Jordan Levin - Generation Gaps

In this excerpt, Levin discusses how his work with younger audiences and younger creators has influenced his understanding of the media marketplace.

See Also: Levin discusses his company's multi-screen business model.

Monday, May 23, 2011

LEVIN: At the WB, I saw both the younger generation of consumers as well as a younger generation of creators embrace the idea of wanting to have a tighter and more immediate dialogue loop between themselves and their audience; they used chat functions early on to do that. People like J. J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, Greg Berlanti, and Ryan Murphy would get online and embrace the idea of what the audience was thinking and saying. They would talk to them directly and if they did something the audience didn’t like, they would explain why and vice versa. That’s much more immediate and specific feedback than trying to read the tea leaves of ratings. Ratings were just guideposts to whether you were doing something right or wrong without knowing exactly why.

It’s my feeling that every generation has a different media imprinting—I’m not exactly sure what you call it, but your media sensibility, or the rules of media that govern your behavior, gets imprinted differently. 

I am in this weird bridge generation in that I grew up in a world of the big three networks and later the emergence of cable television. I spent a lot of time in college concentrating on this whole idea that the TV experience was starting to detach itself from the network experience, and that cable was creating this other experience and that it was imprinting a younger generation differently…to expect sports 24 hours a day, for example, or especially in the kids’ space where we also see programming 24 hours a day. That audience has grown up expecting that a type of programming they like will always be available to them. When I was at The WB, I started to see what was happening online, especially around the kids’ channels where you could experience those characters and those worlds in interactive ways that weren’t linear through casual gaming or whatever else was being offered on screen.

In fact, I had children who were growing up through that transition. My kids are now 15, 12, and 8, but at the time I would say the big light-bulb moment for me regarding the DVR was with my daughter when I realized she had no perception of live television. If something wasn’t available to her and it wasn’t on TiVo, she just couldn’t understand that. Why is it not there?  And then for my son it was about the next generation of video games like Nintendo 64 and the early Xbox. He’s a big sports kid, and if a game wasn’t on, he would play with his favorite players on Madden or MLB2K or whatever it was. I realized that for him it was as much about being able to interact with the players with video games as it was to watch them on TV. And then with my youngest daughter, it was at a point in time when we switched to higher speeds online so we were no longer dealing with dial up. If her older siblings were watching TV and she wanted to watch Dora the Explorer, she was just as satisfied going to Nick.com and playing with Dora as she was watching Dora on TV. She considered it all Dora time.

I think there is a generation gap between the industry and its audiences. For example, I think there is a huge disconnect between the powers that be at the studios, networks, media buying companies, and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) levels and their kids.  I went to the Adult Swim upfront. Jay‑Z was performing. He did a full set. It was at the Roseland Ballroom. Adult Swim did a 10-minute clip of their shows. No one got up to speak or try to sell Adult Swim because no one is buying a specific show in Adult Swim. They are buying the brand Adult Swim so who needs to get up there and say, “Buy this show”? All they had to do is have this quirky subversive voice and express it in the form of graphic title captions that it was their upfront presentation and throw a giant party. Instead of doing their upfront in the morning they did it at night and threw a big frat party, basically. There wasn’t a buyer there, with exception of a few senior people, who was over the age of 30. And I’m sure they’ll do great. I remember when we were at The WB I used to ask, “Why don’t we do our upfront presentation at night? That’s when our buyers are awake.”  We used to think about things like that. The WB was a unique place because Bob Daly, Jamie Kellner, Bruce Rosenblum, and Barry Meyer empowered a lot of kids like me to do stuff. We didn’t really know any better. 

A common suggestion in our interviews is that once kids start getting paychecks they will buy a flat screen and will change their viewing behaviors.

And who says they are going to buy a big video screen? What is television anymore? That big video screen is going to have the same functionality as a tablet, so when they go to watch something on the video screen it’s not as though the interaction with that screen is going to be different from a functionality standpoint, or that the content that is available on that screen is going to be different than the content available on any other screen. It’s just a bigger experience. Absolutely they are going to go to that screen for some bigger experiences but that doesn’t mean that the screen is fundamentally a different screen. It’s just got a better sound and bigger picture.

When do you think more of your colleagues will agree with you?

I think you are going to have a generation that is going to retire, and I think the recession extended their life span in this business, and I think it especially extended the life span on Madison Avenue. I think that in Hollywood to some degree there is greater independence because of personal wealth, and people stay in these jobs for reasons that have to do with something more than just money. But on Madison Avenue, most of those people in the senior media buying positions, I believe, were looking to retire because you would hear them say a lot, “You know what? It’s all too confusing. It’s for the next people; it’s for you guys to figure out. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I have heard that in our business and I always find it somewhat shocking. Because everything is so predicated on younger audiences now, you are starting to see this justification for not being able to age-down networks and instead they are just going to go after the baby boomers. There is an expression that they are going to “ride the dinosaur down.” A lot of people are riding the dinosaur down. [Laughter]    

Return to the Interviews Mainpage.