The median age for Bill O’Reilly’s audience is older than you think

July 12, 2006

It’s been days since I said anything derogatory about [tag]Fox News[/tag], so I hope readers won’t mind if I take note of an odd statistic about [tag]Bill O’Reilly[/tag]’s audience.

The New York Times had an interesting item yesterday about O’Reilly’s arch-nemesis — [tag]MSNBC[/tag]’s [tag]Keith Olbermann[/tag] — and his success in an otherwise-bleak MSNBC prime-time line-up. There’s plenty of text about the usual network rivalries, but one item stood out.

MSNBC’s research claims that the median age for Mr. O’Reilly’s audience is [tag]71[/tag], while Mr. Olbermann’s is 59. (Fox and CNN both report that the only figures they get for median [tag]age[/tag] of shows with older audiences is “65 plus,” and that Mr. O’Reilly’s audience falls into that category.)

The age discrepancy has led Mr. Olbermann to dish out even more mockery in his attacks. “It’s slipping away from you,” he said, addressing Mr. O’Reilly on a “Countdown” segment last month. “You don’t know what to do. You can’t even lie well any more. Seriously: I understand. It’s called panic.” He added, “You begin to see the audience dying off, and the creases deepening in your forehead.”

Now, I haven’t seen “MSNBC’s research” and I have no way of checking its accuracy, but Fox concedes that the average O’Reilly viewer is 65 and older, so maybe MSNBC is right. Just for the sake of discussion, let’s assume it is.

To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with 71-year-old people, but for a television personality, that’s probably not the median age you’re hoping for. In fact, while I’m not an expert, I think advertisers pay the most attention to [tag]ratings[/tag] for viewers between the ages of 25 and 54. If O’Reilly’s typical viewer is 71, isn’t that going to undermine his pitch to advertisers a bit?

Between this and his declining ratings, no wonder O’Reilly seems so cranky.

A minor quibble, as a mathematician: Median and average are not the same thing. When MSNBC claims the the median age of the viewers was 71, that means that if you put all of the viewers in a line according to age, from least to greatest, the guy in the middle would be 71.

In all likelihood, the average age of O’Reilly’s viewers is lower than 71, since people don’t tend to get as much older than 71 as they tend to get younger than 71.

Food for thought, anyway.

  • FoxNews and O’Reilly are constantly calling out other members of the media, so it’s no surprise that Olberman is having success in calling out O’Reilly. The thing I can’t believe is that the other networks don’t point out Fox’s obvious biases more often.

    One of my favorite O’Reilly spins, or deceptions, was when he was trying to make Bush look good on dealing with the poor. He actually said that since the rate of poverty was the same in each of Bush and Clinton’s 4th year, that the policies ofeach President worked equally well. Let’s forget the minor detail that under Clinton, the rate was in sharp decline and under Bush it’s just gone straight back up. Hey, at the midpoint of each Presidency, the rate was at the same spot so they must be equal.

    No spin there.

  • #1

    Good point, now we know that half of O’Reilly’s viewers are 71 or OLDER. As you say, there are not a lot of age slots to fill between 71 and a theoretical max of 120 compared to between 71 and 0. But frankly, leaving the T.V. stuck on Fox at the Old Folks home is not really the way to brag about viewership.

  • Unfortunately, the number of O’Riley viewers in the “good” age range still outnumbers those in Olberman’s group by a factor of three. So Olberman is obeying Law 28: Enter action with boldness.of the 48 Laws of Power, Hip Hop’s new bible according to the LA Times. Maybe the Dems could learn a few things from 50 Cent.

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  • Oh, I’m not saying that O’Reilly’s demographics are anything to brag about. Just, you know, in the name of rigorous language, I’m pointing out that average and median are something different. Say you had three viewers, aged 21, 71, and 73. The median age of those viewers is 71, for sure, but the average age is 55.

    I’m not saying that this is a case where there’s that big a difference, but it’s exceedingly likely that there is a sizable difference between the median and the average in this case, and that given Olbermann’s lower median, there’s a good chance that the averages of the two shows’ viewers’ ages are closer than the medians.

  • On the subject of the national network for Republican’ts:

    Jonathan S. Morris, political scientists at East Carolina University, did a study that found those who watch Fox News always underestimate the number of dead in Iraq. What a shocker.

  • What matters isn’t advertisers (though I’m sure Fox doesn’t mind them), but voters. And 71-year olds vote a lot more than those younger than them. O’Reilley and Roger Ailes understand this, and I’m sure they’re delighted with O’Reilley’s audience demographics. A young, hip audience for a political program is basically useless – unless they vote.

