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May. 30th, 2008 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleEven 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
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dean_sam
"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