Teens rule a different reality on TV
By David Hiltbrand
Knight Ridder News Service
If your television could talk, it might fill you in on the generation gap in this country — the gulf between what teenagers like on TV and what everyone else is watching.
Fox
An analysis of ratings for the TV season shows that teens have distinctive viewing habits. In fact, 14 of the top 25 shows among 12- to 17-year-olds are nowhere to be found among the top 25 shows for all viewers. Nearly half of the most popular teen shows air on Fox.
"American Idol" finalists are, clockwise from top: Ruben Studdard, Clay Aiken, Kimberley Locke, Joshua Gracin, Kimberly Caldwell, Corey Clark, Lashundra "Trenyce" Cobbins, Carmen Rasmuse, Rickey Smith.
And the epidemic of reality programming? To a great extent, you can blame it on teens. They can't get enough of the tawdry stuff. Shows such as "American Idol" are helping arrest a precipitous decline in network ratings among adolescents.
Above all, teens like to laugh. Comedies account for more than half of their top 25. Only three dramas made it onto the teen list: "CSI" (No. 12), "Smallville" (17), and "7th Heaven" (20).
The overall top 25 — a list dominated by adult choices — is more sober, laden with 10 dramas, from "CSI" (No. 1) to "JAG" (24). Those longer shows may help explain why grown-ups watch far more TV than young folks do.
As for reality shows, they hold down three of the top four slots for the teen group. Those viewers' appetite for such programming extends to such otherwise marginal offerings as "Fear Factor" (No. 14 for teens but No. 32 overall) and "Celebrity Mole: Hawaii" (No. 24 for teens but No. 46 for the broader audience.) Last week, the younger audience for "Fear Factor" boosted NBC to its first victory over an original episode of CBS' "Everybody Loves Raymond" (No. 9 with all ages) in nearly four years.
What accounts for this disparity in tastes? Clearly, it is in part a matter of age. But today's teens are also growing up in a world offering endless video games, the Internet, and hundreds of cable channels.
As a result, says Betty Frank, executive vice president of research for MTV Networks, "they're used to getting what they want when they want it. So they're impatient. They move around a lot. They have short attention spans."
The limited duration of reality series, typically four to 13 weeks, enhances their teen appeal. "They're almost like a novella," says Shari Anne Brill of media advisory firm Carat. "They're stories with a quick beginning, middle and end."
Another reason reality series perform well with younger viewers is that the shows usually revolve around dating or contestants being voted off. Issues of relationships and rejection resonate with teens.
The network of choice among adolescents is Fox, which airs the season's six most popular shows for that age group. One week during the recent February sweeps period, Fox had all 10 of the highest-rated shows among teens.
According to Gail Berman, Fox's president of entertainment, the key to the network's success isn't just programming content. It's also attitude, a hyperactive, class-clown approach most evident in promos for shows such as "Joe Millionaire."
