I didn’t watch the Academy Awards.

Well, that isn’t entirely true. I saw the opening montage. I saw the crowd lose its mind when Billy Crystal walked onstage. I saw a handful of awards. (I missed Melissa Leo’s f-bomb – thank you, YouTube.)

Usually, I watch the Oscars. I love movies, so much that I’m in a fantasy movie league: Instead of drafting players, À la fantasy football, we draft movies based on box office totals and Oscar nods and wins.

Unfortunately, this year’s round of nominated flicks didn’t do it for me, and no number of Anne Hathaways (who I wish were my best friend) or James Franco (who I wish were my boyfriend) could change that.

Various industries and companies are trying their hardest to appeal to younger audiences, perhaps to create some kind of loyalty – if you make me love the Oscars (or Mazdas, or Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches), I will love it for life. This poses many problems, not the least of which is running the risk of waving off the current customer base, one that may not be as hip as I am (cue eye roll) but probably has way more money.

So, in an effort to draw that ever-elusive 20-something crowd, the academy hired a fresh-faced and adorable pair from Hollywood’s Young Crowd (Anne’s 28, James is 32) to host what is arguably the most important entertainment awards show in the country. And, by most popular accounts, they flopped. They flopped big time.

And I don’t really blame them for the floppage; I blame the folks who hired them.

In its desperation to be relevant by showing audiences “Whee, we’re hip!” the academy missed something huge: That be-all, end-all age group of moviegoers – ages 25 to 39 – makes up more than 20 percent of the moviegoing crowd, statistics from the Motion Picture Association of America released last March show. So it’s not as though the academy is trying to court a group that is uninterested in movies. They’re actually courting the group that is most interested in movies.

My generation will watch the awards if the right films are honored. Hosting duties play no role in the “Should I watch?” debate.

This year’s Super Bowl, too, fell victim to this assumption – this “If we schedule it, they will watch” idea – by sticking the Black Eyed Peas in the coveted halftime slot. Viewers watch the Super Bowl because they’re football fans or because they’re commercial fans. No one watches a sporting event for the halftime concert. It just doesn’t happen.

And that is true for all age groups (except maybe teeny-boppers – you probably could schedule a Justin Bieber concert in a dentist’s waiting room, and the number of cavities in local junior high girls would quintuple in a week. But that’s a whole ’nother column).

The dirty little secret to enticing me to watch your program – or eat at your restaurant, or apply for your job, or let you cut my hair – is this:

Don’t suck.

History’s not repeating itself

Industries have been catering to the 20- and 30-something crowd for years. The trend started popping up after World War II, when advertisers figured those fresh-from-the-war young folks would drive the economy. Forty-eight percent of the U.S. population was younger than 25, and more and more Americans found themselves in the middle class.

Today, only 34 percent of the U.S. population is younger than 24. By catering to this make-believe “market share” of the population, companies are elbowing out the folks who are actually spending money on their brand.

Take Cindy Hobbel, a Fort Wayne woman near retirement age. She is a Talbots shopper, and she has been for years.

Frankly, I don’t know a thing about Talbots, so I started to browse its website. On the home page for women’s clothing, I am greeted by a pretty, young blond woman in a springy yellow pencil skirt and a white button-down blouse.

Well, actually, it’s more of a white unbutton-down blouse, as in, “it’s unbuttoned down to there.” It’s not scandalous, but it’s not exactly something for a woman near retirement age, either.

“I think business is down for Talbots, as it is for a lot of the clothing (stores), and they’re trying to broaden their horizon as far as the demographics and the population age-wise that they appeal to,” Hobbel says.

This may be the case, but mightn’t using such young models in such young clothes alienate a store’s current customer base?

Hobbel recently received a survey from the clothing store asking for customers’ thoughts on its most recent catalog. Her response: “You’re just catering to people 25 and under.”

About three years ago, Talbots underwent an overhaul to turn the brand around. It wants to, yes, appeal to a younger clientele.

“We are hoping that that woman looks at Talbots in a new light and doesn’t think of it as your grandmother’s brand that it was known to me,” says Meredith Paley, Talbots’ vice president of public relations.

But she’s clear: This doesn’t mean the brand is neglecting its longtime over-40 fan base. Yes, it wants to attract a younger customer, Paley says, but it doesn’t want to lose the devoted woman who has shopped at Talbots for the last 60 years.

Why cater to the young?

ABC’s “Boston Legal” aired for five seasons and counted among its stars in that final season Candice Bergen, William Shatner, John Larroquette and James Spader. Spader is the “baby” of that quartet of stars at 51.

The show’s writers clearly wondered whether the network pulled the show due to its lack of appeal to the Millennial crowd (not true – it’s the only series I own on DVD, plus it won five Emmys and was nominated for 21). During the series’ second-to-last episode, the firm sued network television for not offering any programming for the older crowd.

“They consider those of us over 50 to be irrelevant. How is it possible that we are not even part of the target demo when we watch the most television and spend the most money? By God, there are 87 million of us, and that number will grow by 31 million more by 2020. Are you really telling me that it doesn’t make sense to make television shows that we’d want to watch?” says Judge Clark Brown (Henry Gibson, who was 72 at the time) in his audience-pleasing, if not completely believable, judgment.

Matt Kelley would appear to agree with Judge Brown – excluding an entire generation, especially one that is already interested in your brand or product, is not a good idea.

The trick is to appeal to a younger demographic as well as boomers, not in place of boomers, says Kelley, owner of the Fort Wayne ad agency One Lucky Guitar.

Besides, reaching my generation is way cheaper than reaching my parents’. Instead of spending lots of cash on a traditional marketing strategy, we Gen Y’ers tend to prefer more relationship-based, less preachy efforts.

A national company that does this perfectly? WordPress, a blog-hosting company. When I have a question, I don’t call anyone or email some suit. I go to my Twitter account and say, “Hey, @wordpressdotcom! How do I get a widget on my blog?” And someone – a real, live person – responds to me, in 140 characters or fewer.

“Just look at all things interactive,” Kelley says. “They don’t involve the print cost. They don’t involve the media buy as much. Those costs are replaced by customer service. … You have someone who’s dedicated to those conversations that they’re having on a company’s Facebook page or happening out on Twitter or, say, in person, quite frankly.”

The problem with the Oscars, Kelley says, is that they were too obvious. Anne and James were there to appeal to me, and my best friend, and my favorite blogger – and we all knew it.

“If you appear to be pandering or if you come off as being less than authentic, you just lose (your Gen Y audience). You lose their trust,” Kelley says. “I think that’s the case with the Oscars. It’s OK. You can be 22 and still really like Billy Crystal. He’s still very funny. He’s still very good at that job.”

Look at the recent re-emergence of Betty White (who, it’s worth noting, played the elderly, bored lady who brought the “Boston Legal” let-me-watch-TV case to court). When the octogenarian cutie hosted “Saturday Night Live” last May, it boasted its highest overnight ratings in a year and a half. It also brought about the show’s highest ratings among 18- to 49-year-olds over the same span of time.

Those ratings weren’t just because it’s funny to hear an old lady swear. They’re because White is funny. And, like Crystal, she’s really, really good at what she does.

If she’d have hosted the Oscars, I’d probably have watched more.