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[oselle]

Even Jensen Ackles knows the CW is full of shit:

"What's funny is the network always talks about how we skew to a younger audience, but at the events we go to, the ones who show up at the set are usually women ages 30 to 50. It's actually pretty cool."

We were dishing at work today about the Lost season finale and got into talking about the supposed target audiences of various TV shows. I went off on my usual ramble about how the networks seem to get a fixed idea in their heads about who the audience for a particular show is supposed to be, rather than who the audience actually is.

I mentioned to my friend that Supernatural (which she doesn't watch) had added two young female co-stars this year to lure in younger viewers. And she asked, legitimately, what's wrong with the viewers it has?

One thing I've never understood is what makes an audience of young people (male or female) so attractive. I understand that people in their teens and twenties spend money on a lot of non-essentials but so do grown women. And grown women are not just buying disposable-income type stuff like lipstick and cinnamon lattes, they're also usually making the majority of buying decisions for an entire household -- so if you reach women 30-50 you can pitch them everything from cell-phone service to laundry detergent. We buy it all!

But there still seems to be something vaguely unsavory about having an audience of grown women...or at least, having an audience of grown women for the "wrong" show. Marketers seem happy to pitch to us when we're watching demographic-appropriate fare like soap operas and Grey's Anatomy but we're like the proverbial elephant in the room when we're watching things like Supernatural. So these network execs and marketers convince themselves that no, the majority of Supernatural viewers are teenagers and twenty-somethings, though I'd be willing to bet good money that's not the case. And as a result, they're ignoring the audience they do have just because it's somehow not the "right" one.

I have no idea what kind of marketing studies these networks do but I'd suspect their intelligence is faulty. It's easy to spin data the way you want it to go instead of looking beyond the numbers to find out who the real audience is. Hell, all they have to do is listen to Jensen Ackles. Seems like an observant guy...and pretty damn easy on the eyes, too. :P

Article found at dean_sam

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I remember reading a thing about First Wives Club after it came out. It was saying how usually when a movie makes money Hollywood runs to make copies of it. But with FWC they didn't because it was popular with women, and even if it did make money, they just didn't want to do that. (Granted, they also with other movies find ways of concentrating on the wrong thing to copy so that they're always going for the young boy demographic.)

It still confuses me because don't we all know now that things are getting more fragmented, so it's better to give groups what they want rather than always go for the most? But certainly network TV is notorious for refusing to change the way they work. They're still fighting with each other the way they did in the 70s while the audience is getting more fragmented.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

But with FWC they didn't because it was popular with women, and even if it did make money, they just didn't want to do that.

Wasn't there some idiot executive at...Warner Brothers, I think, who just flat-out said recently that they weren't going to make any more movies with female leads? Supposedly they don't make any money. But even when they do make money, they're still not appealing to studios. It's like nobody wants to be associated with making "women's pictures." Though I'll readily admit that entertainment directly geared towards women has turned into complete schmaltz. You read a lot about how women were some of the biggest box-office stars in "old" Hollywood and they weren't pigeonholed into making "women's" movies -- they just made good movies.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it was in response to that Jodi Foster movie. The fault being that girls can't carry movies, apparently, not that the movie was bad.

It's true "women's movies" have gotten dreadful. Though I also remember when one of my favorite movies came out (LA Confidential) it apparently did really well with women in the test screenings. But the studio tried their best to market it to the teenaged boy crowd instead. The movie didn't do very well and I remember people always said the marketing for it was terrible--teenaged boys were never going to want to see a sophsticated film noir. It's still widely regarded as one of the best movies of the 90s but didn't do that well.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

See now, there's no excuse for not marketing a movie like LA Confidential to women. I would have thought this was a no-brainer. What's here for women NOT to like? The great story? The atmosphere? The costumes? Steel-jawed hot dudes like Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe? WTF? Oh right, but we're all supposed to be going to Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or something.

[layne67.livejournal.com]

But there still seems to be something vaguely unsavory about having an audience of grown women...or at least, having an audience of grown women for the "wrong" show

They're saying the same thing about David Cook, that he appealed to mostly women in their fourties, like there's something wrong with that.

You can read about it here. Heh, I learnt a new term - cougars! :)

[oselle.livejournal.com]

like there's something wrong with that

I always get the feeling that there are things we're "supposed" to like and if we happen to like something that doesn't fit that mold, it's sort of a joke and also a little weird. I still remember reading about how marketers were "stunned" by how many women were going to see the LoTR movies, like that it was some bizarre aberration that no one could explain. That's the thing about "older" women -- no one has really bothered to study us much, so all of these marketers and anyalysts are working off faulty, biased models of what they think we like, and they have little to no idea of what we actually do like.

[pensive]

My 51yo stepfather watched this show RELIGIOUSLY, and got my 48yo mother into it. My stepdad watched for the badass music and the car, and my mom likes a good story (with cute guys too, let's be honest). They are the ones that got me into it entirely.

Suck on that, Demographics suits!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

If you watch the commercials that run during SPN you'll see that they're all geared towards young people and especially boys (there's always at least one military recruiting commercial during the show). I don't think they have any idea of the diversity of their audience, and that's probably true for most television shows.

[ghyste.livejournal.com]

Asylum (approximately 1,200 people) was overwhelmingly female with ages ranged between 7 and 70 and, most unusually, a huge number of family groups comprising up to 3 generations of actual fans (as opposed to family members dragged along with their kids, partners etc.). There was scarcely a teenage boy in the place.

Women make up vast proportion any genre show’s fanbase and are ready and willing to put their hands in their pockets for the right merchandise, but because we’re not fulfilling the marketing department’s profiles and sticking to soaps or soaps disguised as drama, we’re treated like the embarrassing relative at family get-togethers.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

we’re treated like the embarrassing relative at family get-togethers

That's exactly the feeling I get. It's like, "Oh thanks for coming, now sit over there where no one can see you." They'll fawn all over this supposed 18-34 age group that's the audience they want while ignoring the audience they actually have. I don't understand how that makes for good business, but then I think Dawn Ostroff is especially awful at her job and I hope the rumors of her being canned shortly turn out to be true.

[i-o-r-h-a-e-l.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, especially with the last sentence! :D

But yes. Teens might be buying things but they still have to ask for money from their parents. While those 30 - 50? Also, perhaps CW people need to do some real questionnaire. Hmm, they remind me of my own office. :P

Back to the observant Jensen...

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I don't even know what sorts of research they do, but I think a lot of this media analysis is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. I know that a lot of the syndicated research we use in the magazine business sounds like a load of horseshit and I doubt that what they use for television is much better. Even a questionnaire won't help if you're just questioning the people that you think watch your show rather than the people who do watch it and are wholly invested in it.