I’m scanning the newsie sites this morning and notice three headlines about publications essentially zoning by age … basing critical assumptions about reader/consumer behavior on how old people are.
In interviews this fall, Mr. Tanner asked several hundred young people in the Dallas area to describe their dream newspaper. Taken collectively, they imagined a publication with big, bright photographs and snappy articles that focused heavily on subjects like entertainment, all wrapped in a package so thin that it could be scanned in the time it took to ride an elevator. And because there was so much content available on the Internet, they told Mr. Tanner, they were not inclined to pay for such a publication.
After working at Maxim from 1999 to 2002, Kaminsky was hired as only the third editor in Playboy’s history. The magazine, he says, still has a cachet– it just needs some modernizing. Kaminsky insists that he is under no particular mandate, but he acknowledges that his job is to make Playboy more accessible to the free-spending 18-to-34 crowd coveted by advertisers. The average Playboy reader is 32.5 years old while Maxim’s is 27.5, nearly smack in the middle of the desired demographic.
Of course, an older, wiser Sting is the ideal cover subject for a glossy, much-hyped magazine that’s courting — and very much depending on — an older, wiser audience. Launched this month as a response to the Britneyfication of pop-music coverage, Tracks (tag line: “Music Built to Last”) is intended for the over-30 music fan who longs for the days when rock dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
I see this stuff and can’t help thinking of all the retirees I saw taking their grandkids to a Stones concert last year, and all the teens digging Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young I saw at a show this year. Sure, age matters when you’re selling diapers and Depends but I get the sense that there’s a lot more generational crossover these days than most of the experts take for granted. It’s too early to tell now, naturally, but I won’t be surprised to see headlines saying “Age-based appeals gaining less traction” if today’s initiatives flop.
In other welcome news, iwantmedia is back from vacation.
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