‘Old Media’ Never Die, Their Audiences May

I’m on an online discussion forum and it was just pointed out there by Leslie Laredo of The Laredo Group that the average age of print newspaper readers (per the NAA) and network TV viewers is now 50. I don’t have the demographic information in front of me, but I would imagine the story is similar for radio (depending on the format) and print yellow pages (not sure ’cause I haven’t seen the data recently).

Audiences for traditional media are getting older, while younger audiences have gone online or embraced “on-demand” and “new” media. For example, ad-supported UK MVNO Blyk presents itself not as a mobile marketing channel but as a youth marketing channel. The mediums themselves will not die but their core audiences are getting older. This is a more subtle evolution of the market. Thus, in order to reach the broad audiences that these media once reached advertisers will need to diversify their ad spend, which is in fact happening.

The most dangerous part of these demographic data for the mediums is the perception that they’re no longer as relevant. In fact, older audiences have more money than younger ones as a rule, and these are highly desirable consumers but not to all marketers.

The age data put pressure on traditional media to expand distribution — hence TV’s move onto the Internet — and tell a more complex story to advertisers and the marketplace.

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Related: C-Level execs. prefer the Internet to other media as a news and information source (per Forbes/Gartner). This is a leading indicator of where they’re likely to spend their companies’ marketing dollars in the future.