  • BC.
    Great point, but I doubt they are spending. He can get a zillion votes, but if he can’t sell Pledge, he’s not going to be around much longer.
    71 still shocks me. That means that there has to be as many people over 71 and there are below 71. That just seems plain crazy.
    I would have guessed, 45, but maybe that’s cause I live in TX and it’s on everywhere, including my gym.

  • Screw soccer moms and NASCAR dads, O’Reilly’s key demographic are Viagra grumps. Between Rush and O’Reilly, they’ve cornered the market on angry people who can’t get it up.

  • Older people tune into O’Lielly because at least they can hear all the screaming.

  • For all we know, O’Reilly specifically aims at the older population — most scammers do.

  • Thanks to reality TV, we know that Kathy Griffin’s mom (definitely in THAT age bracket) calls Bill O’Reilly her ‘boyfriend’…she really likes him. That’s just one little old lady with a major crush on Cranky. How scary is it that there’s more out there??

  • I have a friend who has voted straight ticket Democrat all of her life.
    She is an o’lielly fan. I laugh every time I go to her house and catch her watching it. She defends his sexual perversions, even.

  • This is very unscientific, but I am 70. I now frequent Dr’s more than I used to. Every one seems to have Faux on in their waiting room?????

  • My mother was a Bill-O viewer, and she died a couple of years ago at age 74. The issue becomes where does he replace those viewers? If half your viewers are over 71, then you are going to lose many of them every year – at an ever increasing rate if you do not replace them. So which viewers can BO look to for reinforcements? Are there people now hitting 60-65 who are primed for conversion? (The tv at the doctor’s office may be his best recruitment tool!) Or does the balloon have a slow, irreparable leak?

  • the reason they put the median age and not the average, is so they could mislead you. its obvious they want you to think a different number, because it makes no sense to use the median age.

  • I wouldn’t be surprised actaully, the people who would be most desparate to have their point of view expressed would be older people who felt that they needed to teach younger people “the truth” according to what they thought. It did strike me that the liberal bias stuff was a lot more true in the 1960’s then it would have been today, so having such an outdated thesis struck me as a historical quibble more then what was true of mainstream culture today. I mean today its all about ratings not any sort of agenda, the news industry is actually rather lazy and people have to find their own news rather then get it from any sort of anchor, unless they just want interest stories or old stories that have already been rehashed to death.

    It is true though that the show came into play a few years ago when that generation would have been somewhat younger. It is a bit silly to be fighting with the youth counter-culture of 40 years ago. I almost got the idea that today’s youth, are irrelivent to the ancient feuders. I was somewhat offended that so much of the 2004 election was shadowboxing over a war completed before I was born and I am an eligible voter who is fairly reliable about going to the polls. I am at least relieved that today’s youth culture is at least relevent to the politicians that are coming into play in 2008 but I did think Kerry was attacked unneccessarily.

    I’d say where average is coming into play is he is trying to recruit a young hipster crowd that is rebelling against their parents who already rebelled against their parents in the 1960’s/70’s. I think this worked for a few years but hipsters aren’t necessarily loyalists and O’Riely’s brand of republicanism is going out of style with younger independants. The rebellion tip was a bit faddish but didn’t really last that long. I bet that’s what bugs him. He launched a show that appealed to grandparents and was trying to do the ‘skip a generation’ get the grandkids into that generation and it only lasted a few years before the grandkids who live in the interenet age and have instant communication, got bored.

    While he entertained the hipsters a bit but they’re not really true believers. Thinking you can keep viewers stupid, doesn’t last much longer then the experiance of their first jobs; radicalism is only trendy for a time but people need to make money at some point.

  • Like what Fargus said the averages of the two shows are probably simular, but if the viewers are 21, 71, and 73. The young viewer needs to stay into the program for it to remain relevent. If the viewer is too young they are likely to get bored and go away. The median vierwer of 55 is a whole lot more stable then depending on young radicals to keep the audiance going. I mean reality tv shows, which he somewhat resembles with all the yelling, are very competitive. They lose audiances regularly and go out of the spotlight.

  • well I am very surprised that the average age is so old.

    However you have to keep in mind that old people run our country, and they are the ones who vote.

    Young people will get out there and protest in Washington and make angry Youtube videos but they wont do the most important thing. They just dont vote.

  • I have a son who was a die hard democrat until he started to work and make serious money. The tax he pays is ridiculous. I am a democrat, but this kid is punished for hard work every payday. My point is that as soon as these kids find their bottom line attacked they will go with whoever gives them the biggrest bang for their buck period

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