Does anybody besides aging boomers watch these shows?
From what I read about viewership, the answer is no.

You should read more. About 30-405 of those shows’ audience is under 50 - so yes, 60%, sometimes more is over 50. (The oldest skewing news program/network, by far, is Fox.) When I was in the business we were lucky if half our audience was under 60, and that was 30 years ago.

I’d hasten to point out that this has always been true. Even in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’ and even before the advent of cable, the “news audience” has always been older than the general population. The research we did shows that as people’s lives changed they became more interested in news. Things like “mortgage interest rate” and “stock portfolio” were particularly potent, but also other issues like “education for children” and “crime in community” became more salient as people aged from “young adult” to “employed adult” or “homeowner adult.”

Of course the network newscasts have aged as portions of the audience, notably younger people have “cut the cord” and as other options have proliferated. Competition for eyeballs has come in many forms, from YouTube to Netflix to Facebook.

Still, it’s not surprising that the shows are loaded with pharma ads. It’s the right audience: aging, hurting, wanting easy fixes. No shocker there.

Heretofore the US pays the going rate while the ROW demands to pay a negotiated rate of just cost plus a little bit.

Yeah, imagine if the largest single consumer of these drugs was allowed to negotiate instead of being required to passively accept whatever price a drug company slaps on a box. Crazy, I know. Maybe the way to “bend the curve” is to allow users to make a decision on prices too? Just a thought.