TELEVISION : The Fountain of Youth Equation : Older viewers earn more and watch TV more, so why are ABC, NBC and Fox wooing the young? Because advertisers covet them

Coming to NBC this fall is a drama series about a band of college graduates taking on yuppie jobs in Washington, D.C. They will bond over beer once a week at a Georgetown pub from which the series takes its name, “The Round Table.” They are not to be confused, however, with the band of college students who bond while studying medicine in the Caribbean in ABC’s fall drama “Going to Extremes,” or with the freshman college students in the Fox drama “Class of ’96.”

Nor are they to be mistaken for the working-class kids who never went to college but bond nonetheless in an inner-city garage where they’ve formed a rock ‘n’ roll band in the Fox drama “The Heights.” Nor for the twentysomething crowd that, beginning July 8 and continuing into the fall on Fox, will bond in a trendy Los Angeles apartment complex called “Melrose Place,” a spinoff of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” the hit series about high school students bonding.

But wait, there’s more.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner works at an urban recreation center for troubled youths in the NBC sitcom “Here and Now” . . . a hip-hop black radio station mistakenly hires a white disc jockey in NBC’s “Rhythm and Blues” . . . Patti LaBelle stars as a blues singer who runs a hip urban nightclub in NBC’s “Out All Night” . . . a former basketball hero returns as a substitute teacher to his urban junior high school in ABC’s “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper” . . . and on Fox, black comedian Martin Lawrence hosts a hip talk show on a Detroit radio station in “Martin.”

Coincidence? Hardly. These three networks, like knights pursuing the golden chalice, are on a quest for young viewers. The category is loosely defined as 18 to 49 years old, but the emerging strategies in the new fall prime-time schedules appear to be targeting the lower end of that spectrum. The way to get them, these networks have concluded, is by programming shows about them. Only CBS, last season’s No. 1-rated network, is still conducting business the way the networks have for decades--by casting the net out for a wider catch of viewers.

So, what’s behind the youth campaign? The answer is simple: money.

In the past, the TV networks served up a smorgasbord of programming designed to attract the largest number of viewers at any given time. Demographics--the breakdown of who was watching, by age, gender and race--mattered, but volume was the primary selling tool. In recent years, however, their hold on the audience has been slipping, and advertisers have been demanding a better accounting of whether their commercials are reaching the likely consumers of their product. So, in a continuing shift that’s being mirrored in all media, from newspapers to magazines to radio, the majority of networks are deemphasizing quantity of viewers in favor of quality--specifically the younger audiences that many advertisers find most attractive.

“We want to attract young viewers because that’s who our clients, the advertisers, want to reach,” said Alan Wurtzel, senior vice president of research and marketing for ABC.

The networks are hoping to capture the elusive, distracted members of the MTV generation--who subscribe to cable, rent more videocassettes, flip around the dial via remote control and, worst of all, go out a lot to movie theaters. The reasoning is that they are more susceptible to advertising in general, that they influence the viewing habits of parents, siblings and peers, and that older viewers tend to stay in at night and therefore are going to watch TV no matter what the networks put on.

“If you look at television (viewing patterns), television is dominated by older people,” explained Ave Butensky, president of the Television Bureau of Advertising in New York. “They watch more often. A lot of networks feel that if you skew your programming selection young, you’re going to get old anyway. You don’t have to seek them out. They’re there.”

The upstart Fox network has aimed young ever since it was formed six years ago, a strategy that has led to profits even though it gets smaller ratings than its three major competitors. And with advertising revenue down last year because of the recession, ABC, which historically has been more youth-conscious than CBS and NBC, was the only one of the three networks last year that wound up in the black.

In announcing the network’s fall schedule last month, ABC Entertainment President Robert A. Iger made clear that the emphasis on demographics over overall ratings was stronger than ever. “Young adults have traditionally comprised the core of the ABC viewing audience,” he said. “We have reaffirmed our intention to aggressively target this important audience segment.”

Now NBC, which lost its ratings crown to CBS last season after six straight wins, is following suit. In joining the youth movement, NBC dropped “Matlock,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “The Golden Girls” even though their ratings were still good, because the bulk of the viewers were in the older age categories. Some advertisers referred to the moves as “granny dumping.” In explaining the shift, NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield vowed to “continue the successful transition from households to demographic focus” with a youthful slate of programs.

“There’s no theory behind it,” observed Doug Seay, a senior vice president of Hal Riney & Associates who buys advertising time on the networks. “The networks go where the money is.”

The bulk of TV advertising is currently aimed at Americans under 50. Although advertisers have other ways to reach young viewers, such youth-oriented cable networks as MTV ond Nickelodeon simply don’t deliver viewers en masse the way network television does. The problem, however, is that young viewers don’t flock to prime-time television as much as they used to.

“In television right now, network shows over-deliver the 50-plus segment of the audience and under-deliver the under-50 audience,” said Seay. “That’s just the nature of who watches television. Males and females 18 to 34 don’t watch as much network television, so they’re a prize that advertisers gravitate toward. What the networks are trying to do is make a shift away from the surplus of 50-plus viewers.”

