The Media's Millennial Myth: 'The Older You Get, the More You'll Watch TV'

'Wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin,' plannin' and dreamin...'

Fifty years ago a British female singer named Dusty Springfield, surfing the wave created by the Beatles, recorded a song called 'Wishin' and Hopin.'

The only thing that has to do with this post is that its opening (openin') lyrics perfectly capture the belief of media buyers and advertisers everywhere that the glory days of aggregated eyeballs in front of tv sets will come back once the Millennials grow up and come to their senses.

Public Service Newsflash: it's over. As the following article explains, tv viewership is dropping by age cohort. Which is not to say that audiences the world over are not still enamored of programmed content. Quite the contrary, in fact. It's just that if you take a sec to look up from your mobile you will note that most people you know, including some who begat you and most you spawned yourself are watching on a host of other devices and times of their own convenience and devising.

This is neither good nor bad but it is most emphatically not indifferent. The way we deploy our attention antennae and absorb information has changed forever. And there does not appear to be any going back. JL

Kip Cassino comments in Advertising Age:

You watch traditional TV programming a third less than your parents do, and your kids watch it a third less than them.
A quote in The New Yorker caught my eye recently: "The older you get, the more you watch."
It was part of "Outside the Box: Netflix and the Future of Television," an article by Ken Auletta about the direction of TV and video. Here he was quoting an industry researcher as she expressed her confidence that even though viewers under 24 years old watch less traditional TV than ever, they would grow into it.
The statement had a familiar ring, because it's said often. It's something everybody seems to know. But it's dead wrong.
Looking through the data, it's an easy conclusion to make.
Table 1: Weekly Time Spent, Traditional TV Viewing, By Age Cohort -- In Minutes

Sources: Nielsen, Borrell; 2013.

At first glance, it seems obvious: younger people watch less traditional TV -- television programming when it is scheduled -- but as they grow older, they watch it more. By the time they're in their 50s, they watch scheduled TV almost twice as much as when they were young. After they retire, their TV minutes grow even more.
But looking at the data another way produces very different conclusions. If we substitute year of birth for age cohort, we see a much less positive picture of traditional TV viewing. With exactly the same data, Table 2 estimates that you watch traditional TV programming a third less than your parents do, and that your kids watch it a third less than them. There is no major change in behavior at some specific age bracket.
The habits of younger people persist as they age. The columns of the table will continue to march to right until they fall off.
Table 2: Weekly Time Spent, Traditional TV Viewing, By Birth Year Cohort -- In Minutes

Sources: Nielsen, Borrell; 2013.

Twenty years ago, the newspaper industry -- then riding high -- looked at the same kind of numbers and made the obvious conclusion as well. It seemed reasonable that at an age between 35 and 40, U.S. adults would get married, buy a home, and start reading newspapers. It took a brilliant presentation by senior researcher Greg Martire in 1999 to show us our emperor had no clothes. Sure enough, as the years have passed, the newspaper reader "sweet spot" has aged. Now the time has come for scheduled broadcast TV to see the same progression.

It's important to remember that we're talking about scheduled TV programming. Today's TV viewers have many ways to watch their favorite shows whenever they want. They can order them from a video streaming service, and watch a whole season over a weekend. They can record them for viewing at a later date. They can fast-forward through commercial spots, and evidence indicates that one in five TV commercials is currently seen as momentary blurred image. It is a new reality. The first step to making sense of it is to admit what is happening. Newspapers were slow to abandon what everybody knew to be true. It will be interesting to see if broadcast TV makes the same terrible mistake.