Niche Nets Target Graying Boomers

Baby boomers aren't getting any younger. By 2010, an estimated 82 million Americans, more than a quarter of the country, will be 55 or older. The result: A new opportunity for niche cable programmers.

“There is an obsession among most networks in targeting younger viewers so you can definitely have success running counter to that,” Horizon Media senior vice president and director of research Brad Adgate said.

Three networks — one with tiny distribution, one mid-sized and one with MTV Networks's clout behind it — are pursuing different strategies to go after all these aging eyeballs:

• American Life TV, a network that has morphed through various incarnations, is pursuing all those boomers, from the 43-year-olds to those in their early sixties.
• Retirement Living is going for older boomers, as well as their parents, targeting the 55-plus audience by redefining the notion of retirement, as people age in better health and with more money than ever before.
• TV Land is capitalizing on advertisers' newfound enthusiasm for fortysomethings by shifting its emphasis away from older-skewing classic TV shows, and the network plans to continue targeting that demographic even as the boomer set continues to grow older.

“It's not a question of eyeballs but of whether those eyeballs have value,” said Elliot Jacobson, vice president of programming for Retirement Living, which recently added tremendous reach, and clout, by partnering with AARP, with whom they are discussing coproductions.

“Boomers are really feeling ignored by Madison Avenue,” said Tanya Giles, TV Land senior vice president of research and planning. Citing a recent study by the network, Giles added that many boomers say they tune out and are even less likely to buy products that seem targeted toward 18-34 year olds at their expense. “We've used this research as an educational piece to show that boomers are not a bonus buy.” She says she has been invited to over 80 ad agencies to discuss TV Land's boomer-oriented data.

Jacobson thinks Madison Avenue is finally starting to get it, with companies like Prudential and Pfizer among others coming on board. “TV Land has certainly done a good job of paving the way,” he said, adding that people 55 and older, also known as grandparents, even spend significant dollars on the toy market. “Now that it's starting to turn, we're excited about that.”

Adgate agreed that “certain advertisers are going after that demo,” with pitches for products and services such as healthier foods, pharmaceuticals and financial institutions.

American Life TV, which has cycled through being known as Nostalgia TV and then Good Life TV, relaunched two years ago with the slogan, “your Baby Boomer TV.” Mark Ringwald, vice president of programming for American Life, which is only in about 11 million homes, said viewers average 45 to 48 years old, but plenty of boomers watch the classic shows it runs during primetime — such as Lost in Space, The Courtship of Eddie's Father and Welcome Back Kotter — with their kids. Many of the old series were created during the boomers' childhood or coming-of-age years, such as Batman or Mission Impossible, while some more recent series like I'll Fly Away or China Beach take place in the 1950s and 1960s. (Some shows are just on because they are deemed classics, like Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.)

Ringwald, who is 50, knows “that if the network was pure nostalgia it wouldn't work,” so it has been trying to define itself through its original programming in other dayparts.

Adgate believes scripted series are the best way to generate the “appointment viewing” that can be key to a network's success. But Ringwald explained that scripted series are “beyond our means at this stage” in terms of budget, and that doing one with poor production values would do the network more harm than having none at all. “We can't put a little crawl across the bottom of the screen saying, 'Sorry, we're a small place, please excuse us until we get bigger.'”

American Life has been licensing off the back end of Canadian productions and producing or co-producing lifestyle-oriented or what they call “Boomer Solutions” originals, typically spending around $75,000 per half-hour for each show. Those programs include Til Debt Do U$ Part, in which an advisor tackles fiscal and relationship woes, and Fixing Dinner, in which a consultant works with typically busy modern families to make it easier and more rewarding for them to gather around the dinner table everynight. Actor George Clooney's father, journalist Nick Clooney, also hosts a series of specials called Moments that Changed Us, which looks back at touchstone events.

Ringwald said the shows try not to obsess too much about being inclusive of both ends of the boomer spectrum. “We're trying to find good stories,” he said. “If we try finding a particular case study of a 57-year-old and that's our criteria, you may get a boring program.”

To that end, American Life has backed away from shows that were too narrowly-focused and information-heavy. American Family, for example, tackled a different issue each episode, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or depression. Ringwald felt that each installment of the series — which has ceased production but still appears in reruns — would only hold interest for individuals dealing with that particular issue. “If it feels like a public service announcement or homework it turns people off,” he said. “They have to be entertained.”

Ringwald is open to the idea of producing a boomer-oriented game show or talk show, but rather than build a show around a personality, he wants to first find a concept that will fit the network's brand. The brand, however, is still a bit amorphous, and not just because the boomer audience is so diverse.

The network has also begun creating socially conscious programs, but Ringwald admitted that the thinking behind it is not clearly laid out. “We're just beginning this strategy, we're feeling our way,” he explained. So far the network has run inspirational series like Profiles in Caring and Volunteers: For the Sake of Others, as well as more somber documentaries such as Journey to Darfur and Poverty in America. The emphasis in these and future projects is “how to make the world a better place.” Ringwalk said. “That's our only criteria at the moment.”

Darlene Chapman-Holmes, network vice president of marketing, thinks such proactive-oriented programming is essential because “a lot of people in this demographic don't want to be reminded that they're getting older. They do not want to sit on their porch and rock in a chair.”

That may be the image conjured up by the name Retirement Living Television, but network founder John Erickson, who made a fortune in developing retirement communities, chose that moniker because he is determined to change perceptions of what retirement is all about.

