Coprolite Newsletter, September 2005

When the Caller ID said “unknown name, unknown number,” I steeled myself to the task of getting rid of another pesky salesperson wanting to sell me siding or refinance my house. But this one was different. It’s sort of flattering to have a survey person seek my opinion about TV shows. The woman seemed to quiver with excitement at the prospect of finding out what I thought. Finally I’d have a chance to influence next season’s crop of prime time offerings. The flattery didn’t last long.

After a few general questions, the interviewer asked my age. Seventy, I told her.

There was a pause. “Is there anyone there between 12 and 39 that I could talk to?” she asked.

“No.”

“Well, thank you anyway. Goodbye.”

I was stunned. Age discrimination is usually much more subtle. Corporations try to make you feel you were actually in the running for the job, but just happened to be narrowly beat out by a younger candidate. The media world seems to have dropped all pretense.

In fact, Modern Maturity reported a while back that we older citizens are not just ignored by the entertainment world. We’re the kiss of death. Shows have actually been axed because they were TOO popular with viewers over 50. (Dick Van Dyke’s Diagnosis Murder was one of them.)

When did we become such pariahs to marketers? Doesn’t our money spend as well as a younger person’s?

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Shylock, are we not fed with the same TV dinners, subject to the same coughs and colds, healed by the same patent medicines, warmed and cooled by the same cruises and resorts as they are? If you cut us, do we not apply the same brand of adhesive strips?

Much as it galls me, maybe the answer is to try to “pass” as a young person. Next time they call with a survey, I’ll pretend to be twenty-something. I’ll just happen to be a twenty-something who hates stab-in-the-back “survivor” shows and shallow, off-color comedies. I’ll be an unusual new breed of youth who likes dramatic shows with character and plot, comedy shows that produce laughs instead of snickers, and yes, mystery shows where the white-haired old doctor figures out who done it.

If enough of us do this, maybe we can throw the marketers into a tizzy over the strange new preferences of the kids they dote on so much.

Advertisers and networks may rush to send Jessica Fletcher shuffling on the trail of yet another murderer. Laura Petrie, knitting in her rocking chair, will gush “Oooooh, Rob!” once again. And Jeopardy will be back on prime time.

Back when we really were kids, we used to put on our parents’ old clothes and play grownup for fun. Now, we grownups may have to pretend we’re kids. “Let’s Pretend” gets more serious—and yet more ridiculous—as time goes on.

Oh well, doesn’t everything?

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com
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