Well, I celebrated my birthday on August 2. 2009, and suddenly things have changed. Every survey I have received since that day ends abruptly on page 2 when I enter my age. "This survey is now completed." That appears to translate to "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."

Why? I suspect it is because i just graduated from the 45-54 bracket into the 55-65 bracket on my 55th birthday. In an instant, I apparently went from Valued NBC Panel Member to Irrelevant Oldster Just Waiting to Die.

I find this a bit depressing. I am a member of the first real television generation — the first kids really weaned on what Harlan Ellison calls "The Glass Teat". My mother used to sit me in front of our black-and-white set in my little Swyngomatic with the game shows running while she did the ironing. (This backfired on my parents in one respect. Despite all their frantic "say da-da" and "say ma-ma" efforts, my first word — as gleefully witnessed by my assembled uncles and aunts one afternoon — was "Tide". It also may have had something to do with their later discovery when I had just turned 5 that I could already read at a fifth-grade level. But I digress...)

Anyway, I earned the name CouchGuy honestly, as I am a lifelong fan of television. So it is a little disconcerting to find that television execs have now decided that I may as well be dead for all the influence I should have on programming. "55 and over? Forget it. We don't care what you have to say."

What's that got to do with an Apple media blog? Well, if the programmers and advertisers ignore my demographic when surveying network/cable TV audiences, the only way I have to be influential is to support the TV I like in a more direct manner. This is where Apple's TV show downloads come into play. Broadcast and cable TV (and to a large extent subscription based services like Netflix and web-based smorgasbord services like Hulu) all measure their success by ratings, surveys and demographic info gathered in various ways. And all of them can weight that info by demographic group. With iTunes TV show downloads, however, the $1.99 ($2.99 for HD) I spend on a show like Monk is a vote that counts as much as that of any snot-nosed 12-year-old hard-core Next X fan. (In fact, given the odds against a 12-year-old hard-core Next X fan actually living to be 13 after trying some of those stunts, I'll get to vote more just by longevity.)

So it may benefit me in a way I hadn't expected if more people do embrace the downloadable as opposed to the scheduled TV experience. This is something for me to think about as I move toward the end of my low-cost cable TV package deal's price guarantee in 2011...