Since we deployed the phrase “Hee Haw demographic” a while back without much elucidation, we’d like to more fully explain what we mean by the phrase: We are not referring to a type of people or a location where they live, but, rather, a practice performed by U.S. television networks in the early 1970s to shift from targeting for generic volume to targeting those with the more disposable income.
At that time, TV networks and advertisers realized that success wasn’t necessarily about the size of a show’s audience but rather the size of their target demographics within the audience. Specifically, they wanted to target the giant Baby Boomer market and they wanted to make them their customers for decades to follow.
Hee Haw was simply one of the many TV shows that was cancelled from network TV during what is known as the “Rural Purge.” In fact, these shows were popular in urban areas, too, but, the shows were broad brush programming, not focused targeting. For our purposes, the “Rural Purge” moniker is especially misleading. The TV shows that were cancelled generally contained “rural” themes (Green Acres, Hee Haw, Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C., etc., but not all: The Lawrence Welk Show was also among the shows cancelled in the “Rural Purge”), but the point is that we’re not referring to “rural” vs. “urban” when we use “Hee Haw demographic,” we are referring specifically to targeting for volume (Android, Windows PCs) versus targeting those with the more disposable income (OS X, Mac, iOS, iPhone, iPad).
Apple targets high-value consumers. Apple separates the wheat from the chaff with their value proposition. Android phone assemblers generally do not target high-value consumers (they target price-conscious customers with endless BOGOF promos) and when they do go after the high-end, they simply do not compete well against iPhone.
Apple customers are the wheat. The “Hee Haw demographic,” for whatever reason, failed to make the cut; they are the chaff.
We’ll link our use of “Hee Haw demographic” to this article going forward.
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