{"id":415,"date":"2010-02-04T15:36:05","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T15:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp\/?p=415"},"modified":"2010-02-04T15:36:05","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T15:36:05","slug":"new_is_different_than_young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/2010\/02\/new_is_different_than_young\/","title":{"rendered":"New is different than young"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago, Hilary and I went to LA so she could film The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.<\/i> You can read all about how I didn’t think her appearance would sell any albums here<\/a>, and watch her performance on Hulu<\/a> if you missed it. But I can’t imagine any of *my* readers missed it<\/i>. <\/p>\n

For me, the strangest part of this experience, perhaps besides watching Hilary Hahn and Andy Richter get their make-up done at the same time, was that I, Classical Music Publicist in NYC Who Doesn’t Really Watch Late-Night TV Unless Frasier<\/i> and X-Files<\/i> Re-Runs Count, was not so many degrees of separation away from one of the biggest media stories of 2010. Because of this loose personal connection and despite my previous disinterest in late night, I obsessively followed the immediate media fall-out and ensuing commentary of The Tonight Show <\/i>drama. The piece “Jay Leno triumphs over what’s cool<\/a>”  in the LA Times<\/i> was especially interesting. In it, Neal Gabler posits that Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno are on opposing sides of a variety of cultural, geographical and generational divides, and that the decision to reinstate Jay Leno as the host of The Tonight Show <\/i>was “a function not so much of money or ratings but of
\ndemographics.” His point, which I’ll delve into further in a moment, is that it doesn’t matter what the Conan or Leno audiences look like; all that matters is that Leno’s audience is larger. <\/p>\n

Since Alex Ross came out as Generation X yesterday, I feel confident coming out as Generation Y today. When I was heading to LA, friends and colleagues who are my age said, “Tell Conan we’re ‘Team Coco’!” When I returned, my dad and grandmother said, separately, “It was nice to see Hilary on the show, but we’re happy Jay’s coming back. We don’t really ‘get’ Conan.”  It’s completely inconceivable to me that anyone might enjoy Jay Leno’s general presence or sense of humor. I don’t “get” him. The night Hilary was one of the guests on Conan’s show, a man who could kick himself in the back of the head was a guest on Jay’s earlier show. Sure, there have been plenty of self-kicking-esque stunts on Conan’s shows, so perhaps my bringing this up is unfair, but the juxtaposition that night was especially striking.<\/p>\n

But back to the LA Times <\/i>piece. Neil Gabler writes, <\/p>\n

Everyone agreed [in 1992] that Letterman was edgier than Leno, more
\niconoclastic, and, to a lot of people, funnier. Letterman wore the
\nself-deprecating dork’s mantle, but it was a ruse. He was the cool,
\ndroll kid who had reinvented late-night television, and NBC decided he
\nmight not be the best fit for the square “Tonight Show,” where
\nmiddle-American Johnny Carson had held forth for 30 years.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, NBC was right. Leno had been an edgy — and very
\nfunny — comedian once, but he had gradually drifted to the center
\nwhere the larger audience was. If that meant blunting his comedy, Leno
\nwas willing. By the time he took over “Tonight,” Leno’s basic commodity
\nwas not his humor, which had become toothless, but his likability. He
\nwas your grandmother’s comedian — the comedian of the Silent Majority.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Conan O’Brien was handed Letterman’s vacated spot after
\nLeno. O’Brien had never been before the camera. He was a writer. But he
\nwas a great idea for a late-night show host: Harvard-educated, then
\ntrained at the writers’ tables on “Saturday Night Live” and “The
\nSimpsons.” It didn’t get any cooler than that. Even if he was as
\njittery as a nervous Chihuahua and milked his handful of jokes for
\neverything they were worth by shameless mugging, he was young and
\ndifferent — a hipster.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The most noteworthy line of this piece, at least for the purpose of this blog post, comes next, when Gabler explains why NBC wanted Conan O’Brien for The Tonight Show <\/i>in the first place:<\/p>\n

