@ Cable Show: Forget The ‘Lost Generation’ — Start Younger
Liberty Global CEO Michael Fries isn’t giving up hope when it comes to kids and TV. Forget the handwringing over the so-called lost generation – the increasingly untethered-to-TV teens and 20-somethings causing so much concern for anyone whose business model relies on a device that doesn’t fit in a pocket or can’t be carried in a backpack.
Fries, the lone cable operator on a Cable Show panel with Jeff Bewkes, Rupert Murdoch and Phillipe Dauman, explained: “I have kids who are 10 and 7 and they have a very different relationship with the television than teenage kids. They love the TV in my house — it’s big, it’s flat, it’s high definition. The point I’m making is that we have a generation below this lost generation that we can still capture and retain — if this industry does it right.”
No definition on what doing it right means but it would seem to start with assuming all is not lost.
I'm skeptical. 10 and 7, with all due respect to Mr. Fries, have fewer options that watching tv at home with dad. It's the teens — and older, job having 20somethings — that determine the future of the industry. And they are all about the hand-held devices, quick content, celebrity news, etc …
It's ironic though, that the very people running the industry would not want their own children to watch what's on TV now. Maybe doing it right should not be in respect to how much profit the industry earns, but what we are giving and educating our children with.