CBS Corp. President and CEO Les Moonves blames evening news anchor Katie Couric’s rating decline on men over 55, who refuse to accept a female anchor. But he still likes older viewers overall as the lynchpin demographic in his network’s strategy. Mediaweek reports on Moonves’ comments at McGraw Hill Companies’ Media Summit in New York last week:

“In response to a question about CBS being the oldest skewing network in prime time, Moonves said the network has been able to do very well bringing in advertisers who want to reach older viewers from the Baby Boomer generation, and he took a swipe at the other Big Three Networks, who he said, believe “people past [the age of] 54 don’t count.”

“This is a system we’ve been trying to change,” he said. “We think it’s unfair. We think the Baby Boomer is still where the [spending] money is.” And in a message to those who believe that younger viewers have more disposable income to spend, he described that 18-34 demographic touted by the other networks as a “bullshit demographic.”

Moonves also noted that evening news shows still bring in 21 million viewers nightly, despite all the fragmentation going on in media.

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