Back in August, 1991, when I first introduced the concept of using Nielsen data to calculate median ages for television networks, in a report titled, Median Age: A Measure of Program Selectivity, it was a vastly different media world than it is today. There were only four broadcast networks, half as many cable networks as today, no video streaming, and the average home could only receive 33 channels. It took a few years, particularly as new networks started emerging, for median age to start taking hold as an industry-wide measurement.
The simplicity of using a single number to help analyze the increasingly fragmenting media landscape had a strong appeal – particularly to networks like FOX, WB, and UPN, which were trying to distinguish themselves from the more established broadcast networks. My friend and colleague Jack Wakshlag started using median age for WB during their industry presentations, and other networks and programmers soon followed suit. It took several more years before Nielsen finally agreed to report it as a standard metric.
In my initial 1991 report, FOX’s median age was only 29, ABC’s was 37, NBC’s was 42, and CBS was the oldest at 45. There were only a dozen or so primetime series with median ages above 50, all of them on CBS.
Ten years later, in 2000, there was still a relatively wide gap among the then six broadcast networks. WB’s median age was under 30, UPN and FOX were in the mid-30s, ABC and NBC were in the low 40s, and CBS was in the low 50s.
Another 10 years went by, and as younger viewers started to shift to other viewing sources, the broadcast networks aged considerably (while the gap between them narrowed). In 2010, for the first time, ABC, CBS, and NBC all had median ages of 50 or higher, with CBS topping out at 55. FOX had aged up to 45. Of the English language broadcast networks, only CW had an average median age under 40 (Univision was also under 40, as were all the other Spanish language networks).
In 2015, broadcast median ages continue to rise, with CBS at 59, ABC and NBC at 54, FOX at 49, and CW at 44. Roughly 45% of all ad-supported cable networks measured by Nielsen have median ages of 50 or higher. Five years ago, only about one-third of reported cable networks had an average primetime median age of 50 or higher.
Originally, median age was seen as basically a simpler replacement for looking at percent composition for numerous demographic segments. While median age had real value 20 years ago in evaluating one network versus another, is that still true today?
If your target audience is Adults 18-49, does it matter that TruTV’s average median age is 38 and TNT’s is 50? In a vacuum, maybe. But when you know TNT gets more than twice as many Adults 18-49, the answer is obviously no.
Does it matter that AMC’s average median age is 42, when Walking Dead is 37, Better Call Saul is 42, Mad Men is 52, and Turn is 55? Or that FX’s average median age is 41, when American Horror Story and Louie are 37, Mike & Molly is 50, and Justified and The Americans are 55?
If you look at the top 20 rated cable networks among Adults 18-49, two (Adult Swim and Nick-At-Nite) have primetime median ages in the 20s, two (ABC Family and Comedy Central) have median ages in the 30s, , and four (TNT, History, HGTV, and ION) have median ages in the 50s. The rest are in the 40s.
I recently worked at ION, and one of our ongoing frustrations was that too many in the industry looked at median age as though it meant something way beyond what it actually means. It was clear that if we could only get our average median age under 50, the industry would look at us differently. Should it really matter, for example, that ION’s Criminal Minds has a median age of 53, compared to Nick-at-Nite’s Friends at 35 and USA’s Modern Family at 41? Even if all three have pretty much the same Adult 18-49 ratings and Criminal Minds has a significantly higher Adults 25-54 rating? Of course it shouldn’t matter. Unfortunately, in our business perception often trumps reality. And 50 is still a magic number.
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