WASHINGTON — I was the worst show in "Nightline" history.
I went on the venerated news program in 1989 after the first President Bush's first
State of the Union address, and somehow managed to bore Ted Koppel silly.
"Come back," he said drily, at the end of the show, "but not too soon."

When Mr. Koppel and Kyle Gibson did a book chronicling 16 years of "Nightline" a few years back,
I was featured in a chapter called "Shows We Wish You Had Never Seen."
Now you might think this traumatic experience would sour me on Ted Koppel,
and leave me rooting for David Letterman.  But it isn't so.

I love Ted and his show. And I also love Dave and his show. One is serious and one is funny. But beyond that, the two men are a lot alike: topical, smart, sophisticated, politically savvy originals who have produced decades of amazing television.

Mr. Letterman felt he was being taken for granted by CBS, so he flirted with ABC,
which led Mr. Koppel to feel he was being taken for granted.
But this whole mishegoss at ABC has led me to realize how much I'm being taken for granted.

When baby boomers were coming of age, everyone said that because we were such an outsized cohort, society
would always cater to us and shape itself around us. We would be "the pig in the python," indulged and spoiled.
But now, even though we have the most economic clout, the culture is no longer pitched to us.
It is pitched to teenage boys.  Boomers may be the pig, but dudes control the bacon.

The executives in Hollywood who decide what to put on big screens and small are in the grip of an obsession
with callow youth worthy of Oscar Wilde. In a breathless quest for teens and the 18-to-34 set, they have become
the spendthrifts of their own mediocrity.

Michael Eisner and Robert Iger, head Mouseketeers, think Mr. Letterman would be more valuable than
Mr. Koppel because the comedian appeals to a younger demographic.

"The average age of `Nightline' viewers is 50, the Letterman average about 46," The Washington Post noted.
"But that gap can translate into millions of dollars in greater revenue from advertisers who prize a younger audience."
So this whole contretemps rests on a difference of four years?  Weirdly, the success of a show, and the amount
of money it makes, is determined more by the age of its viewers than its ratings.

Media buyers and advertisers think younger viewers are more valuable not because they spend more money
— no one spends more dough more frivolously than boomers — but because they are more elusive.
Even though young women are a bigger market, young men are at a higher premium because they're tougher to lure to shows.

The hard business decisions of media companies, it turns out, are made with the fuzzy logic of romance:
You'll only be complete if you can win over the object of affection that seems out of your reach.

"It's more based on myth than truth," conceded one network executive. "It might have been true
in the 60's and 70's, but it has become an increasingly misguided assumption."
Our whole culture is built on a marketing sand castle.

Advertisers, as Fred Brock wrote in The Times, have become "a bunch of anti-Willie Suttons,
aiming where the money increasingly isn't."  Advertisers base the youth chase on antiquated notions
from 30 years ago when older meant more mature. With fickle, prodigal boomers, a group obsessed
with staying young, age does not necessarily bring thriftiness or habitualness.

Advertisers are still going by that old saw that they need to hook people at a tender age, before they get set in their
buying habits and develop an allegiance to one brand. It ignores the fact that we have become a clicker society
with a short attention span.   Boomers switch brands constantly, moving from this anti-depressant to that,
this age-defying face cream to that, this boutique wine to that.

Studies show that young adults have more brand loyalty now than restless middle-aged customers.

Maybe advertisers and TV suits know they're operating on archaic premises and skew ridiculously young
because they're striving to be hip. Or maybe they're just, as David Letterman might say, colossal boobs.