Network News is Dead because it focuses on Brain Dead Over 60 Crowd...

[KoKo]

I've been a poster on DU for many years and there are folks here that go up into their 80's. One mistake those folks who target news and make decisions about news is that you can only sell products to the "young demographic.

Just listening to the Cable Pundits (right now it's Chris Matthews) repeating over and over about CBS & Network news having only brain dead (implication of Nursing Home, asleep viewer) "over 60" audience who just isn't mainstream with the younger viewers and that's why they hired Catie Couric. Seems to be a "MEME" that the "18 to 54" or "18 to 29" Viewer are the ONLY ONES that should be catered to. One would wonder why. :shrug:


Wouldn't one hypothesis be that it's mostly about getting the young viewer/consumer hooked on credit card debt? The older folks have some experience in life behind them and they might not be so willing to hock their lives away for "plastic." Why else would so many folks of all ages up into their 80's be Colbert or Stewart fans...or if they've tuned out of the MSM in disgust they still are posting on the blogs and active readers online. They vote, they still subscribe to newspapers and they are mad as hell about the Crooks that run our government.

It's amazing how the Media Spins not only itself but it's viewing audience and the rest of the American people.

[MadBadger]

1. Because its about making money, and advertisers like the most viewers in the demo

They are more likely to get up and go buy products that have been advertised.

[pretzel4gore]

3. like Michael Moore said long ago, if it was about profits, GM sell crack

it isn't about profits, it's about crowd control...

[napi21]

4. YOU got it! The older people know better than to fall for the BS

advertising hype. Although I still question their logic a bit. It's the older folks who finally have the disposable income to spend of WANTS instead of NEEDS.

I guess that's why I'm not in marketing, huh?

[StudentsMustUniteNow]

2. I always felt that older age was associated with greater wisdom

Guess Chris Matthews proved me wrong.

[murray hill farm]

5. Excuse me!!!!

Brain dead!!!!! Guess I better go lay down and die! Oh wait....I have an anti war demo that I have to attend in just 20 mins. Oh well, If my brain dead self can remember how to get home, I will be sure to lay down and die then.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Have you noticed the commercials during network news?

It's all adult diapers and centrum silver. He's kind of got a point, network news is for old folks, the same way MTV is for teens, which is why they sell zit cream and bubble gum in their commercials.

I don't know why, I suspect it's network loyalty. Old folks spent our lives picking from three different channels, and that's how we got our news.

[RufusTFirefly]

7. Some members of the "brain dead" demographic

Helen Thomas, 86: "I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war?"

Robert Byrd, 89: "The right to ask questions, debate, and dissent is under attack. The drums of war are beaten ever louder in an attempt to drown out those who speak of our predicament in stark terms. Even in the Senate, our history and tradition of being the world's greatest deliberative body is being snubbed."

Gore Vidal, 81: "The more you know of the background of something, obviously the more able you are to grasp what is happening at present. We are filling people in on things they don't know. How much did Halliburton really steal from the United States Government? Those are things we really should know about. Our representatives in Congress are not very good at telling us that."

Lee Iacocca,82: "Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car."


No wonder CBS News is frightened of them.

[roguevalley]

14. Include my parents, Alan and Dorothy Bishop, 79 and 75. Bush

and the depression and anger that fuck inspired in her probably contributed to her aneurysm that killed her. I loathe him with the fire of a thousand suns. Call my house, pollsters. Please.

[RufusTFirefly]

20. I salute your parents, roguevalley

My own father, who turns 86 on Saturday, told me how annoying it was to return to college after WWII and hear his fellow students call anything they didn't agree with "fascist." He had actually fought fascism and thought he had a pretty good sense of what it was and wasn't. But now, he confessed, right now, in the present day, is the first time the accusations of fascism have actually rung true for him. Folks in their 70s and 80s, who have the context we younger folks lack, realize that something is wrong -- dangerously wrong-- with this country.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. the most wanted demographic

has always been younger, and also usually males. I think this is because they are more impulsive in their actions and also, because they have been brought up in the TV culture, are more likely to buy into the consumer culture. People my age and older know that buying Product X won't make the girls flock to you or make you get that important job. There are, of course, discerning youngsters out there who know this too, but I fear that the majority of the wanted demographic tend to buy whatever the idiot box sells them. Or at least that is what the networks and advertisers think.

The problem with network news, however, isn't viewership--its the fact that it went from being a public service to a for profit center of the broadcasting business. Once the public service angle was out the window, it has been a downhill slide to see which news program best emulates The National Enquirer.

[KoKo]

17. Many of those folks "Over 60" are going to be the only ones with any real money left....

that's if they didn't buy into "Credit Card Nation" and didn't get ruined by the Wall St. Crowd who threw out their Pensions with Buy Outs and the Bush Medicare that forces them into Prescription Boondoogles and increasing lack of access to decent doctors and not "pill pushers. They are the folks who tried to hang on to what they had because getting a mortgage for a house was hard years ago...with 20% down and a credit scan that included talking to your relatives and checking to see if you had a job that paid enough to cover the mortgage payment. AND...buying a car was hard. You had to have a heafty downpayment and be able to prove you'd worked long enough to afford the payments. Often meant if you had switched jobs within two years...you weren't approved.. You were RISK for both house mortgage and car.

Folks don't realize how De-Regulation allowed the "CREDIT CARD DEBTOR NATION" but many who lived through REGULATION remember. :shrug:

[Johnny Noshoes]

9. Howard Beale said it best...

"We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You even think like the tube. In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion." Howard Beale

[Uncle Joe]

12. I think of it as the "Matrix",

and no small coincidence that Neo was first contacted through his computer.

