CBS Faces an Age-Old Problem

In a recent episode of Fox’s animated hit “King of the Hill,” a crotchety old man was told to “go home and watch ‘Touched by an Angel’ “--referring to the CBS series airing the same hour.

Such barbs underscore the age-old problem CBS faces in the youth-obsessed television business--namely, that buyers of advertising time see its program lineup as skewing too heavily toward an older crowd.

CBS’ traditional older audience profile came to the fore again during the November rating sweeps, when the network attracted the most viewers in prime time overall but ranked fourth--behind NBC, Fox and ABC--among adults 18 to 49, one of two broad age groups (the other being 25 to 54) against which the vast majority of advertising time is sold.

The product for sale in television is viewers, and media buyers covet them in that mid-range demographic segment, raising a pointed question: Despite CBS’ apparent success relative to the competition, when is a win not really a win?

The cold, hard facts of lagging behind demographically were demonstrated by preseason sales for the current year: NBC, which holds a wide advantage among adults 18 to 49, sold $2.15 billion in ad time--$900 million more than CBS, which also trailed ABC and, on a per-unit basis, Fox, which offers less programming per week than the other major networks.

In a more specific example, NBC’s “Seinfeld” averages a bit more than double the total audience for CBS’ “Diagnosis Murder,” which also runs at 9 p.m. Thursdays. Yet because the popular sitcom scores a bull’s-eye with key demographic groups while Dick Van Dyke’s show plays mainly to people older than 65, the disparity in their per-commercial sales price is nearly tenfold.

“When you boil it down to dollars and cents, Fox gets more money for ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘King of the Hill’ than CBS does for ‘Touched by an Angel,’ even though the latter has a bigger [overall] audience,” noted Bill Croasdale, president of the broadcasting division at Western International Media, a major ad-buying firm.

Obviously stung by headlines citing CBS’ sweeps victory, NBC issued a press release pointing out that 14 of CBS’ shows rank in the top 20 among people 65 and older, but none crack the list of favorites among viewers under 35; by contrast, no Fox program made the top 20 with people over 50. NBC and ABC are represented in every demographic segment.

“I don’t know a single dime that’s spent on this network . . . on the basis of households,” said Marvin Goldsmith, ABC’s president of sales, referring to the number of homes watching, a measure that favors CBS. “I can’t turn a household number into revenue.”

For its part, CBS isn’t backing away from its results; instead, the network is waging a renewed war of perception by trying to redefine the criteria for success, touting boomers--a 35-to-54 age bracket encompassing those born during the baby boom.

CBS has even initiated a direct-mail campaign telling advertisers to “Go where the money is,” citing the fact that boomers and older adults have higher disposable income than those in the 18-to-34 age group.

As CBS Television President Leslie Moonves put it in a recent speech to advertisers, “It just doesn’t make sense for any of us to place our greatest emphasis on younger adults when the leading edge of the baby boom generation has joined CBS in reaching the half-century mark.”

Still, media buyers and rival executives say CBS is fighting an uphill battle. The emphasis on younger demographics has been a staple of television for years, and though Moonves said progress is being made, he concedes at this point the movement is “glacial.”

Meanwhile, rivals charge CBS with employing inflammatory rhetoric by implying that the other networks have shunned older people, insisting that’s not the case.

“You’ve never heard any network say, ‘We don’t want older viewers,’ ” said Preston Beckman, NBC’s senior vice president of program planning and scheduling. “It’s just not the standard used in the business.”

Several assumptions guide the current system. First, an older person is presumed to be more fixed in terms of buying habits. In addition, several categories representing television’s biggest advertisers--including movies, fast food and soft drinks--specifically target a young audience.

People in their 60s are also more apt to live alone, whereas a mother in her 30s or 40s may be shopping for a spouse and two or more at-home children--purchasing a greater quantity of the products they do buy.

Most significantly, younger people have the potential of paying long-term dividends if they become regular consumers of an advertiser’s product.

“The feeling among most advertisers is, if we can catch you while you’re young and get you hooked on our brand, the odds are as you mature, you will stay with us,” Croasdale explained.

Such reasoning has fueled the emphasis on younger demographics, despite ample anecdotal evidence of fit 50- and 60-year-olds jogging in Nike high-tops or driving expensive sports cars.

David Poltrack, executive vice president of planning and research at CBS, who has trumpeted the network’s case for more than a decade, said he gets letters from middle-aged people annoyed by the prevailing logic governing the TV business.

“They say, ‘How dare Madison Avenue ignore us? I spend much more money than my children do. They’re coming to me for money,’ ” he noted.

Moreover, the age bracket that advertisers covet makes the job of programmers that much more difficult. Older people watch more television and tend to be more loyal to programs they like, while the younger audience is more fickle and elusive.

CBS doesn’t dispute that advertisers don’t buy time based on viewers over 55, touting that audience as “a bonus” to media buyers. Even facing such resistance, network officials maintain that an upward shift to include people in their 50s and 60s in the broad demographic target must inevitably occur, based on an aging population and the lunacy of myriad channels pursuing the same finite audience.

“To the extent that the networks all chase the same narrow audience with the same type of programming, they’re contributing to erosion of the network audience and driving viewers to sample cable,” Poltrack said.

CBS hasn’t always stood so firmly behind such an approach. The network embraced its boomer strategy after the previous management team sought unsuccessfully to compete with the other networks on their terms, rolling out a schedule that featured such short-lived series as “Central Park West”--a prime-time soap from the creator of “Melrose Place.”

“They tried to go young and it didn’t work,” said Jon Nesvig, president of sales at Fox. “If I had their [audience], I’d be out trying to sell the same thing.”

CBS continues to state its intention to draw more young viewers--but gradually, rather than via a complete course reversal. Still, rivals question how long the network can resist pressure to fulfill the needs of sponsors and--since advertising is the life’s blood of television--its stockholders. Where serving viewers fits into that equation remains to be seen.