MATURE MARKET HEADLINES POSTED 03/06/98
Vintage Video Vendor Reaps Reel Profits
One of the largest nostalgic collections of entertainment media is being assembled by entrepreneur, John Cooper for his "Starlight Roof Classic American Music and Video" emporium. It seems that Aging America's retirees and baby boomers have an unquenchable thirst for vintage entertainment.
Cooper hopes to fulfill this mature market niche with his collection of 4,000 classic movie videos and '78 albums featuring big band music. And, if your vintage film or hard-to-find music isn't on hand at his store, he can tap into a nationwide network of operatives to get it. Cooper has long been devoted to the classics and big band music.
Prior to opening Starlight Roof, Cooper owned an independent record store where he bought and sold vintage music including Big Band recordings by Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. Displaying his wares at local swap meets on weekends, he developed a large audience of devoted fans who were unable to find the older recordings through the larger record chains.
When a video distributor suggested that Cooper branch out into vintage videos, selling films produced between the '20s and '50s, Starlight Roof was born. The vintage films include silent movies and videos from a bygone era. The name "Starlight" was chosen to evoke the image of couples dancing under the stars to the Big Band sounds.
Starlight Roof recently relocated to Pasadena, California into that town's historic movie house, the Uptown Theatre, built in 1922. Cooper says he's happy to provide a place where fans of all ages, from their 20's to their 80's can take a walk down memory lane, talk with fellow enthusiasts, and have fun discovering media nuggets from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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Genetics Offers New Clue to Alzheimer's
A new genetic association with Alzheimer's disease has been discovered by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh with support from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Cancer Institute. The announcement was made in the March 1998 issue of Nature Genetics.
The new gene has several different forms and codes for the enzyme bleomycin hydrolase (BH). The BH gene is one of the few genes discovered so far that has a form that is associated with development of Alzheimer's disease in people older than 65 years of age. One form of ApoE, another gene with multiple forms, is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's after the age of 65.
The BH gene appears to act independently of the ApoE gene, which was found to be associated with Alzheimer's disease in 1993. According to NIA scientist Stephen Synder, PhD, "the discovery of an association between gene forms and Alzheimer's gives us an additional clue about the mechanisms that underlie Alzheimer's disease.
Because the enzyme encoded by the BH gene may play a role in the disposition of amyloid, a substance commonly found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, it may also lead us toward other new avenues of investigation." Dr. Synder cautions that this finding needs to be confirmed in other populations before the association with Alzheimer's can be generally confirmed.
The National Institute on Aging is one of 18 institutes at the National Institutes of Health. NIA leads the federal effort in studying Alzheimer's disease and supports basic, clinical, epidemiological and social research on aging and the special needs of older people.
See AgeVenture archives for related article:
Scientists Rethink Genetic Test for Alzheimer's
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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TV's Family Hour Not Fit For Grandkids
Attention all grandparents. The next time you babysit the grandkids, make sure you don't nod-off during family-hour TV viewing. Otherwise, the little ones in your care may be in for a real education. You may not have to prepare for those embarrassing questions like "Grandpa, where do babies come from?" They'll learn that right after the next commercial break.
Yep, television's fast becoming a "no-man's land" for American families. That's because television programming is too foul-mouthed, sexually-oriented, and violent for today's grandkids, says the Parents Television Council (PTC). Instead of toning down objectionable content in response to public outcries, the networks' only change was the adoption of a meaningless ratings system.
For example, says the PTC, "65 percent of programs containing obscenities did not carry an L rating (signifying coarse language), and 76 percent of shows with sexual innuendo did not carry a D rating (signifying sexual theme dialogue)." And these alarming figures don't even include NBC's programming because that network refuses to use content ratings. Age-based ratings also failed to hit their mark.
The PG rating is meant to designate that a program is suitable for all except young children. However, 59 percent of the PG-rated episodes contained sexual references and 46 percent included obscenities. These findings are based on a study of three weeks (Oct 30 - Nov 19) of family-hour programming on the commercial broadcast networks. The study comprised 128 separate shows. Here's a few highlights of what the PTC study found.
- Of the 81 PG-rated episodes, 48 contained sexual references.
- On average, there were .91 uses of foul language per family hour, up from .88 just a year ago. NBC was easily the worst offender in this category with 2 uses of foul language per family hour.
- The networks averaged 2.09 sexual references per hour. ABC led with 3.47.
- References to sex outside marriage outnumbered references to marital sex by 3 to 1.
- There were .87 portrayals of violence per hour. CBS was the most violent network.
- Seventy-five percent of shows contained objectionable material.
The Parents Television Council concludes that the so-called family hour (8-9pm EST and 7-9pm Sunday) is unsuitable for families. Worse, the networks are consistently applying misleading labels, or refusing to label shows, in a deliberate effort to suggest otherwise. PTC believes that the networks should either commit to an honest application of the ratings system or abandon such misleading practices altogether.
