And they aren’t.  They’re commercials targeted to the younger demographic.  And as the Super Bowl itself shows, the younger demographic isn’t where the cash is.  The advertising agencies had better wake up and smell the coffee: older, more conservative audiences are the ones that should be targeted now.

The networks and the NFL get it: we’re getting old as a country.  Seven of the last eight Super Bowl halftime shows have featured Boomer and Gen X icons: Paul McCartney (2005), the Rolling Stones (2006), Prince (2007), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (2008), Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (2009), The Who (2010), and Madonna (2012)?  Perhaps the under-40 crowd remembers Madonna, but if they do, it’s in a very vague half-sleep state.

And yet America’s commercial advertisers seem to think that the most valuable audience is the 18-49 crowd.  For years, American advertising has been run on the notion that young audiences are more valuable than older audiences; that if you grab a youngster’s brand loyalty early, you’ll grab ‘em for life; and that older audiences are set in their ways.  That’s how so much liberal television has been sneaked past advertising honchos – young people tend to be liberal, and so the honchos figure that liberal television will appeal to the most lucrative demographic.  Even if more older people watch than younger people, the advertisers figure, they need to greenlight young-skewing programs to hit the target demo.

But the Super Bowl gives the lie to that.  The viewership was enormous, of course – over 111 million people watched the game – but the interesting part of the ratings breakdown is the age breakdown.  Among adults 18-49, the Super Bowl scored an incredible 40.5 rating; each ratings point is worth approximately 1.159 million viewers.  That means that somewhere around 47 million people aged 18-49 watched the game.  Where did the other 64 million people come from?  The older crowd and the younger crowd.  It’s fair to assume that the vast majority of that rating came from the older crowd (Nielsen age breakdowns are either pre-programmed into television devices, or manually input).  In other words, at least as many people 50+ watched the game as people 18-49.  Hence the entertainment choices at halftime.

Now, that doesn’t automatically mean that older audiences are worth targeting, of course.  But the Nielsens themselves say they are – a joint study by CBS (which nobody under the age of 50 has ever watched) and the Nielsens shows that, in the words of CBS Chief Research Officer David Poltrack, “There is no link, none, between the age of the specified demographic delivery of the campaign and the sales generated by that campaign.”  That’s why there was a seeming gap between the content of the commercials, which skewed younger, and the content of the halftime show, which skewed older: the networks understand that to get viewers, they need to aim older.

If the advertisers ever catch on, television may have to skew more conservative, too.

In 1961, John F Kennedy’s FCC chairman Newton N. Minow gave a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters which is still cited today. You’ll understand why when you read the money quote:

When television is good, nothing–not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers–nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you–and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials–many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it.

Sound familiar? Aside from the dated reference of station sign offs, this is pretty much what you see today. Except now we have over 200 channels.

Today, if you have a certain interest, there’s a channel for it. But even that gets old.

Minow’s speech was in 1961 when you were lucky to have 3 TV stations in your town. In 1980 the band Pink Floyd released “The Wall” album which had the classic line “13 channels of $#!+ on the TV to choose from.” And here we are, almost 30 years later and the song remains the same (except the 13 channels part).

Yesterday I talked about the point of a story. Today I want to talk about why so much stuff on TV is drek.

Back in the day, it was a industry view that television shows existed to deliver consumers to advertisers. Shows were made as good as they had to be to achieve that goal.

In the minds of the executives, it’s as mercenary as that. Entertainment brings viewers in. And once they’re in, they’re sold to. That’s been their business model for decades.

The creators of these shows, the entertainers who starred in them, may have thought it was all about them. But from a business standpoint, the suits were looking to get money from advertisers and they wanted shows as a product to sell to them. Every year they have conventions where they bring out this season’s new series, and they try to get the local stations and advertisers hyped up on them.

As a result, they’re looking for certain kinds of proven formulas to reach a target group. The groups being people who fit into certain demographics, a.k.a. demos.

In the old days, broadcasting was a new method of disseminating information. The only way to do that before was via print or public speakers. Broadcasting transmitted its message to radios and later to televisions. You hoped that a large percentage of viewers would like what you were selling. The target group was anyone who watched or listened.

But as times changed and marketeers got more sophisticated, they moved to “narrowcasting”. Narrowcasting involves sending your message to a select few. Say, women. Or teens. Now we’re splitting hairs to the point where we’ve got channels for aspiring cooks, sports fans, documentary freaks, movie buffs, decorators, etc. They know which people watch these kinds of shows and they sell the ad time accordingly.

In the near future we’ll be dealing with “pointcasting”. Broadcasting is to the many, narrowcasting is to the few. Pointcasting is to the individual. With modern technologies like RFID chips and frequent shopper cards (like the ones your grocery store gave you), they can track what kind of products you buy and they will be able to target specific ads to your personal tastes. Even in stores. So when you walk into a store right now, and you see flat screen TVs playing something, they will eventually play something for you specifically. This technology exists. I’ve worked with a company that is developing their product in that area. They are not alone.

There may come a time where TV series are tailored to the tastes of the narrowest of demos. The individual. We’re getting there.

TV fans just want the shows. They don’t want the ads. They’ve learned how to cut them out. So the TV networks, faced with the loss of revenue from advertisers, have had to think up new ways to get those ads back in front of the viewers. They’ve resorted to having more product placement in shows. They’ve created sites like Hulu which allow you to see their shows for free, but you have to sit through the ads.

Ultimately, it’s about bringing the consumers to the advertisers. Whatever can be done to achieve that goal will be done.

From a creative standpoint, we have to consider new approaches as the old systems die off, or morph into something entirely new.

There are many excellent shows being made right now. Television has been more interesting than film in the last few years. But the wasteland quote still applies.

As TV viewership dwindles, as people spend more time on the Internet and elsewhere, there will be an opportunity to find a new means of bringing in the consumer. People will always want entertainment. But what will be the format?

We’re slowly moving away from the broadcasting age and toward a new, “pointcasting” age of entertainment which will take strange new forms. Next time I’ll talk about that.