The only data I can find are at the top of this very thread which suggests Over 50s spend most of their time watching television while 18-49 year olds are out spending money!

Before I discovered this site, what I thought even if the 18-49 demo was the most coveted by advertisers, the total viewers still matter has value and matters on a show’s renewal. But when I learned through this site that the total viewers don’t really matter that much I was shocked although I understood over time why the 18-49 is important but I do hope that total viewers could somehow matter eventually for a show’s survival. Because in my opinion, all viewers should matter. But then again I’m not from the US so I don’t fully understand how the market is there. Just to share, here in the Philippines,those demo numbers matters only to smaller networks and cable channels, the major broadcast networks look on the audience share but then again we don’t have a TV season like you do have there and telenovelas/soaps (or as we brand it teleseryes) dominate our primetime and there are just two networks that are big players.

Anyway, I’m just fascinated how US TV works that’s why I’m always here on this site and I love what I learning from this site, it could be easily understood by a regular person like me

I completely understand what you want and why you want it. We feel the same way. Unfortunately there is not a great solution that will make everyone happy. There are all kinds of ways we could implement an easier way for you to spot those posts but they either require a lot more work for us (i could create the domain releases.tvbythenumbers.com, and we could post all the releases there and stick a widget of them on the main site, but we would have to publish to two different web sites to do that) and we could exclude the press releases from the widget you see, but then they don’t get indexed by Google. We wind up getting a lot of traffic from Google to the press releases so that’s a problem, and one that we have not been able to solve yet.

I already have a stupid blog; it’s linked by my unpronounceable name.

By the way, the twitter link on the Follow Us page goes to tvbtnfeed.

AZTop: I haven’t seen an ad for the clapper or a medic alert bracelet (or a chia pet for that matter) in fifteen years. I forgot Werther’s Originals and Polygrip.

It would be interesting to see some actual research on people’s buying habits because I believe that it would be a lot different from the preconceived notions the industry has.

I think the relative scarcity is the bigger deal as far as premiums and the industry focus goes.

If all age demos were watching TV equally, and the supply of adults 18-34, and 18-49 was the same on a percentage basis, I think we’d live in a world where there was a lot more focus on average viewers.

Thank-you for the link. Is disposable income the same as income that actually gets disposed, and disposed on advertised products? I took it as a challenge but couldn’t quickly find data on this.

So would the following modification be fair: “Most advertisers believe an average 18-49 year old can be more easily swayed to spending on their products than an average Over 50.”? (I can find a few links to support this.)

My understanding is that advertisers generally pay a premium to reach 18-49 year olds. It may not be the only reason (supply was kindly highlighted by Bill above) but I think advertisers also believe they can get more money out of them. But I could be wrong.

Cheers.

A one time purchase of an ipod or a bike is fine, but the majority of the ads out there are for goods that people will regularly purchase.

There is something I will never understand about Neilson or the advertisers. They say they want to reach young people yet they don’t put boxes in college dorm rooms. You have a huge huge chunk of 17-24yr olds in College and I doubt they are calling their parents back home to tell them what they watch at 8pm. Advertisers would have an easier time figuring out which shows young people watch if they actually measure young people.

I’ll grant you that there are surely more people 65+ living on fixed incomes than 25 year olds, but, there are more 25 year olds living from pay check to pay check.

None of that says anything about disposable income! Here is something that actually does. Unfortunately it is not sorted by Nielsen demographics, but you can see the average disposable income of the 55-64 group is higher than both the 25-34 group and the 35-44 group. However, there are far fewer 55-64 households:

http://www.esri.com/software/bao/pdfs/dispinc.pdf

Simon, please link to the data that backs that up, or cite the source if it isn’t one that’s online. Thanks!

My understanding is that 18-49 is the most significant demo. Also it’s the 18-49s who do spend money that the advertisers are most interested in – but I don’t think there’s a ratings demo for 18-49 spenders, at least not one that’s published widely. Simply, an average 18-49 year old spends more money on advertised products than an Over 50.

…and the broadcasr networks mostly submitting to the whims of their advertisers makes sense also…

…but when (as previously discussed here) a lot of the niche cable networks abandon me to chase after the pyt’s of 18-34, leaving me nothing that I really like on, then what do I do?

Apparently, I am only allowed to let Alec Baldwin turn my brains into a cottage cheese-like mush, so the 18-34 demo cohort can scoop it out with a melon baller and gobble it on up, while watching Dancing With The Slatterns…

…so I guess I am only good for soylent green to the advertisers and networks, then…

…ah well – all I can do is dream that Roger Thornhill gets machine gunned off of Mount Rushmore, whilst I am waiting for the vapid Kardashian tramps to decide whether they want to melon ball me, or David McCallum

If you need to satisfy your tweaking jones, I *highly* recommend starting your own blog. There will be more tweaking opportunities than you’ll ever be able to tweak!

AZTop: Why do you want ads to target your pocketbook? You forgot Liberty and Rascal scooters.

When you say “network TV” I assume you mean “broadcast network TV”. On average 21% of adults 55+ were watching ABC, NBC, CBS, CW and Fox during primetime on the same week, so the other 31.5% were either watching other broadcast networks or cable networks

Please excuse my ignorance but I’m also struggling a little with the data. I understand that it’s basically to say there’s a disproportionate number of younger viewers. But I’m sure it doesn’t mean to say that more than half of all Over 55s are typically watching network TV at any given moment during primetime? The percentages are a total of some kind, yes?

I find it a bit insulting that it is assumed that over 55 should only be interested in denture cream, adult diapers and sleep aids. It may be true that over 55 are more “ad resistant”. They may be easier to reach, but harder to convert. Seems to me there’s an opporutinity there for smart advertisers.

That’s viewers 55+

Older viewers are easier to come by than younger viewers, thus the younger viewers are more expensive. Corn is easier to come by than truffles, thus truffles are more expensive. But that doesn’t mean I can walk into the supermarket and take the corn for free!

So my (long-winded!) question is, if, hypothetically, “NCIS” gets the exact same demo rating as “So you think you can dance”, but the former gets 20 million total viewers, and the latter 7 million, does NCIS command a higher advertising rate?

Face it, the next time an 18-34 year old tunes in regularly to CBS will be the FIRST time.

It’s not really laziness, and if we reshuffle the order by backdating press releases and changing times on posts, it screws up our RSS readers because it changes the order of the posts. I think doing it for one or two posts here and there (like this one) isn’t a problem, but if we strive to always prioritize the non press release content, it exponentially increases the chances that our RSS readers (especially the skimmers!) will miss something they wanted to see.

I’d rather double the length of the “recent posts” list and make better use of the center column and featured posts than get into a regular practice of reordering posts.

Suggestion, how about putting a different side bar for the press releases and the TBTN posts? Or at least prioritize the TBTN posts over the press releases so that this kind of informative won’t get buried easily

The Teens 12-17 demo average broadcast primetime rating last week was a 26.9.

By the way, Bill/Robert this article should be in the featured story of the blog because I guess the readers are not noticing you had this post up. This post deserves more exposure IMO than the renew/cancel index stories since readers will flock those posts anyway

I for one did not notice this since post it was already buried by the several press releases in the ‘Newest Posts” sidebar, I only found this when I checked previous tweets.

Since it’s all about money, the best thing you can do is buy products from the advertisers on your favorite shows. Then let them know you saw your commercials on shows X, Y and Z. Boycotts are ineffective. People outside the demos say they have money to spend. Advertisers say they don’t spend it. So prove them wrong.

I already checked and the domain http://www.dumpbroadcasttv.com is available. I’m all set to go.