting things that I would not have picked by myself.

~~~
guard-of-terra
There are a lot of different modes of entertainment. One that you describe is
pretty rare - "Show me something I would like to see, I don't care what, maybe
something new".

Obviously this is a useful mode to have. TV channels about wildlife and
history are good examples - you can turn them on even for 10 minutes while you
do some chores, for example. But for "stateful" content like sports or TV
series this is suboptimal. And that's the bulk of entertainment.

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jdonaldson
You could also say that TV is increasingly for the young. Vice, House of
Cards, etc. are great but they're targeting the 20+ crowd. There's an
explosion of new shows and programs for kids on cable. Some of them, like
Adventure Time, are so well done that I enjoy watching them. In fact, you
could call this a bit of a "golden age" for this sort of thing.

Watching shows on the internet is great. The acting talent and quality there
has really improved. But, I see this less as taking away from cable, and more
as taking away from the box office. Kevin Spacey was doing great movies 10+
years ago, and now he's headlining Netflix's service. Honestly, I think these
long running tv shows are a better format for a lot of actors. Breaking Bad
just can not be done in a 2-3 hour movie, or in a syndicated format where each
episode needs to be treated more or less independently (e.g. Law and Order).
However, Netflix didn't really start that trend, cable did.

Also, cable/tv "owns" the coax cable running through the house: the fastest
and most reliable way of moving information around the average US home.
There's new technologies like Moca that are going to make a lot of things
possible that currently are very flakey with current wireless/alt-ethernet
solutions.

TV has always been (mostly) about mindless entertainment. I think the shows
that are successful outside of a traditional cable package succeed because
they were probably inappropriate for the cable programming format anyways.
Services like Netflix are filling a new niche, but I don't think they can
significantly take away the core value of cable for most people.

~~~
davidgerard
And the DVD box, the predecessor to whole series binges on Netflix. The 2005
revival of Dr Who was, IIRC, funded at least partially based on selling lots
of boxes of it later.

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sparkzilla
My kids spend all their time on YouTube. They would rather watch video on
their phone than sit down in front of a TV. This has big implications for all
media, not just broadcast TV.

~~~
mikegioia
I don't have kids, but I noticed my cousins would all watch TV up until age
12/13 when they were allowed to get phones. As soon as they got phones, they
abandoned the TV. Snapchat, instagram, netflix, games, and even hulu are now
the only media they consume! I'm honestly excited to see what the TV landscape
looks like in 10 years when these kids are 22-25.

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ClayM
This should more accurately say "traditional broadcast TV is increasingly for
old people".

There's still plenty of people watching content in the TV format, they just
are not doing it from exactly 8pm to 11pm in the way that they used to.

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majormajor
There's some mixing in this thread of "watching via cable programming" and
"watching TV/movie content on a TV versus a computer or mobile device."

For the former, even among people not paying at all, or not paying for it
through the traditional cable company means, big-studio TV content seems more
popular than ever (unsurprising since it's higher quality than ever, with
still-increasing amounts of money pouring into it). This shift ultimately
seems like one that will only hurt the traditional broadcast networks, as well
as the cable networks that fill themselves with "passive watching" content
versus the stuff that (currently, at least) plays much better in the newer
distribution channels. Or maybe stuff like reality will just move online later
when that demographic moves online if cable starts to fail. That's probably an
area where the "it just works, and it's on, set it and forget" aspect of cable
is actually a very large advantage, though. Otherwise, about the only non-
large-content-library advantage of cable is that fast forward/rewind on my DVR
work way better than on online streaming.

Extreme space and budget restrictions seem to be the only reason to give up
the latter. The couch or recliner + TV viewing experience is hard to do
without (I did it for a couple of years after moving and being short on space,
and then couldn't believe I'd done it for so long after getting a TV again).

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Theodores
Same in the UK, average age of viewers on BBC is 59-60:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2014/telev...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2014/television_services.html)

I shudder to think what the average age is of broadsheet newspaper readers
is...

~~~
walshemj
Well makes the competition for the top jobs easier top Investment Banks and
fast track Civil service still expect a rounded renaissance man or woman - its
not that long ago that you where advised by school and parent's to say that
you read a broadsheet in an interview.

I suspect that it helps in Oxbridge and Ivy Entrance interviews as well

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themartorana
The plethora and popularity of reality TV doesn't say much about our older
generations.

Sarcasm aside, the relative popularities of Fox News on TV and Vice on the
Internet are pretty good examples of what this article is talking about.

~~~
tedks
In my experience, only people above 30 watch reality shows. Virtually all
reality shows are for old people. Real Housewives, everything on HGTV,
everything on the History and Discovery channel... the only network that's
associated with youth that has reality shows I can think of is MTV, but even
that is probably more watched by aging men trying desperately to relive their
cool days.

~~~
bronbron
That's funny, my experience has been the complete opposite.

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walshemj
Yes TOWI, BB etcetera are your younger and lower social class C2, D and E
using the NRS system.

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userbmf
Is this simply because regular TV has advertising and advertisers want to
target the people with the most money?

There is a huge gap in wealth between generations thanks to debt via housing
and education. Are advertisers putting pressure on program makers to make
shows that appeal to old people? I'd guess they've done a lot of thinking on
this.

~~~
guard-of-terra
"There is a huge gap in wealth between generations thanks to debt via housing
and education"

You sound like there's a ton of incentive to make TV channels for teenagers,
promote mortgage and colleges on it. Capture all the unserved audience, make
$$$s. If that's where all money go in this generation.

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tcfunk
Love when reports use "median" anything...largely a useless statistic. The
median age has little to no relationship to the average age of viewers.

~~~
Nacraile
Curiously, you can also argue that the mean is a useless statistic, since it
tells you very little about the bulk of a distribution with asymmetric
outliers (i.e. age, wealth)

Knowing that the youngest person in the oldest half of the TV population is
getting older does tell you something interesting, and slightly more specific
than what the mean gives you, although I suspect mean and median are fairly
close in this case.

Of course it would be nice to have mean, standard deviation, median, and maybe
a few other percentiles. Better, a full histogram. But median is hardly
useless.

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codeflo
Calculating "percent increases" of the median age of a population doesn't make
any sense at all.

~~~
Nacraile
Why not? A relative difference in values is a relative difference in values.
"The median of this distribution is a bit larger than the median of this other
distribution" sure makes sense to me. Sure, comparing two histograms would be
more informative, but also much more difficult to discuss concisely.