[Bitwit1234]

10. I'm over 60 and I watch TV and spend most of the day on the net.

I guess I am not a typical senior...What the so called programmers in the TV circuit don't understand is the you viewers are not interested in TV NOW. When I was that age I never watched TV, there was so much other stuff to do. Even to TV was new. And my kids watched cartoons and shows for them, but I still didn't...Now there are so many of the shows on TV land and a couple other cable stations that I have never seen and watch. So...what good did it do to cater to the younger crowd back then. None of our crowd watched TV.

The ought to program to older people. After all even tho a lot of seniors are retired a lot of them have so called disposable income. They are saving, they are putting it away for when the RETIRE. They have it to spend and that is what the boobs in TV don't understand.

[roguevalley]

15. we also vote more than any other group possibly. Poor dolts. Most

of this country will be old shortly and they better get it right.

[Donnachaidh]

11. Stereotype MUCH?

It's really amazing that the younger kids who are the ones who seem to be marketed to (I GOTTA have THIS brand of BEER - I GOTTA have this Ipod) get all cranky when it's pointed out to them.

But it's perfectly FINE for THEM to equate grey hair with *brain dead*. Trying to shuck off the blame WE ALL share? May your own children be blessed with your wisdom. :sarcasm:

[KoKo]

16. You didn't read past Subject Line...did you............

:-( Most folks are so used to replying to Subject Line...and thinking there's an attack they don't bother to read the body of the post....unless it's a buddy of there's posting on DU that they know for SURE where they are coming from.

My post tries to get to what you say...but not as eloquently as your reply does...if one reads past your Subject line to see and understand what you are saying.

[Warpy]

13. Anyone who uses the public airwaves must allot a certain

amount of time for stuff that actually serves the public. Competing for advertisers on evening news is a relatively new phenomenon. Back when the whole thing started, they competed for viewers by offering superior news in the hope that the viewers would be too lazy to get up and change the channel (no remotes, remember that?) and would deliver their advertisers warm bodies for the commercial stuff. News was supposed to be broadcasting's loss leader.

That was the way it was all supposed to work, anyway. Now it's a concerted effort to keep the news FROM the public while still being able to claim that block of time in the evening as discharging their duty to the public.

Most people who watch do so out of habit, it's the noise to listen to during and after the dinner hour. Polls show that these folks don't buy a thing they hear, that they rate the trustworthiness of evening newscasters in the teens, at or near Cheney's number. Sad.

Advertisers love the uninformative celebrity tabloid crap, though, because their cherished 18-49 demographic is the young adult starting out, buying that first house, raising those kids, and spending every dime they earn. They figure folks over 50 already did all that and aren't interested in doing anything with money but hoarding it in the vain hope they won't starve when they're too old to be greeters at Walmart. They figure everybody between 18-49 is too busy to pay attention and they'll eat that garbage up while their pockets are getting picked by the people the networks avoid telling them about.

The evening news has become not only worthless but dangerous. It really is time to pull the plug on them completely while keeping that responsibility to the public in place. Let the networks scramble for real programming on real subjects. Or let the whole thing die a miserable, painful and ignominious death. They don't deserve to live as they are now.

[vixengrl]

18. What I don't get is--why would Katie Couric appeal to me?

(If you allow me the conceit of representing "younger viewers".)

Is there anything particularly "hip" or "interesting" about her that would make a Gen-X'er or Gen-Y-er say--"Hey, now I suddenly totally want to have the news read to me for twenty minutes between commercials. This is really quite informative and not anything I couldn't have already got from the web and cable news."

(Would a young fellow, aged 18-34, the prized commercial demographic, be shouting--"MILF!" at a glance of her legs? Is she peut etre the Rachel Ray of news? Fun--delish? News in 30 minutes?)

The problem is format; viewers across the spectrum, regardless of age, are restless with being "viewers". I think for the partisans who listen to talk radio, or the people who participate on forums or check news groups, they do it for selectivity and interactivity (or maybe the illusion thereof.) Passively receiving The Word from the Voice on The TV just doesn't feel real. That's why I think the best-received bit on SNL all these years was "Weekend Update" and why "The Daily Show" is so great--the parody draws back the curtain on Oz. And the brilliant Colbert does the same for the cable "talking heads".

You know where my 95-year old grandfather gets his news? Newspapers. He reads and thinks about things, and does the Cryptograms to keep his mind sharp. The letter to the editors are interactive. Editorials and columns provide insight. Me, I hit Buzzflash and DU:LBN, and take the constitutional rounds of my favorite blogs--I think we both view the t.v. news, as mostly info-tainment. The thing that comes on before Jeopardy.

[KoKo]

19. Good Points ...you make. Who was Katie supposed to Impress? None of us it seems,

across the age spectrum. It must be some crazy person hired to knows nothing about nothing and didn't even bother to test market her in focus groups ...the way it used to be done years back. :shrug:

Thanks for your perspective... All the way from you to your 95 year old grandad...

[zulchzulu]

21. CBS fired Murrow...they have made many mistakes over the years

As for mainstream media and news especially, the news directors who make the final decision on what gets shown have a jackboot on their necks from their masters, usually with ties to the weapons, pharmaceutical, insurance and conservative industries.

If you've ever worked for a TV station in the news division (I have), you can see the game very easily. And there's not a lot you can do about it...

[Gloria]

22. Did you hear Matthews today declaring that he didn't know how any

news could really be objective? And how he thought journalism was better now....because of "attitude"? It was most disgusting conversation with the editor of a conservative rag, a columnmist from the WaPo and a blonde (last name Cox).

Matthews was spewing about how was so thrilled that people watched him and trusted him, how he could only do his best to deliver his honest opinions...It was nauseating.

[KoKo]

23. I missed that...but figure Matthews got his "Talking Points" awhile back...even though I had hope

it would be different...:-(