ONLINE EXTRA: Q&A With Lifetime's Tim Brooks

Cable World, June 6, 2005

An expanded version of the interview with Lifetime's EVP of research that appeared in the print version of CableWORLD.

By Shirley Brady

Forget 25 to 54 year olds: That's been the common theme during this upfront season, during which networks have been attempting to skew younger and target the 18-to-49 demo. Tim Brooks, cable's resident TV historian and EVP of research for Lifetime, critiques the reliance on these categories and the obsession with youth.

CableWORLD: Are 18 to 49 and 25 to 54 artificial demographic categories given today's fragmented media landscape?

Tim Brooks: They are artificial. The 18-to-49 demo--which is an age range that's not used, I believe, by any other country in the world--is an artifact of when Nielsen introduced demographics for the first time, around the end of the '50s and early '60s. They had to figure out some place to start, so they discussed it with their advertisers and subscribers at the time and said, "Well, why don't we take a wide chunk?"

CW: Why that particular demo?

Brooks: They were very focused in those days, in the family era, on homemakers who would buy products. They even had a demographic break called "woman of the house." Shows you how far we've come. So 18 to 49 was meant to be anybody who might have a kid, meaning the broad swath of middle-class America. And somehow this all got locked in over the years, and it makes no sense at all anymore. Especially today, with so much fragmentation where an 18 year old and a 49 year old have absolutely nothing in common. They probably had something in common back then, but they have nothing in common today.

CW: Are we stuck with this?

Brooks: Unfortunately, we've been stuck with this break for sales purposes. There's a lot of pressure against changing it because, in part, it's a big break and therefore you get big numbers out of it. If you happen to be very strong in the 30s and 40s, it may make up for your underperformance in the 20s, for example, and vice versa. So it covers a multitude of sins.

CW: What's the future of demos?

Brooks: We've been very slow in doing what other countries have done and really adapting demos to be more pinpointed. What's going to happen is rather than refine what we define the demographic breaks as, we may wind up moving away from demographics entirely into something that is more tied to places where your message gets through, where you actually sell products, where the environment matches your product.

CW: Meaning more platform- and lifestyle-specific?

Brooks: We do a lot of that now. Most of the branded cable networks have a lot of information on their viewers, not just on their ages but on their psychographics. We just did a big study on that for Lifetime and women. So yeah, I think it's probably going to go there instead of, say, let's make it 21 to 49.

CW: How are viewers tracked outside the U.S.?

Brooks: First of all, they have no household measures, they don't even report that, it's all persons. And within persons, you will have breaks like 16 to 21 and 21 to 30 in England or France or Germany, and they will basically conform to lifestyle groups. We find for example in our research that even in the U.S., there's a major change in women's lifestyles and attitudes in the early 20s. And that makes sense.

CW: What did your own research find?

Brooks: If you're 18 to 20 years old as a woman, you're either still in college or you're living on your own; you're dating; you're probably not settled down yet or having kids yet, because women are having children later. When you get to 22 to 24 is when you get a major change in attitudes. A woman is typically getting her first job around that time, she's taking on responsibilities, entering her first big relationship or marriage, perhaps having her first child. So years different from who she was at 18 or 19, just three years earlier. On the other hand, the difference between a 22 or 23 year old and a 29 year old is pretty narrow. There are some differences, but not very great, and then very gradual after that. So a logical break in a woman's area, and I suspect in the men's area too, is something like 23 or 24 to 39.

CW: What do you think of TV networks, broadcast and cable alike, chasing younger demos, who are spending more time online and watching less TV? Are older viewers, which TV is overlooking and ignoring, a potentially more rewarding target group to pursue?

Brooks: This has been the case for a long time. There are ample studies showing that it makes no sense at all to advertise only to people under 50. The money is with the older consumers. For a long time advertisers and agencies, particularly, held to the notion, well, maybe that's true but brand preferences are set early in life so we need to reach them in their 20s and 30s, because by the time they're 50 or 60 they're not changing their brand any more.

CW: Any studies to the contrary?

Brooks: Yes, there has been a ton of research to show that that's not true any more. [According to a recent RoperASW study], 50 and 60 year olds are just as likely to change their brands and try new products today as younger people are. And they're just as media savvy. A 50 year old today is not the 50 year old of 1945 or 1950 or 1960. So all of the science indicates that you're absolutely right--somebody parachuting in from Mars and observing how we track viewers would say that we're absolutely crazy. That we ought to be going where the money is and where people are buying products, not on some artificial basis of youth that has no basis in fact. As much as many networks have tried to change that--Dave Poltrack at CBS argued that case for years--and have put out presentations and very thorough studies and these little wheels you could turn that would show the payoff from each demographic, it didn't matter. The advertising world--and buyers are all young anyway--wasn't listening.