It’s ironic that just as conventional broadcasters scramble to woo young adults with a fresh batch of titillating reality programming, marketers are finally realizing the folly of largely ignoring one-third of the population – the massive and lucrative baby boomer segment.

Right now, only 5% to 10% of Canada’s media spend is directed at boomers, says Jane Bradley, director of sales and marketing for Toronto-based 50Plus magazine. This, despite the fact that by 2005, boomers are expected to control 60% of all disposable income. Already, according to the National Post, the over-50 group accounts for $35 billion in Canadian retail dollars spent each year.

Similarly, in the U.K., a recent study by the World Advertising Research Centre, cited in The Guardian, showed that 95% of that country’s advertising is geared to those under 35, although most of the wealth is held by 50- to 65-year-olds. Meanwhile, in the U.S., more than half of the US$8 billion spent in last year’s upfront TV market went towards the 18-to-49 demo, with the remainder split between the under-18 and 25-to-54 groups.

Clearly, the world’s marketers are obsessed with youth, so it’s not surprising that the broadcasters are too. But signs are beginning to emerge that show this obsession just isn’t healthy.

For instance, the constant pressure on broadcasters to skew younger may be a major factor contributing to the steady erosion of overall conventional TV viewers.

‘No matter how many Survivors or Amazing Races are produced, the share of conventional viewing continues to decline to the advantage of specialty television,’ notes Theresa Treutler, SVP broadcast investment director at Starcom Worldwide in Toronto.

U.S. media guru Jack Myers agrees. ‘Broadcast networks will inevitably stay with the reality genre,’ he wrote in a report issued in February. ‘In the process, it seems certain that cable network ratings will improve through the reality craze, while broadcast network ratings decline.’

In fact, cable in the U.S. is seeing ratings increases for the over-50 group that are one-third higher than increases in the 18-to-49 demo. The draw of cable apparently is the original, scripted program versus ‘unscripted’ reality shows on conventional.

To wit, when U.S. network CBS first launched Survivor, the average age of its audience dropped almost a whole generation. In the U.S., 12- to 17-year-olds are major drivers of the reality craze.

As a result, many boomers are migrating to specialty television, save for special-interest programming, such as sports or news, and some dramas including ER, 24 and the CSI and Law & Order franchises.

That’s good news to Errol Da-Re, VP of sales for Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting, a major beneficiary of the boomer shift to specialty TV.

‘Specialty is in a huge growth period and has been for a number of years. It’s only logical to think that if there are that many boomers in Canada – about 10 million – that their programming preferences are not going to be reality shows,’ he says. ‘We have CSI coming on to our Showcase and Showcase Action schedules for that very reason.’

Da-Re says that Alliance Atlantis really began taking boomers into consideration about a year ago when a deeper look into research showed it was reaching boomers very effectively.

Some of AAC’s most popular channels with boomers are History Television, HGTV, Showcase, Food Network Canada and Discovery Health. In fact, History has the highest per-minute audience in Canada for men in the baby boomer demographic (36 to 55).

‘We believe that if you’re not reaching the demo that amounts to 32% of the population, you’re missing out,’ says Da-Re. ‘Talk to automotive companies, pharmaceutical and recreation companies. They’ll all tell you they’re trying to reach boomers. If they can’t reach them, they’re really going to struggle with their sales.’

So why are boomers still so neglected? Mainly because after a long courtship with advertisers beginning in the 1940s, they were cast aside by marketers attempting to grow a new generation of consumers loyal to their brands. This trend was based on the assumption that brand preferences are solidified by age 25, and that boomers’ preferences were already locked in.

But current research debunks that theory and shows, for example, that marketers can lose out by not keeping their brands relevant to boomers – because 70% of them are likely to purchase packaged-goods brands other than those they usually buy.

‘The marketing world is waking up,’ says Keith Hillmer, president and creative director at BOOM Communications, the baby boomer-focused division of Toronto’s Padulo Integrated. ‘When you look at the huge numbers the boomers represent – and their buying power – it’s almost like [marketers] haven’t been looking at the facts and figures for the last eight to 10 years.’

Hillmer points to advertisers such as The Bay, Gap and Sony, which are including boomers in their targeting, as well as many other marketers in categories such as automotive, travel, fitness, health care, telecommunications and financial services, which have realized the boomer potential.

Wine is another category that’s developing a new appreciation for aging boomers, and the Wine Council of Ontario went straight for them in a recent ‘Wines of Ontario’ campaign.

Robert Levy, managing director of Toronto’s Brandspark International, handled targeting and segmenting for the effort. He says it was the size of the boomer group and their wine purchase volume that tipped the scales toward media choices for the older audience.

Levy selected specialties such as The Food Channel, HGTV, Life and CBC Newsworld, along with special-interest and intelligent dramas on the conventional side.

Because boomers generally view themselves as about 15 years younger than their actual ages, ‘you can go after people in their 30s and 40s,’ Levy says, ‘and if the message is relevant, it will appeal to boomers in their late 50s.’

A version of this article appeared in the May 5, 2003 issue of Strategy Media magazine.