On Monday morning, listeners in Kansas City may have been surprised to hear <strong>KMBZ</strong> fill-in guy <strong>Chris Merrill</strong> filling in for <strong>Glenn Beck</strong> ... for good.</p><p>The news-talker yanked "The Glenn Beck Show" from its cozy 9-11 a.m. perch and demoted it to late nights. And in came Merrill, a boomy-voiced libertarian less versed in the conspiracies surrounding George Soros than the rantings of George Costanza.</p><p>I did the KMBZ Friday roundtable with Merrill in December, and we talked again last night for a story I'll be writing on him. I like him a lot, and I like what KMBZ is trying to do here &#x97; attract a younger listener to a station whose format just naturally skews to older listeners.</p><p>It's a tall task for a news-talk station to go young; frankly, few of them seem to try. On the TV side, whether it's <strong>MSNBC</strong> or Fox News, the viewer is bound to be middle-aged, for whatever reason. (<strong>HLN</strong>, with its heavy doses of scandal and celebrity, is the exception.)</p><p>But the youth problem is really biting Beck right now. The kids aren't taking to Professor Glenn's dumbed-down distance-learning course known as The Left's New World Order for Dummies 101. It's easily lampooned &#x97; as <strong>Jon Stewart</strong> and <strong>Stephen Colbert</strong> have shown again and again &#x97; and the message of fear and suspicion just doesn't click with a generation that, polls show again and again, are more idealistic and open-minded than their parents.</p><p>This is especially clear when you look at the precipitous falloff in audience for his <strong>Fox News Channel</strong> show.</p><p><table border="1" align="center"> <tr bgcolor="#CCCCCC"> <td><strong>Show</strong></td> <td><strong>P2+ 2011</strong></td> <td><strong>P2+ 2010</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>Chg</strong></td> <td><strong>A18-49 2011</strong></td> <td><strong>A18-49 2010</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>Chg</strong></td> <td><strong>A55+ 2011</strong></td> <td><strong>A55+ 2010</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>Chg</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Glenn Beck</td> <td align="center">1900</td> <td align="center">2820</td> <td align="center">-32.6%</td> <td align="center">277</td> <td align="center">511</td> <td align="center">-45.8%</td> <td align="center">1389</td> <td align="center">1963</td> <td align="center">-29.2%</td> </tr> <tr> <td>O&#x92;Reilly Factor</td> <td align="center">3123</td> <td align="center">3681</td> <td align="center">-15.16%</td> <td align="center">467</td> <td align="center">585</td> <td align="center">-20.1%</td> <td align="center">2262</td> <td align="center">2635</td> <td align="center">-14.16%</td> </tr></p><p></table></p><p><I>Numbers are in thousands (000). P2+ is all persons ages 2-up, A18-49 is 18-to-49-year-olds and A55+ is, well, Grandpa. Source: Nielsen, as crunched by Brad Adgate of Horizon Media. Table by me.</i></p><p>In the year following an election and after years of growth, it&#x92;s not that surprising that Fox News should be having a down quarter. But Beck isn&#x92;t helping matters. As you can see, his falloff in audience is twice as great, in percentage terms, as that of <strong>Bill O&#x92;Reilly</strong>. But his audience falloff among the younger demographic that advertisers are trying to reach is alarming: nearly half of 18-49-year-olds, nearly 40 percent of 25-54-year-olds. Meanwhile, the dropoff with viewers 55-plus is not as steep. So Beck&#x92;s audience is not only getting smaller, it&#x92;s getting older.</p><p>Radio managers are dumping Beck elsewhere too. To be fair, it&#x92;s not all about him. In KC, Philly and other markets, management also wanted a local voice in there instead of a syndicated one. But clearly, demographics are Beck&#x92;s worst enemy on TV and, I suspect, on radio as well.