Volume 2 Issue 148
November 19, 2003
The Missing
So where have all the young male TV viewers gone?
The Swamp is currently on hiatus, but as promised there will be periodic updates and articles.
As my stint in the unemployed world gets longer, one thing I have found myself doing more often is watching television, especially in the evenings. For me, this is a change, as now errands and things that normally would be done in the evening are accomplished during the day, leaving me with even more extra free time in the evenings than during the rest of the day. So, instead of using TV as just a time filler with whatever movie or sporting event was on, I recently have actually started to regularly watch some shows, a somewhat new habit for me, even if I don't watch them religiously every week like many Americans.
However, my recent foray into more regular television viewing has placed me into an even more rare group than the jobless: a young male watching TV. As you may have heard, this year's TV season has been rocked by a massive fall off in the number of male viewers between the ages of 18 to 34. With cable already grabbing more and more of network TV viewers, the networks are scared stiff, and with good reason.
Obviously, young males between 18 and 34 are a core demographic, simply because they have large amounts of disposable income. My current employment status notwithstanding, most young men have steady, well paying jobs, and with men marrying later (27 on average), and having children later, there are fewer obligations to meet, freeing more money to be spent on things advertised to them on television. Therefore, as you may have noticed, many programs tend to try and appeal to this demographic, to help enhance network revenue.
But this year, the young men have gone missing. Nielsen reports that viewership is down 7% overall by young men, but the networks claim that their numbers are down anywhere from 16% to 21%. This spells big trouble for the networks fiscal picture...if those viewers have actually vanished.
The confusion comes from the way the Nielsen Media Research company conducts it's weekly survey of viewers, something it, and only it, has been doing since 1942. The ratings are done through a sample of 5,100 homes, known as "Nielsen families." In those homes, a box is installed on a family's TV's, and family members are supposed to press a button when each of them begin watching a show. To help check the statistical accuracy of this sample, another sample is done weekly with one time families filling out diary books with the shows they watch in a given week. Unlike the automatic system, diary families have to write down in a book what they watch. These numbers are not usually part of the weekly ratings, which come from the boxes, but are done to ensure that the main sample is correct. Both groups are selected at random, an important part of statistical accuracy, and are paid a small sum. (In 2001, my household in Washington was paid $1 each to do the diary book survey for 1 week.)
With the sample size relatively small (but statistically accurate) for the large number of television viewers, small glitches in Nielsen's system can cause problems, which is what the networks are alleging has happened this year. They're not without precedent: in 1972, Nielsen found that a drop off in viewers could be attributed to a glue in the boxes that melted when the TV warmed up, destroying the box. Similarly, the networks are convinced that something is up this year.
In a recent AP story, CBS researcher David Poltrack noted that the problems could be traced to just 105 people nationwide. Most of the viewership decline is in 18 to 24 year olds, of which there are 600 in the sample. Poltrack figures that 105 of them could be causing the downturn, perhaps because they don't want to participate in the study. NBC's research head Alan Wurtzel has an even more controversial caveat on this theory: that the new participants that aren't cooperating are mostly Hispanics, recruited in large numbers to help make the sample more reflective of the population.
Nielsen, who has had a love-hate relationship with the networks throughout the history of their monopoly, has said there is no problem with the sample. The only problem they admit in fact, is that homes with digital video recorders (think TiVo) can't be part of the study because the equipment is incompatible, a conflict that will be resolved within 2 years. Within 2 years, Nielsen has also committed to doubling its national sample to 10,200, to help make the sample more accurate.
Of course, there are also hoards of other theories. Some suggest that too many young men have been shipped off to Iraq, therefore not watching TV. Others have suggested that resident college students are not included in the samples, a key portion of the 18 to 24 sub-cohort. Still others suggest that video games have eaten in to TV time for young males. Of course the networks want to show that the problem is the system, not them.
But...and here's where those paragraphs of background are about to pay off if you're still reading...it is them. This fall season of TV programming has to be some of the sorriest garbage ever to grace the airwaves. Even using overall ratings, only 2 of the new shows can even be considered semi-hits, Fox's The OC and CBS' Joan of Arcadia, and both of these shows skew to more women than men. (Though I have caught the latter on CBS a few times, and it's not bad.) In a country where the best series are currently on pay-cable mostly, and where a show on FX (The Shield) can win Emmy's year after year, the networks need to wake up and notice something is wrong.
And while there may be a decrease in viewers, cable is getting more and more male viewers every week. TIME this week reported that the Cartoon Network's nightly block of cartoons Adult Swim regularly captures more men under 35 than Letterman or Leno do on network. Seriously, who wants to watch 2 dozen Law and Order's every week (this a show that if you miss the first 30 seconds, you have no hope of ever figuring out what the hell is going on...), or the dozen CSI's, or the hoards of "news"magazines that have had to dig real deep to get anything resembling stories to feature recently? (One magazine, ABC's Monday Primetime, has even begun to resemble a travel show, with all the stories from a different city each week.)
The simple fact remains that the one thing that all viewers value is originality. It often explains why many series become "surprise hits" year after year. Of course, then the networks set out to copy them until no one ever wants to see anything like it again. Look at the new wave of crime shows based on people like crime scene investigators and corners (CSI, Crossing Jordan). Um...do you really think that the doctor at the morgue goes chasing the bad guys? The copy of the reality show has about killed the genre, except that NBC continues to lower the bar and hasten the demise of Western civilization with it's abomination of a show called Fear Factor, where contestants regularly eat bugs and do other disgusting things for no apparent purpose whatsoever. Shows that once were greats on TV, such as ER have been reduced to ridiculous storylines (how many times has that hospital been bombed or attacked?) that show the show jumped the shark years ago.
This is not to say that there isn't quality TV on the networks today, only that they are often hidden in crappy time slots or otherwise not given the chance to succeed on network TV. These shows are mostly dramas, as most comedy's have become so trite as to not even bother anymore. Ed, a show in its 3rd season on NBC, has a small following despite excellent writing and reviews, and finally has been put in a decent time slot this year, with no big programs opposing it. On the smaller WB network Everwood is an excellent drama in it's 2nd season that breaks the network's traditional teen drama model, and would be given even more critical acclaim and publicity if it was on HBO or in another "mainstream" setting. (Not that HBO is the end all be all of programming...from what I hear, Carnivale is pretty bad, and K Street didn't exactly light the world on fire.) And there are some decent comedy's still out there like Fox's That 70's Show, if it can be forgiven the mortal sin of making Ashton Kutcher a star. CBS' Everybody Loves Raymond also hasn't worn out its welcome yet. While these shows have smaller ratings than some of the "hits" on TV, they tend to have loyal bases that are distributed well among age groups, including those oft-sought 18 to 35 year olds.
Of course, taste is subjective, and I'm sure that there are plenty of other reasons that males have deserted network TV as well, and even a few more decent shows on TV. And obviously someone is watching shows like Friends still, as it continues to rank in the top 10 of ratings weekly, despite old storylines and tired characters. But networks should use the fall off of young men to be a catalyst to experiment with programs that smaller networks and cable have been doing for years with success, as it may be their last chance to salvage their futures, as "on-demand" television and a proliferation of cable channels catering to every interest and group threaten to put them out of business.
Bad John Edwards Photo of the Day: If you read all that, you deserve a Johnny photo!
What the hell are you lookin' at buddy?
