Still Alive. For Now.

Is this photo:

a) A membership photo of a Southern sorority?

b) A Faces-Of-Meth style campaign warning people about the dangers of excessive hair-blonding and teeth-whitening?

c) A collection of Journalism School graduates who are unable to find jobs at real news outlets?

If you answered “c” you are correct. This is a collage of hosts and contributors for Fox News. I watched a good amount of Fox when I was back in Connecticut over the past few months. And what really struck me wasn’t the in-depth coverage of non-issues like Benghazi. No, I was struck by the ads:

Lipitor, Ambien, Celebrex, Flomax, etc. Watch an episode and you’ll see ad after ad for pharmaceutical products addressing the medical challenges of seniors. Like the “news” itself, it was a constant barrage of reminders about all the threatening things inevitably coming your way. At first I figured the ads were geared toward revenue-generation. As with any other network you advertise to your viewer base, right? There’s a reason the Disney Channel doesn’t advertise Flomax.

But then I read some interesting statistics. The average age of Fox viewers is 68.8 years. And their share of the 20-54 year old market is only 20% (and mostly comprised of people watching the show with a parent out of a desperate desire to connect). And suddenly the real reason for the drug-heavy mix of advertisers became obvious:

Fox doesn’t care so much about revenue (they’ve got sugar daddies for that). No, they’re just trying to keep their shrinking pool of current viewers alive. They’d probably run those drug ads for free. Because there’s no one else.

But Fox shouldn’t let that get them down – with 18 years on the air they’ve already surpassed the 15 years that Joseph Goebbel’s propaganda network lasted. That’s quite an accomplishment.