Via Romenesko, here’s a hilarious item in which ABC’s Charlie Gibson, the anchor of “World News Tonight,” fails to grasp why there are so many ads targeting old people on his show:

Want younger viewers for the evening news? Ditch the geezer ads, says ABC World News anchor Charlie Gibson.

If networks are serious about luring pre-Social Security eyeballs, they should replace commercials for adult diapers, dentures and “patent medicines” with spots for younger, sexier products, in Gibson’s view.

The current commercials “bespeak an older audience,” says Gibson, in town last week to anchor World News from the National Constitution Center. “I’d rather have car ads.

“When you put on ads mostly for medicines, you’re saying ‘We want an older audience.’ I would like ads that say ‘We have a younger audience here.’ ”

Not likely, Chas.

Median age of World News viewers this season is 59.9, according to Nielsen Media Research. It’s 60.3 for Brian Williams’ No. 1 NBC Nightly News, and 59.5 for Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News.

Networks target 25-to-54-year-olds for news.

Apparently they don’t teach economics in anchor school. The advertisers who will pay the most to reach an older audience are the ones who sell products to them. And in any case, the way to attract a young audience is to put on a more interesting newscast, not to run car ads.

Update 10/10 12:16 PM: For more on demographic targeting in network news, see this post on how newscast content targets the interests of the younger women who are the most lucrative marginal viewers of the evening news.