Game Over

American Demographics, Feb 1, 2004 by Christopher Reynolds

Byline: CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS

One unseasonably warm evening in September, 24-year-old Tyler W. sat in his Jersey City, N.J., apartment in front of his TV. But the financial analyst wasn't watching a sitcom rerun, an entertainment gossip show, the nightly news or even ESPN. Instead, Tyler was playing EA Sports' FIFA Soccer 2004, a team sport video game, on his Microsoft Xbox.

Tyler usually plays video games or surfs the Internet for about an hour or two after work. In the past, that's time he might have spent watching TV. "I like the interactivity of sports video games," says Tyler, who didn't wish to give his full name. "I don't get that from television."

Unfortunately for TV executives, Tyler isn't a rare exception. When Nielsen Media Research's fall sweeps ratings came out this past November, they clearly showed that men between the ages of 18 and 34 were watching less television, particularly fewer prime-time shows.

For the time period during the autumn weeks when many vaunted network shows hit the airwaves for the first time, Nielsen's data concluded that men 18 to 34 watched a hotly debated 7.7 percent less, or 270 fewer seconds, of prime-time TV programming a day than they did a year earlier. That may seem an insignificant drop, but Nielsen's research shows that younger men have been watching less television for the past 12 years and are no longer glued to the boob tube.

Collectively, this group accounts for about 12 percent of TV's total audience. For ad-supported network and cable TV channels, with more than $37 billion in annual revenue, the male 18- to - 34-year-old demographic accounts for about $4.3 billion. So, every minute that young males don't watch prime-time programming could carry a potential price tag of about $77 million across network, cable, national syndication and national Hispanic TV channels. At the same time, 18- to 34-year-olds purchased 50 percent of all video games, consoles and accessories sold in 2000, according to Interactive Digital Software Association. NPD Group estimates this market is worth $10.6 billion.

Still, TV industry experts blame a large part of the drop in male viewers last fall to the networks' failure to introduce new shows that snagged them. During the fall season, the most popular programs were The Simpsons, Friends and CSI. New shows that had a measure of success, such as The O.C. and Joan of Arcadia, appealed more to women. "The majority of it is geared toward women.... I mean, obviously, The Bachelor and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." says Scott A., a 23-year-old financial analyst who lives in Wayne, Pa. (Scott also didn't want his full name published.) "I watch football. I don't watch any sitcoms, let's put it that way."

Younger men also have found other ways to spend their free time: playing video games, watching DVDs, tuning in to cable channels, logging on to the Internet or ordering video-on-demand. Nielsen's research shows that among men 18 to 34, daily video game use jumped 22 percent during the period from the end of September to mid-November compared with the same period in 2002. While network viewership was down in fall 2003, ad-supported cable networks, such as ESPN and MTV, saw a 0.8 percent gain in their prime-time ratings over the previous year.

As TV loses its appeal among younger men, advertisers are using divining rods to follow the money. The PGA Tour, which tries to attract younger fans, sponsors EA Sports' golf video game, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004. It even includes a section where the player can outfit his virtual persona with accessories from Nike, Tag Heuer and Adidas. Kris Magel, senior vice president and group director of national broadcast at Optimedia, a New York advertising firm, says, "Partnerships with the developers of these games is a really interesting way to try to get in front of these guys."

Some media critics think the young-male maelstrom is much ado about nothing. Rush Limbaugh, the radio talk show host (whose audience is mainly men over the age of 35), believes marketers worry too much. In a posting on his Web site in the fall, he wrote: "The networks are losing the deadbeat demographic. We're not talking about women here. We're talking about 18- to 34-year-old men, who still live at home with their parents."

Limbaugh may be missing something, though. There are an estimated 32.7 million men in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 34, or about 11.25 percent of the population. Within 10 years, this age group will grow 4 percent to 33.9 million. Even though younger men spend less money than other demographic groups, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic's Consumer Expenditure Survey in 2002, they will splurge more as they age and as their paychecks become heftier. Which is why advertisers want to reach younger men while they're forming brand loyalties.

"Men 18 to 34 are hugely valuable," says Steve Grubbs, partner and CEO of PHD, the media arm of Omnicom Group, a New York advertising and marketing firm. "There are a whole slew of product categories that depend on that demographic. Ask WB, MTV, Pepsi, Coke or Sony Playstation. That's their bread and butter."