Catering to a population that is likely to be replaced sooner than later by viewers that don't romanticize tuning dials is folly. I've observed that as viewers age, their channel line-up thins to less than a handful of channels until they perhaps lose interest in changing channels altogether.
As I have aged I have noticed three things that would cause me to change my viewing habits, particularly if I were still watching "appointment" TV:
1) I have a much greater tendency to fall asleep in the middle of a show, particularly if it's boring. Maybe several times!
2) Some programs these days have poor audio quality (audio techs must be sleeping through the program too!) and it is hard to understand what's being said. I would say my hearing is going bad, and that may well be (too much loud music as a kid!) but then again I do not encounter this issue on all shows, just certain programs.
3) My memory is not what it used to be (and it was never that great) so I have trouble following the extended plot lines that last an entire season. Therefore I tend to slightly prefer episodic shows where each episode is pretty much standalone, in other words you don't need to have watched previous episodes to figure out what's going on.
#1 isn't really an issue because I record everything and if I fall asleep, when I wake up I just jump back to the last thing I remember seeing. #2 there isn't much I can do about, other than avoid poorly-mic'ed shows. #3 isn't enough of an issue yet that I avoid watching series, but the ones I can binge-watch are more enjoyable for obvious reasons (I can remember something I saw an hour ago a lot more easily than something I saw a week ago).
Now, if I were in a room with cable and no PVR capability, I think my first choice might be something like HGTV or some other network that shows programs that require no previous viewing to understand.
One thing that may be slightly different about me than others of my generation is that I don't much care for watching anything so old that it's in standard definition, and that goes double if it's in black and white. I just don't get people who are into the nostalgia TV craze. Most of those old shows aren't that great in my opinion. The other thing I would never do is sit around and watch religious or news channels all day - I don't need anyone trying to tell me what to think, I had to put up with that crap way too much when I was younger and I'm damn well not going to put up with it now. I watch shows I
want to watch, and if there's nothing on I want to watch I'll find an interesting video or just turn off the damn TV!
I do think that younger people may somewhat underestimate the ability of older people to learn new things, such as a new remote. What I have observed is that often younger people aren't always patient enough to teach an older person how to do something. They are used to dealing with their peers, to whom they can demonstrate a complex process once and that's sufficient. But with older people you might need to demonstrate something several times, and often if we sense you are getting frustrated and annoyed we'll just shut down and say "it's too hard" because we don't want the conflict, or being made to feel like we're idiots. And then again there are times when we wonder who in the hell is designing things like remote controls, that they make them so difficult. Again, it goes back to memory issues - it's way easier to remember half a dozen buttons than the 30 or 40 that appear on some remotes, and it's even easier if we can find those buttons easily. Personally I use a Harmony remote to control my devices and one of the nice things about it is that if a label on a button doesn't make sense you can change it, and you can also move your most-used buttons to the top of the list. Now, I am not talking about older people who have dementia - once that sets in, anything you teach them will probably be forgotten the next day (or in 30 seconds depending on the severity), but not all older people get that, and even those that do sometimes don't get it until they are in their 90's or later.
Anyway not all older people are alike, and we don't all romanticize tuning dials, nor do we all get to a stage where we lose interest in changing channels!