Except for CBS, which is staunchly holding the old network line, trying to persuade advertisers that there is still money in big overall ratings and mature audiences.

“Looking at the new fall programming schedules, we’re ecstatic with what we see,” said David Poltrack, senior vice president of research and planning for CBS. “All three of the other networks are chasing this very young audience. There’s a blur of twenty-something, coming-of-age programming on all the other networks. That opens up a tremendous opportunity for us. We’re targeting the aging baby boomers, the 35- to 54-year-old audience, and no one else seems to want them.”

Nationwide marketing trends back up the CBS strategy. Other industries are also following the graying baby boomers, who are in possession of the country’s highest disposable incomes. But Fox, NBC and ABC are more interested in zeroing in on the viewers for whom they say advertisers are paying premium prices.

For example, ABC’s youthful sitcom “Family Matters” and the mature NBC drama “Matlock,” starring Andy Griffith, drew similar ratings last season. But a 30-second commercial on “Matlock” cost an estimated $120,000, while the same spot on “Family Matters” sold for as high as $190,000. The difference: Almost twice as many 18- to 49-year-olds watched “Family Matters”.

Before Fox, cable TV, VCRs and satellite dishes, when there were just three networks competing for viewers, the race was for the greatest number of households tuning in. A dozen years ago, 92% of all TV viewers watched CBS, NBC and ABC in prime time. Today that audience is spread out, with the three networks attracting only 60% of the audience.

Fox, which has snapped up 13% of the audience, has demonstrated that tightly focused programming for youth can be profitable, and it is is hoping to take another bite out of the Big Three by expanding to a fifth night of prime-time programming next month, a sixth in the fall and a seventh by next spring.

“When you talk to the advertisers about what the networks are doing, the first thing they say is, ‘Hey, that’s Fox’s strategy,’ ” said Jamie Kellner, president of Fox Broadcasting Co. The average Fox viewer is 27, well under the U.S. median age of 33. The average viewer age of the other three networks combined is 43.

“And isn’t it interesting,” Kellner said, “that the established networks are taking the newest network and following our lead, rather than striking out on their own?”

Advertisers have always been interested in demographic information about TV viewers, but for most of the history of the medium they had to rely initially on ratings that only indicated whether the set was on in a given home, followed weeks later by diary information that revealed who may have been watching at the time. Only recently has technology made the information easy to acquire: In 1987, the A.C. Nielsen Co. introduced an electronic ratings system for cable and network television--the People Meter--which made the age and gender of TV viewers available overnight.

Now that’s all anybody talks about.

“The household ratings are an anachronism,” said Gene DeWitt of DeWitt Media, a New York media planning company. “I mean, really, who cares? Nobody advertises to households. Households don’t buy products; people do. We don’t even look at the household ratings when we make media buys. I don’t know one advertiser who does.”

There are a variety of reasons why advertisers find young minds the most attractive to make an impression on. The biggest one is the belief that young people have not formed solid brand loyalties yet, as opposed to older folks who have already made up their minds about what products to use. “Give me a child until he is 7, and I will give you the man for life,” as the Jesuit saying goes. If advertisers can grab consumers in their early years, conventional wisdom teaches, they can hold onto them.

But two bodies of research that set out to test that assumption contradict each other.

According to a 1989 survey of 2,064 adults by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, an overwhelming 72% of adults 50 and older reported that they were brand loyal and willing to stick with their favorite products, compared to only 10% of younger adults 18 to 49. What’s more, 64% of the 50-plus set claimed that advertising had no influence over them, while 64% of the under-50 crowd admitted to falling under the persuasion of advertising.

“The concept here for advertisers is that with an older audience you can’t influence product switching as much because they’re not inclined to switch,” said Andy Fessel, senior vice president of research and marketing for Fox. “From our perspective, younger people represent an ideal opportunity for advertisers to reach their goal, which is to build brand identity.”

A study commissioned by CBS’ Poltrack, however, suggested that younger consumers were the most brand loyal age group--but only slightly. The scanner-based study, conducted by Information Resources Inc., monitored the shopping behavior of women in 20,000 homes, following the purchase transactions of 378 brands in 27 packaged-good categories. The results found that 41% of women 18 to 24 were brand loyal, compared to 37% of women 50 to 64. Overall, the study concluded that brand loyalty among women does not increase with age on any significant basis.

Poltrack defended the study as more valid because it tracked consumer buying patterns over time, rather than relying on people to report their behavior in a survey.

“The problem with measuring brand loyalty by just asking people is that there’s a socially desirable aspect to saying you’re not brand loyal, especially for younger people,” Poltrack said. “Some people interpret brand loyalty as saying, ‘Gee, I’m not very original or creative.’ ”

Another reason for courting young viewers it that when they get hooked on a program, they generally bring other family members to the TV set with them. Households headed by viewers 55 and older are frequently occupied by only a few people, while younger households are rich with parents and children ripe for the plucking.

