For Network News, Finding Younger Viewers Is a Gray Area

In the youth-obsessed world of television, network news divisions are wrestling with an age-old problem: how to get younger viewers to watch TV news.

Continuing a decades-long trend, younger viewers simply have less time to devote to news than older ones and less interest in it. The median age for NBC anchor Tom Brokaw’s audience this TV season, for example, is 56.7, compared with 58.7 for ABC’s Peter Jennings and 60.3 for CBS’ Dan Rather, according to Nielsen Media Research figures.

NBC recently announced with much fanfare that Brian Williams, 43, will take over the anchor chair from Brokaw at the end of 2004, the first transition atop a nightly network newscast in two decades. Yet, if the presumption is that a younger face will bring in younger viewers, it may be mistaken. During May, the median age of Williams’ MSNBC audience was 60, older than that watching Brokaw.

Given the emphasis on reaching younger audiences by advertisers, who want to establish brand loyalty among young adults and hold onto them for life, making news more appealing to those demographics remains an issue for news divisions. The formula for doing it, however, remains elusive, particularly if it means reeling in that audience without sacrificing core news viewers.

Historically, people become more interested in news as they get older, said Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s head of research. But some pessimists think that model is about to fall apart. Those in their 20s and 30s have grown up on a news-on-demand diet, providing them round-the-clock options such as cable and the Internet, as well as alternative news sources that include reality shows, MTV and late-night comedians.

As a result, some in news worry that younger viewers may not as readily develop the nightly news habit. Indeed, one of the youngest news audiences these days, with a median age of 51 last month, can be found watching CNN Headline News, with its frenetic, information-filled screens and 15-minute headline cycles. “NBC Nightly News” is the only network newscast whose median age has dropped this season compared to last in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as the young people who tuned in to learn about those events drifted away or stuck with cable.

“People of my generation grew up with the habit and are now news watchers,” said consultant and former network executive Jeff Gralnick, who is 63. Those in their 20s, 30s and 40s “didn’t grow up with the habit.... As these people age into their later 40s and 50s

Williams fits the traditional network anchor model: a serious white man who wears impeccable suits and has spent a career moving his way up the news ladder, from local stations to his stint as NBC’s White House correspondent to his current job as anchor on a very traditional-looking newscast on cable’s MSNBC. He is getting more international experience too, traveling to India last week to report on tension there.

Still, research indicates that younger viewers don’t automatically crave the Walter Cronkite-like father figure that the previous generation was raised on. “Older viewers grew up being guided by an anchor, while younger viewers are used to self-selecting their own news,” Wurtzel said.

Rather than follow anchors, research shows that younger people are “much more interested in the stories and what they consider to be the honesty of the stories,” said Phyllis McGrady, who oversees newsmagazines and documentaries for ABC News. Younger viewers, she said, want to know that the reporters have been on location with a story and that “they have lived and breathed it.”

TelePrompTers, flashy satellite links and “all the gadgetry and wizardry of television” also no longer impress young viewers the way they did their parents, noted Erik Sorenson, president of MSNBC, which had a median age in May of 54, young for the news world.

Wurtzel said it is folly for network newscasts to chase after younger adults. He conducted research in the past on whether it would be worthwhile to develop a newscast specifically for the 18- to 34-year-old crowd and learned that “the answer is no.” While a newscast could be designed to appeal to that age, he said, “because of a combination of interests, lifestyle and behavior, we predicted they would not become loyal enough viewers to make it viable.... Getting them to watch traditional network television news is very, very difficult, if not impossible.”

Networks also can’t be seen as pandering to younger viewers, executives said. ABC was accused of doing just that on the newsmagazine “ABC Downtown,” with its crew of leather-jacketed correspondents. McGrady maintains that the show did have a younger style, but that it wasn’t at the expense of substance.

Moreover, there are perils to changing too quickly. When it launched three years ago with new anchors and a raft of young contributors, CBS’ “The Early Show” attracted a younger audience but quickly lost older viewers. “Two-thirds of the people who left us were 65-plus, so they just obviously tuned in, saw the new cast of characters ... and said, ‘This isn’t what I bargained for,’ ” said CBS News President Andrew Heyward, who would love to attract more young viewers to the “CBS Evening News” but “not at the expense of the core audience.”

So other than increasing promotion and putting anchors on Don Imus’ morning radio show and late-night comedy shows, what’s a network to do?

Evolve slowly, executives said, as they have done in recent years by adding more lifestyle, health and finance stories. CBS’ newscast has consciously developed and showcased a handful of youthful reporters, said Heyward, “which makes the whole program feel younger and more contemporary.” CBS’ “48 Hours” will get its own makeover in the fall with Rather’s decision to no longer be the host. One possible change is doing away with a host altogether, in line with what younger viewers seem to expect.

A dissenting voice comes from Paul Slavin, executive producer of ABC’s “World News Tonight.” He is largely dismissive of pursuing younger audiences, noting that the first half of the newscast is all about the day’s events and wouldn’t change no matter who is being targeted. During the program’s latter half, when there is more discretion, “I need to find as many viewers as I possibly can. And I need to be as inclusive as I possibly can. It’s about doing as many stories about pop culture as about pharmaceutical drugs.”

Like other networks, ABC News started its own Web site partly to gain “entree to a group of younger information users who were not necessarily television watchers,” said Gralnick, who has worked for both ABC and NBC.

“The hope is make them consumers of your news and begin to pre-brand them by exposure to your news on the Internet site, and then lure them to the TV side,” a strategy that could be self-defeating, he added, if viewers decide they get enough news from the Web and don’t need more from TV.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Median Age of TV News Viewers

Network evening news

(season-to-date)

NBC ...56.7

ABC ...58.7

CBS ...60.3

Cable news

(May only)

CNN Headline News ...51

MSNBC ...54

Fox News Channel ...59

CNN ...63

Source: Nielsen Media Research