Old people's music

I don't watch TV live. I record everything so I can fast forward through the opening and closing credits, the adverts and the slow bits. The other night I noticed on my recordings that the same long advert kept appearing. It can be hard for TV channels to sell advertising in the small hours and they tend to give advertisers a lot of time to sell their stuff. The stuff here is a 10 CD compilation of 'great songs only available on TV.' You know the style. I would tell you the name in case you decide you just have to have it, but I'm so taken aback at the weird mix of pictures and sounds, I've forgotten.

The pictures on the advert show a couple wandering around a town. I'm not sure what they're doing but they are obviously having a good time. Are they tourists? Who can tell? They look to be maybe late 40s. Slim, well-dressed, white (natch). Let's say they were born about 1958. That means they were teenagers in the mid-70s. That's the era of glam rock - Bowie, Lou Reed, Roxy Music, etc. It's also the era of punk. Teenagers of this era missed the technicolor musicals of the 50s (South Pacific, Carousel, etc - I wish I'd missed all that), not to mention the arrival of Elvis in the late 50s/early 60s, the Beatles and the Stones in the 60s and a whole panoply of great pop and rock groups. This was the golden age for us Baby Boomers. (And while I'm on the subject: you 'young' people may resent us Baby Boomers and claim we have destroyed the world but we did at least leave you decent music).

The music being played in this advert is by Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Alma Cogan, Andy Williams, etc. All singing stars of the 40s, 50s and 60s. Old people's stars. Whatever else this is, it ain't 70s music. And it sure as hell ain't young people's music.

So what audience is the ad going for? Young people in their 40s who have managed to miss out on the whole of the 60s and 70s? Can't see it somehow. Or is it for old people who still feel young? People would have to be born in the 1930s to be around for some of this stuff. Maybe that's the USP (unique selling point): you don't have to be young to like this kind of music. You just have to be delusional.