“There is an entry into the household through a younger viewer,” said Fox’s Fessel. “The younger viewer, the teen-ager or young adult living at home with their parent, brings other viewers to the set.

“If you get a younger viewer in the household to watch your show, what happens next is that program is exposed to older viewers in the household,” Fessel explained. “The result of that is this great ripple effect, like hands reaching out to hands and pulling in the audience.”

And outside the home, there’s a strong socialization factor among younger viewers, who are more likely to be influenced by what they hear from their friends.

There may be no greater example of that phenomenon than “Beverly Hills, 90210,” the Fox series that became a national craze among teen-agers last year and spawned a wave of look-a-like programming next season. The season finale on May 7 drew 72% of the teen-age girls and 50% of the teen-age boys watching television at the time.

“First we just had really young kids watching the show. Then they got a little older, and soon we were getting college students,” said producer Aaron Spelling. “The letters we’ve been receiving lately, some of the dearest letters I’ve ever seen, are from parents who are thanking us for the show. I can’t tell you how many parents say they will not allow their kids to watch the show without them, which we think is great.”

The reorientation to demographics at NBC is by far the most dramatic and is subject to the most debate, because the network is turning away from the audience that during the ‘80s pushed it to No. 1 in prime time.

Advertisers and competing networks executives were surprised earlier this year when NBC axed “Matlock,” “The Golden Girls” and “In the Heat of the Night.” And, possibly more surprising, ABC picked up “Matlock” as a mid-season replacement, while CBS put “In the Heat of the Night” and a revamped “Golden Girls” on its fall schedule.

The reasoning lies somewhere in traditional network-TV-think.

“Prime-time networks go through cycles--being No. 1 . . . not being No. 1,” explained Preston Beckman, vice president of program planning and scheduling for NBC. “What happens with those cycles is a natural history of network growth. It starts with attracting younger viewers. Once you attract younger viewers and those shows become popular, then the audience for those shows begins to broaden, and you attract everybody.”

But being on top is a precarious position. “As popular shows stay on the air over time, their demographics skew older. They become victims of their own success,” said Seay, of Hal Riney & Associates.

“In trying to keep the mantle of No. 1, what happened is we held onto a lot of shows longer than we should have,” Beckman said. “Maybe four years ago is when we should have made a change and let go of some shows. But comfort in being No. 1 sometimes overrides that fact and you stop looking for younger viewers.”

Many advertisers disagreed with NBC’s decision to yank their successful programming, considering that one-third of all prime-time programming loses money for the networks. Especially since NBC also lost “The Cosby Show” this past season.

“It was a mistake,” said Paul Schulman of the Paul Schulman Co. in New York. “When NBC says they got rid of ‘Matlock’ because of its old skew, their feeling was they could replace a show like ‘Matlock,’ which gets a steady 22 share (of the total TV audience), with a new show that gets a 19 or 20 share but delivers more adults in the 18-to-49 audience. The feeling is they can get more money for the replacement show at a lower household rating because it will deliver the higher rating toward the target.

“There may be a fallacy in that. You may not be able to replace ‘Matlock’s’ good share with a 19 or 20 share. If you can, then you’ve succeeded and you can get more money from your product. If you can’t, you’ve failed and your network sinks down deeper.”

But NBC’s Beckman feels the gamble is worth it, noting that ABC has chosen to hold back “Matlock” as a midseason replacement.

“Look at ABC’s (fall) schedule,” Beckman said. “Do you see ‘Matlock’? I’m sure they said, ‘If we put this show on, it will define a night for us as older skewing, and we can kiss 18- to 34-year-old viewers good-by.’ And I’m sure their sales department said, ‘No, you can’t do that to us.’ ”

In ABC’s defense, Wurtzel said that “Matlock” remains a strong show and will play an important role as a replacement series next season. “Look, (‘Matlock’) is a very successful show with a powerful appeal,” he said. “While you hate to say it at this time of the year, there will be failure on the network next fall. I mean, 75% of all shows fail the first season.”

For all the clamor over younger viewers, CBS, the network that is trying to sell advertisers on the 35- to 54-year-old viewers who flock to such hit shows as “Murphy Brown,” “60 Minutes” and “Murder, She Wrote,” was the highest-rated network last season--in overall ratings and in the vaunted 18- to 49-age group. One of the reasons is that truly popular shows--last season’s highest-rated entertainment series, ABC’s “Roseanne,” being the prime example--do tend to break the age barriers and draw viewers across the board. And that’s why the networks aren’t likely to take their fountain-of-youth pursuit to MTV extremes.

“When we are really successful, we have programs that span the gamut of ages,” Wurtzel said. “We don’t want to do programs that are so hip, so cutting edge, so arcane, that nobody over a particular age is going to be interested in them. That’s not in our best interest. Frankly, there are only three mainstream, broad-spectrum networks in existence. That’s something unique, a franchise that once given away can never be recaptured.”