NY Times mag punctures the "Myth of '18 to 34'":

Eighteen to thirty-four: for decades, conventional advertising wisdom has attached the adjective ''coveted'' to this slice of the viewing audience. According to an analysis by the former NBC News president Lawrence K. Grossman, advertisers pay an average of $23.54 to reach 1,000 viewers in that age bracket, versus $9.57 per 1,000 over the age of 35. And since commercial television, whatever else it may be, is fundamentally a system for delivering audiences to advertisers, network executives lose a lot of sleep trying to figure out what will hold fast the slippery attention of people in their late teens, 20's and early 30's. It is, as it has been for 40 years, the principle by which a great deal of our popular culture — not just TV, but music, movies, radio — comes into existence.

The odd thing is, there's no real reason for it anymore.

....What logic suggests that, because there are proportionally fewer young people than there used to be, because they have less money than they used to and because it's harder to separate them from that money than ever, advertisers should spend more money trying to court them? It would make as much sense to say that advertisers really ought to pay top dollar for viewers who don't have any spending money at all.

If you ask the agencies themselves about the relevance of the target demographic, they're likely to tell you that numbers-oriented research of any kind is so last year. Forty years after creative advertising's Big Bang, the study of demographics is a ''science'' many now scorn as outdated and crude. ''Now they call it psychographics,'' Thomas Frank says. ''They hire sociologists, anthropologists — it's very elaborate.'' The methodology of today's market research often approaches the mystical.

So who's willing to pay the WB extra to reach today's young adults? The ads featured on ''Gilmore Girls'' themselves paint a portrait of the coveted youth audience. Apparently, they spend as if they still get an allowance. Wendy's, Snickers, Cover Girl makeup, chocolate milk — there was hardly a product advertised on ''Gilmore Girls'' that would cost a consumer more than $10. With one glaring exception: new cars. Ford and Honda advertised throughout the Tuesday-night lineup.

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