The ratings trends for nightly newscasts are a problem by themselves, but the age issue makes the long-term prospects even more complicated. Not only are their audiences shrinking, but they are also getting older. The commercials on a network evening newscast tell something about the audience. They are often a string of pharmaceutical ads aimed at older Americans.

The median age of network evening news viewers in 2003 (from 59.5 for ABC to 61.2 for CBS)¹⁷ [1] is around 10 years older than network programming as a whole (which was 45.7 to 52.2 in 2002). For the American population as a whole, the median age is 35.3.¹⁸ [2] This makes the nightly news a less attractive sell to advertisers, preoccupied with youth (see Economics [3]) and thus less lucrative for the networks. According to network officials, the ad rates networks can charge for older audiences are substantially less, perhaps even a third lower, than those charged for the youngest demographics.¹⁹ [4] In terms of long-term strategy, moreover, what happens in 10 years when a significant portion of the network news audience has died?