Younger viewers, they said, were better viewers<\/b>. They were more
\nsusceptible to advertising blandishments. They were more likely to
\ndecide on a product and maintain loyalty to it for life. And they were
\nharder to reach and therefore more desirable. Whatever the excuse, the
\nresult was that older viewers — and old meant over 50 — were suddenly
\nworthless in television terms. Losing Conan O’Brien, should O’Brien
\nhave gotten restless and decided to leave NBC when his contract was up,
\nwouldn’t have been much of a loss on its face. Even if he had gone to
\nFox or syndication, there was no way he could have competed against
\nLetterman, much less Leno. … [but] If [NBC] lost him, it would lose his cool. Leno, for all his ratings prowess, was just too square for NBC in the
\nage of the almighty 18-to-34 demographic that everyone now lusted
\nafter. In a way, NBC, like an aging suitor, was addled by youth. There was just one complication. Leno, unlike O’Brien, actually could take his Silent Majority elsewhere, uncool or not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have made what can loosely be described as a “career” of assuming that younger audience members are better audience members. When I left my job at IMG Artists two and a half years ago, someone offered that I was “pretty young for a classical music publicist.” Turning the dial to 99.9 Cocky FM, I responded, “I”m exactly who everyone wants in the concert halls and I know how to get me.” (What a prize.) <\/p>\n

On his New Yorker<\/i> blog<\/a> yesterday, where he revealed himself as a Gen X-er, Alex Ross posted a graph from the League of American Orchestras’ Audience Demographic Research Review<\/a>, “in all its scary glory.” Previous generations, he writes in his analysis of this data, have increased their participation in classical music as they got older, while “the so-called Generation X, however, has yet to exhibit an upward spike as it moves into middle age.” He continues:<\/p>\n

If the light-gray line doesn’t reverse direction in
\nthe next ten years, [classical music] organizations may begin to fold.  There is, in fact, reason to hope that such a reversal will
\ntake place. I’m a member of the fatal X, and I’ve noticed anecdotally
\nthat a number of friends who had previously paid little heed to
\nclassical music have begun to show interest. It’s worth remembering
\nthat a great wave of fear came over the classical world in the
\nnineteen-sixties, when it appeared that an entire youth generation–the
\nbaby boomers–had lost touch with the music. This specimen of alarmism
\nappeared in Stereo Review<\/em> in 1969: “Today’s dying classical
\nmarket is what it is because fifteen years ago no one attempted to
\ninstill a love for classical music in the then impressionable children
\nwho have today become the market.” Then again, many boomers were
\nexposed to classical music in their formative years, even if they made
\na show of rejecting it in favor of Dylan and the Beatles. They had some
\nmusic education in school; they saw Bernstein’s young people’s
\nconcerts, opera singers on late-night television, conductors on the
\ncover of Time<\/em>, and so on. Such exposure fell off sharply in
\nthe eighties and nineties, when Generation X came of age. Orchestras
\nand opera houses will have to work considerably harder to bring this
\ncohort in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If I ran my own study, which perhaps I’ll do when I retire at age 30, I would explore the amount of classical music marketing dollars spent on each of these different age groups. I have personally never thought to myself, “You know – there are probably a lot of old people who don’t come to classical concerts or buy classical CDs out there. How do I reach THEM?” But why not? They could spend American dollars, they could fill seats, they could fall in love with classical music. And as Alex points out in his post, being “of age” doesn’t necessarily mean people are coming to classical music without nudging. Why does “new audiences” have to mean “young audiences”? <\/p>\n

So perhaps “I’ve made a huge mistake,” and if you don’t get that reference, I’m really sorry: you’re not one of the cool kids I’ve been courting for classical music. (But now I’m a-comin’ for ya!) We should be spending time and money trying to reach all potential new audience members and music lovers, regardless of age, because as the LA Times <\/i>pieces ends, “As O’Brien faded into the evening last night with bundles of cash and
\nnewfound martyrdom, the baby boomers have finally gotten some small
\nmeasure of revenge, however old and dorky and undesirable they may be.” <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago, Hilary and I went to LA so she could film The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. You can read all about how I didn’t think her appearance would sell any albums here, and watch her performance on Hulu if you missed it. But I can’t imagine any of *my* readers missed it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}