"Unless applied accurately, the ratings system will continue to be hopelessly confusing, inconsistent, contradictory and meaningless." On second thought, forget about television and read the grandkids a good book.
If there's a bright-side to this otherwise dismal scenario, AgeVenture believes it's the tremendous window of opportunity now open to production entrepreneurs willing to fulfill what's obviously become a programming void in family entertainment.
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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Aging? Boomers say "Hell no, we won't go"
How are the Boomers doing these days? Seems they've got a case of the Boomer Blues. They're depressed, disillusioned, and headed for the therapist's office, says a Beverly Hills psychologist. Their depression is the product of a clash between high hopes and lackluster reality.
Baby Boomers were told that life was full of unlimited opportunities. Boundaries weren't limits, they were lines to be crossed. Rules? You make your own rules. We grew up with Sinatra singing the virtues of doing things "my way". Everything from life to a McDonald's hamburger could be had "your way". Well, that was then. And this is now. Writing in the March issue of New Choices magazine, psychologist Kathleen Mojas, PhD put it ... well, ... "her way".
"Boomers were presented with an array of tantalizing options and told they could change the world. The reality is that nobody can have it all." And how are the Boomers handling reality? Not as well as their folks did. The key difference between the boomers and their parents a generation before them is not the amount of suffering. "It's the way they suffer," says Dr. Mojas.
While their parents suffered in silence, the "me generation" boomers suffer openly, and with fanfare. What's troubling these boomers? Aging. Things like baldness, impotence, wrinkles, gray hair, failing eyesight, hearing difficulties, and the usual amount of aches and pains. But unlike their parents, they aren't about to go quietly into that good night. When a Boomer says "I can take it", he means whatever remedy he needs to swallow to avoid aging.
Yes sir, Boomers are kicking and screaming their way into maturity, leaving no stone unturned as they seek to discover remedies to counter or delay the inevitable aging process. Whatever's falling off, fading, or stopped working is unacceptable and must be changed. Wrinkle creams, penile implants, lasers, and liposuction. You name it. Boomers are after any solution to the grim realities of aging. Mojas seems to suggest that boomers are in denial. "It's their way of casting off the reminder that aging and death come to everyone."
It reminds me of athletes on the losing side of a lost game. They have that unquenchable desire to "do it over", "one last try". Like those athletes, boomers are fighting for life-extension, one more inning, trying to take the game of life into "over time", so they can finally finish what is unfinished, do what they had set out to do.
It is that drive to gain a reprieve, a second chance that has spawned an entire anti-aging industry offering everything form miracle drugs to liposuction. The growth of that industry is perhaps the only thing that's remained limitless in the lives of the Boomers.
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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Older Drivers, Seeing Is Deceiving
Fatal collisions involving older drivers are 12% higher in states that don't require a vision screening test for driver's license renewal, according to Dr. Melvin Shipp, a doctor of optometry at the University of Alabama's School of Optometry. Dr. Shipp studied traffic fatality records from 1989 to 1991 in 48 states, as well as driver's license renewal requirements in those states.
Most driving decisions are based on what a driver sees. But age brings changes in vision that can affect driving ability. After age 65, people usually cannot see as clearly as they once did and often have difficulty seeing to drive at night. Their field of vision, Shipp concludes, is reduced, affecting their ability to see other vehicles and pedestrians approaching from the side.
A thorough eye exam would serve to identify the small number of older drivers whose vision has reached a stage where they are likely to be a hazard to themselves or others. The February issue of "Optometry and Vision Science" concludes that states requiring such vision screening may be saving the lives of older drivers. State-mandated vision tests often prompt older drivers to visit their eye doctor for corrective lenses prior to renewing their license.
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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Home Exercise Market Gaining Muscle
Adults in half of all American households own at least one piece of exercise equipment, and its being used regularly, says the Fitness Products Council. That trend translated into $5 billion in home exercise equipment sales last year.
"The stereotype is that most home exercise equipment just ends up gathering dust, but now there is solid evidence that 55 million adults are using the equipment with good results," says Gregg Hartley, executive director of the Fitness Product Council (FPC) which recently sponsored a national survey targeting use of exercise equipment.
The survey found that exercise equipment is owned in 49 million households and used regularly in 32 million households. Here's a capsule summary of what the FPC survey found.
- owner-users represent 28% of the adult population
- owner-users are equally divided by sex and age
- non-users cited boredom and lack of time as exercise deterrents
- most-owned equipment: free-weights, treadmills, stationary bikes.
- leading sources of sales: department stores
- average amount spent on a single piece of equipment: $392
- television infomercials stimulated 17% of purchases
- 14 million adults plan to purchase home exercise equipment in the future.
"Just a few years ago, home exercise equipment meant a pile of weights in a boy's room," Hartley said, "but today consumers are spending big bucks for treadmills, stationary bikes, home gyms, and other equipment. The FPC thinks this trend will continue for many years."
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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Dr. David Demko, Editor
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