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.

TV Week magazine ran a special report this month foced on the growing momentum in media and advertising targeting 50+ audiences. Along with the usual flotsam about affluent boomers and their supposed obsession with 1960s sitcom reruns (e.g.  TV Land cable), the report contained these interesting nuggets:

• Retirement Living TV surfaced as the “most-wanted” network that cable systems want to add to their lineups in a recent survey. The channel was named as the top “get” for networks passing 1 million to 40 million homes by 43% of respondents.
• A senior media buyer at agency Media Contacts claims that the old bias toward the 18-34 demographic is dying off:

“The old story of all advertisers wanting to focus on the 18 to 49 demographic is fading, because the boomer audience is continuing to grow and they control a tremendous amount of spending,” said Adam Kasper, senior VP and director of digital media at Media Contacts, a division of media agency Havas. “Advertisers are lagging behind a little, but they are starting to realize there is money here.”

The report also notes growing advertiser interest in targeting Boomers and seniors via online video campaigns.

Paid subscription and pay-per-view video have a bright future–and both will be driven by Boomer consumers, according to Saul Berman, who heads IBM’s global media and entertainment strategy practice. In this interview with Beet.TV at the recent AlwaysOn conference in New York , Berman talked about the broad trends IBM sees comin down the road in the ongoing advertising and content revolution.

JWT Boom and C&R Research released high-level findings from its latest round of research in the Boomer Heartbeat series. C&R’s BoomerEyes unit, led by Anne Wall, does some of the best work around on the 50+ market. The new research focuses in on the leading edge Boomers, age 60-64, in three specific areas of life:

• The empty nest
• The role of technology
• The role of employment and the workplace

I didn’t find anything too surprising in the findings, to wit:

• Empty nesters might be a little sad about kids leaving the house, but for the most part are enjoying their new freedoms
• Boomers have always embraced new technology, and are using just about every form of it as they age.
• Work remains important to Boomers, and many are working “in retirement.”

Television networks are slowly waking up to the importance of grown-up viewers as their audiences fragment and decline. They’re affluent and more loyal to legacy media…or so they thought. Turns out adults are getting tougher to reach through traditional channels according to a Multichannel News report. Citing research from Wolf Resource Group, the article notes that adults 25 to 54 spend more time online than do younger demos–even though the kids are thought of as the Internet generation. Other highlights:

• 42 percent of YouTube’s audience is 35 to 54
• 30 percent of Boomers participate in user-generated content–although just 10 percent create content themselves
• Adults age 35 to 49 are the biggest users of digital video recorders–31 percent use them at least once a week, compared with just 26 percent among 18 to 34-year-olds.

Marketers will miss out if they rely only on traditional legacy media to reach lucrative Boomer audiences–especially as younger Boomers edge into the 50+ category.

I talked recently with Robin Wolaner, founder and CEO of TeeBeeDee, the latest social networking site launched for Boomers. Others include Eons, Boomj, Rezoom and Gather. Robin launched TeeBeeDee in September, backed by $4.8 million in venture capital. TeeBeeDee joins a wave of sites betting that Boomers will join younger audiences in adopting social networking in big numbers. She’s shown a knack for correct bets before, having launching Parenting Magazine in 1987 just as Boomers were becoming parents in droves. She later sold Parenting to Time Inc., where she continued to work on magazine success stories like Martha Stewart Living and Sunset Magazine.

Robin, are you a serial boomer entrepreneur? Parenting launched on the crest of the boomers-as-parents wave. Is it about generational information needs for you?

That’s the most positive way to say it! I keep sticking with what I know. I think it takes a lot more talent to do something for an audience you’re not part of. Fortunately the generation I’m a part of is a pretty big group. It feels easy to trust my gut, but TeeBeeDee isn’t just for Boomers. It’s a state of mind as much as anything else. It takes a level of affluence and health and vitality to have a desire to keep growing. There is a fork in the road at mid-life. Some people can’t take the steps to reinvigorate their careers and relationships. But the mindset of the person joining our site is, ‘I’m in pretty good shape, I’ve got a couple decades ahead…I’m going to make the most of things.’ ”

Over half of MySpace users are over 35. Why wouldn’t Boomers just hang out there?

MySpace has way more profiles than members, and a lot of them are fake. Marketers are using it to reach a teen market. Boomers are not going to see it as their site, or a place they are comfortable. We’re really a hybrid. We’ve created a site where people could exchange information about their experiences—it’s not about sharing with people you don’t know. Facebook is connecting with people you already know; TeeBeeDee is about expressing yourself and learning from people you know through the site.

Do you see Boomers shifting their time and attention away from traditional media in order to hang out on social networking sites?

The most telling statistic, when you look at what Boomers are doing online, is that we look just like younger people but are not yet networking in big numbers. So you have to believe one of two things: One, we are never going to network, because our concerns about privacy are such that we won’t do it. Or, second, we just haven’t had the right site yet to make networking worthwhile. That might be TeeBeeDee or some other site. I’m not predicting that all Boomers will network. But it is valuable. But it’s It’s changed my life in many ways, and I think Boomers will find the sites where they can do this.

What is the value Boomers will find in networking?

Networking has value when it has a purpose. Purposeful networking will happen in greater numbers. No one is as motivated as you are to get the answers you need. That is why networking can be purposeful—it’s not just about hanging out—people our age don’t have the time for that.”

And how will that affect traditional media that count Boomers as very important parts of their core audience?

The threat to traditional media is not uniform across segments. For example, there always will be a place for fashion magazines—in print and online. But when it comes to finding out information in a specific need-based way, that will move to sites like ours. As soon as advertisers find ways to reach the audiences they want in new, targeted ways, the old categories are threatened.

How do Boomers differ from younger social networkers in terms of their online behavior?

The comfort level of Boomers is lower than with younger users when it comes to personal revelation. That’s why we let people post with user names, instead of real names. This audience needs to have that option. During our beta test, we saw that people will start out with a user name—and then they change over to their real names after they get comfortable.

What are the business metrics for success at TeeBeeDee?

This is a good time to start a consumer Internet-based business. Membership and engagement are key, and so are frequency of visits and time spent on the site. We are a 19-person company, so we don’t have high overhead. We’ve raised enough capital to develop this business. The initial model is advertising based, but we’re not counting on ads for the first year, because we are growing the community. Our advertising launch will be in November.