Opinion: Court judge James Pickles became an international emblem of fuddy-duddyness when, in the 1960s, he enquired from the bench, “Who are the Beatles?” Time would prove he was simply a cracking example of what is surely the most ingenious facet of modern demographics: the near-absolute separation of youth from middle age and beyond in matters of culture and entertainment.
No matter how well read, tech-savvy and spry the older age group of the day fancies itself, children and teens will always be getting into stuff utterly beyond their ken, and maddeningly incomprehensible to them when they eventually cotton on. Then, inevitably, that particular phenomenon will be passé, with new Secret Yoof Business afoot.
This is the embarrassingly belated “aha!” moment the BBC, among other flailing state broadcasters, is finally experiencing in its long and increasingly desperate quest to attract youth to its content.
The venerable Beeb has just published data showing that, while it might fairly claim to be one of the few media outlets with global reach to compete with online youth magnets, it’s overwhelmingly losing the battle.
TikTok is eating its lunch. Less than half of British adults now get their news from the BBC’s bulletins – despite these long being generally held up as gold-standard reportage.
Though massively influential, TikTok cannot straight-facedly be said to be impartial, authoritative or comprehensive. But the BBC now accepts its superior, more reliable content cannot viably compete, however youth-enised with hipper, groovier presenters, pop content and so on.
It’s easy to blame – or indeed credit – the internet and fret about dumbing down. But the young were developing their own underground culture out of sight of tiresome parents and authorities aeons before social media, television and radio. Classical scholars have charted ferocious demographic warfare from toga times, typically with the concurrent themes that the young bumptiously think they know everything and that the old have lost the art of rethinking matters afresh.
Fast-forward to the modern era and the young have consistently snuck out to engage in vaultingly elder-alienating culture – the tango, the cha-cha, jazz, crooners, rock’n’roll, hippy culture, prog-rock, punk, thrash metal, rap, hip-hop … the list will only be as exhaustible as the planet itself.
It’s a brilliant system, allowing the young freedom to pioneer their own fun and to experiment with subverting their elders’ certainties.
Older people who, in parlance long superseded, try to “get down wiv da kids” are generally viewed as sad and possibly a bit creepy.
It’s easy to understand why state broadcasters and other media outlets whose audiences skew to the older demographic feel obliged to make themselves more approachable, democratically representative and inclusive.
Public broadcasters did, for a time, draw the focus of many millions during the pandemic, but that was a blip.
Younger audiences have the confidence and ingenuity to find and develop their own cultural sources – and their seniors’ cluelessness and/or horror, as ever, adds to their resonance.
But the next most ingenious thing about demographics is that, so far at least, humans age and so do their attitudes and perspectives.
Sure, the BBC has weakened itself by alienating some of its current fogey audience in a bid to get a younger audience that has proved unreachable. This doesn’t necessarily mean all the older-skewing media face extinction, but more likely that people will seek out what they’ve got to offer when they’re at a life stage at which it’s relevant to them.
Given the massive top-heaviness of the older demographic, broadcasters’ greater viability challenge is staying relevant to ever more demanding fogeys, often in denial of ageing.
Meanwhile, anyone extolling John, Paul, George and Ringo to the young will get a fresh new burst of “Who are the Beatles?”
