NFL Hopes Rolling Stones Will Attract 18-To-55 Male Demographic

DETROIT—With ratings for the Super Bowl telecast dropping to the point where a mere 86.1 million viewers watched the program in 2005, the NFL and Super Bowl XL broadcast partner ABC will attempt to reach their key demographic—males ages 18 to 55—with a halftime performance by the Rolling Stones. "Advertisers for this annual championship sporting event are targeting working- and middle-class males in this valuable age bracket, and we believe there's no more surefire way to convince American men to watch a football game than to offer them the driving blue-collar rock of the Stones," said NFL vice president of programming Charles Coplin. "The Rolling Stones are an iconic musical presence that, for 40 years, has been bringing fathers and sons together on the weekends. That's precisely the kind of thing we want adult males to associate with our sporting event." ABC executives are cautiously optimistic that the Rolling Stones may even be able to reach viewers up to age 65, many of whom started following the band when they first established themselves in 1966.