Judging by its programming, I would have guessed PBS already had a pretty good bead on the 50+ audience; the network’s schedule is  packed with Boomer and nostalgia rock music, travel, food and personal discovery shows. But the network seems ready to do more. PBS is launching a new “Public Television 50-Plus Initiative,” according to Paul Kleyman, who writes Age Beat Online, the Newsletter of the Journalists Exchange on Aging. Here’s an edited summary of Paul’s interesting missive on the initiative:

“This is not just an initiative that is a one-year activity we’ll then cycle off into something else; this really should be the basis for the scope of work we should take up for now and the future. So we really should get this as right as we can out of the box.” That was the message Paula Kerger, PBS President and CEO, had for a select group of about 50 leaders in aging and top executives from throughout public television about the system’s new Public Television 50-Plus Initiative.

Speaking at a “summit” held near PBS headquarters in suburban Washington, D.C., in late April, Kerger noted that the system hopes to have as dramatic an impact on raising the quality of programming for older viewers as PBS did on children’s programming. In the next decade, she said, PBS intends to extend its penetration into the same older audience that other entities in broadcasting have long disdained as a liability, those past the vaunted 18-49 age group. Although the 50-Plus Initiative proposal places most emphasis on the boomer generation, it also states that programming will be developed for more senior age groups.

The 50-Plus Initiative, Kerger said, is part of a wider effort to secure the future of PBS and its 355 affiliated stations, while the media world is changing in an “ever complicated, ever fractured manner.”

The 50-Plus Initiative is the brainchild of Jim Pagliarini, president and CEO of Twin Cities Public Television (TCPT), and Judy Diaz, managing director of brand strategy for PBS. With development funding from The Atlantic Philanthropies, they commissioned market research last year showing that “at any given second in primetime, 1.4 million people 50-plus are watching series such as NewsHour, Now and Nova,” according to a summary provided to attendees. At present, according to the PBS study, 89 million people, about 30% of the U.S. population, are 50 or older. Although the research determined that PBS programs already serve its more mature audience, “that content was not consistent or aligned in such a way to realize potentially powerful audience outcomes.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.