Television’s pursuit of the ‘yoof’ audience insults us all
Michael Hogan says that broadcasters who see disparate viewers only in terms of age are making a big mistake
The Eggheads have been scrambled. Trivia buffs were heartbroken this week by news that BBC Two has ceased production of afternoon fixture Eggheads because its audience is too old. The series currently on-air was filmed last year and there are currently no plans to make more.
“I think it has fallen victim to the BBC’s understandable desire to pull in 16- to 24-year-olds,” said Jeremy Vine of the quiz he has hosted for 12 years and more than 1,000 episodes. Cue eye-rolling nationwide at TV’s seemingly insatiable obsession with chasing youth.
“Eggheads has the oldest audience on British television,” joked Vine. “I think the average age is 90.”
Regular panellists on the programme include champion quizzers Chris Hughes, Judith Keppel and Barry Simmons, who are all in their 70s. The average age of a BBC Two viewer is 62, but the broadcaster has been instructed by Ofcom to pursue a younger audience. It duly plans to double the budget of youth channel BBC Three over the next two years.
Under threat from streaming services, social media, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram influencers and the countless other things that compete for young people’s eyeballs nowadays, TV executives are in a tizz. All broadcast channels face declining “reach”. Ratings might be temporarily up during the pandemic but the long-term trend is downward. Advertising revenues have fallen through the floor.
The BBC has decided that relentless pursuit of youth is the answer. It’s desperate to be talked about and seen as “relevant”. Yet it neglects older viewers at their peril because they’re the ones watching most terrestrial TV. The TaxPayers’ Alliance says the BBC is “wasting cash on chasing a youth audience it has no hope of catching”. So is it time to debunk the myth of “yoof TV”? Do teenagers and twentysomethings – who are usually glued to their phones rather than the TV anyway – really need an entire tranche of programming dedicated to them? And do they only watch shows that are specifically aimed at their age bracket?
Take recent BBC hit Normal People, the adaptation of Sally Rooney’s coming-of-age novel. It was rightly praised by critics, pulled in recordbreaking ratings and, unsurprisingly, was drooled over by TV types chasing youth audiences.
However, its millions of viewers certainly weren’t all as fresh-faced as millennial lovebirds Marianne and Connell. Two thirds of them were aged 35 and over. As a painfully acute portrait of young love, its appeal was timeless and universal. Older viewers adored it too – some sighing with wistful nostalgia, others sighing with relief that their days of hormone-addled navel-gazing were over.
Normal People began as a binge-watchable boxset on BBC Three but also got a weekly airing on BBC One, which helped it break through into the mainstream. It’s not the first BBC Three production to cross over.
Fleabag followed a similar path, going from cult stage adaptation to front-page phenomenon. So did Gavin
& Stacey, which went from youth romcom to cross-generational family favourite and last Christmas became the UK’s biggest scripted programme of the decade. If the show is good enough, older viewers will tune in too.
It also works the other way around. During lockdown, young people have enjoyed the cosy comfort-viewing of The Repair Shop, Sewing Bee, MasterChef and Gogglebox as much as the rest of us. Perhaps surprisingly, they’ve also gravitated towards the reassuringly familiar classics. UKTV, the broadcaster behind such channels as Dave, Alibi and Gold, has seen a 55 per cent increase in 16- to 34-yearolds, enjoying early episodes of Inspector Morse, Casualty and The Bill alongside old-but-gold sitcoms The Vicar of Dibley and Only Fools and Horses. Who would have thought that Dawn French in a cassock would become “yoof TV”?
Of course, young people still want to watch Love Island and the latest buzzy Netflix series – but that’s not all they want to watch. Broadcasting bosses must beware being driven solely by marketeers and tick boxes.
Indeed, execs should bear in mind that the younger generation are not suckers who will fall for anything as long as it looks superficially hip. Quite the contrary: they’re highly media-literate and reject anything that smacks of style over substance. BBC Two’s new sitcom The First Team attempts to satirise the world of bling footballers and Insta-models but fails dismally, feeling inauthentic.
The latest series of Killing Eve tried far too hard to be “edgy” and lost the faith of fans. It remains character and story that capture audiences, not designer frocks, flashy supercars or whizzy graphics. Take the terrestrial drama success of 2020, ITV’s Quiz, which entertainingly retold the “coughing Major” scandal on Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire? from 2001, when today’s teenagers weren’t even born. The story meant little to most of that elusive youth market. The key players were all middle-aged and distinctly uncool. Airing over Easter,
Quiz none the less proved particularly popular among young viewers. Its 10 million viewers included 1.5million in the 16-to-34 demographic, making it the highestrating drama for this age bracket since Line of Duty on BBC One a year ago.
Indeed, writer Jed Mercurio’s blockbusting thrillers are another case in point. Both Bodyguard and
Line of Duty are resolutely free of “yoof ” trimmings – no pumping soundtrack or urban slang, just grown-ups with lanyards and stern expressions – but they hook younger viewers as much as the rest of us.
Ever since the arrival of satellite television, we have seen the slow erosion of communal viewing, so I can understand why there is anxiety about targeting a specific demographic. But to see disparate audiences solely in terms of their age is deeply patronising to youngsters and does older generations a grave disservice.
My children, for example, are primary-school age but watch all manner of programming that aren’t “kids’ shows” (although nothing inappropriate, before you report me to social services). They chortle merrily along to The Simpsons along with prime-time panel games QI and Would I Lie to You?
They also enjoy reality contests such as Britain’s Got Talent, Strictly and Bake Off. Do they care that Simon Cowell is 60, Bruno Tonioli is 64 and Prue Leith is (gasp!) 80? Do they reach for the remote crying “Urgh, wrinklies!” and flip to something starring millennials in baseball caps? Of course they don’t.
Good telly is simply good telly. Those who work in the industry that strives to make it would do well to remember that.