“It's important that we're not defined by our name, and the challenge is producing programming that defines us,” said Jacobson. “For the time being, changing the name is not on the table,” he added, albeit with a carefully worded caveat that “as our position changes, the potential is there to change the name too.”

The bright side, Jacobson said, is that while some of the younger part of the 55-plus demo may be turned off, “the name clearly defines our focus.”

Adgate agreed, saying “the name conjures up who they are without any marketing and ultimately the shows will be more a criteria of success regardless of the name.”

He adds that 55-plus “is the fastest growing age group in the country and they're rewriting the book on retirement — they're more active and have more money than previous generations.”

Still, Adgate said that the name does pose some challenges — “you imagine someone who has no schedule anymore and doesn't need to know what day of the week it is. This is not for everyone.”

American Life's Ringwald, who admitted he hasn't seen Retirement Life, said that “just the title is a turnoff to me.”

While some have said the network arrived too soon, since only half the boomer audience fits the demo, Adgate thinks “there's nothing wrong with being five years ahead of your time. It takes five years to get the carriage deals and work out programming. This is an evolutionary process.”

“We truly understand this demo,” Jacobson insisted, adding that Retirement Life is the only network with a research department led by a Ph.D. in gerontology. He admitted that nearly half the callers to the network's call-in shows are women in their 40s who are caring for their parents and looking for helpful information.

(Hallmark Channel skews toward older viewers, with acquired series such as Matlock and Murder, She Wrote, but it has also branded itself more broadly as a family-oriented programmer.)

The year-old Retirement Life, which is in 29 million homes, has made two major moves since launching: expanding from a limited block to round-the-clock programming and partnering with AARP. The network has followed a similar pattern to American Life in its approach to original programming, though Jacobson said that will change now that there's a growing awareness of this demographic among producers and distributors.

“Last year at MIP, nobody understood what we were asking for; but by this year there was a considerable shift,” he said, adding that his network can't sustain itself by producing all original programs itself; “we want more of a balance” with acquired productions.

According to Jacobson, in an effort to differentiate the network from others who draw heavily from the 55-plus crowd — he cites PBS, Hallmark Channel, CNN, GSN and Biography — the network started heavy on informational programming, dealing with the medical, consumer or public policy aspects of everything from hip replacements to taking multiple medications to reverse mortgages.

A cooking show and an exercise show were deemed not to be pointedly focused on this age group enough and never made it past the pilot, though Jacobson said he would reconsider the genres at some point.

Original shows include The Voice on social issues, Healthline and The Prudent Advisor. The network's signature remains its two-hour Daily Café, a midday version of the Today show, filled with recognizable names like co-host Mary Alice Williams and regulars like Dr. Ruth or Michael Musto. Jacobson often uses recurring segments on this show to test potential new series.

The network is also moving toward more lifestyle programming with a greater entertainment value, and it is shifting away from less-expensive-to-produce studio-based shows to more costly field-based ones. “Now that we have a better understanding of our audience, we are investing more,” Jacobson said. He wouldn't give details, other than to says that the network's spending is “competitive with other cable channels” on these types of shows.

And while there still are information-oriented shows — this month the network debuts the technology-focused show Retired and Wired — next month will bring a dating show tentatively called Chance for Romance, in which an expert offers tips for older people just returning to the dating scene. Also planned is travel magazine show A Time to Travel; and Florence Henderson (star of the quintessential boomer show The Brady Bunch) will host a new entertainment magazine show.

“We have to make sure to appeal broadly because our constituents are varied, but you can't become so broad that everything becomes bland,” Jacobson cautioned.

American Life and Retirement Living combined have less than half the distribution that TV Land does. But even if they catch up down the road, they will not end up as direct competitors for viewers. Right now, Retirement Living is just getting the older boomers, while American Life wants the whole spectrum. But TV Land, which traditionally hit what is now the true boomer demographic, with a median age in the 50s, is actually targeting just the youngest segment of the demographic … for now.

While they're repositioning themselves from classic TV to a boomer lifestyle network, the reality is that as the boomers age, TV Land will let them go. “With the boomers there's an opportunity we identified, and now our focus is on viewers in their 40s,” TV Land president Larry Jones said, “but in 10 years, we'll still be targeting the 40s, we will not follow the boomers. It's the life stage we want.”

Other Viacom Networks, like Nickelodeon and MTV, have long used this strategy to great success, he added.

So, while the classic series remain, the original programming has changed. Television-oriented shows, like Living in TV Land, are fading to black, since Jones says there is little left untapped there to produce a long-running series. They've been replaced by shows with a broader pop culture frame of reference, like Generation Boom or Myths and Legends, which deals with cultural phenomena ranging from Carly Simon's hit pop song “You're So Vain” to the munchkins from the The Wizard of Oz.

TV Land is also investing in more reality series, including The Big 4-0, on people turning 40; High School Reunion, which catches up with the class of 1986; and She's Got the Look, a model search for women over 35. All of these series feature participants younger than true baby boomer age, but the thinking behind them is that boomers would be interested in watching — and reliving — what it was like to be a younger.

Adgate, who's 52, is not so sure. But he pointed out that TV Land knows that no matter how much the landscape has changed on Madison Avenue, “a show [like The Big 4-0] that resonates with 40-year-olds will still generate more dollars than if it's The Big 6-0.”

While Jones believes the network can find a signature hit among its non-scripted series, he also said that if someone came to him with a scripted series that provided the sort of light, escapist television his network is striving for, “I'm optimistic we'd find the money to make it.”