Post-Gazette photo illustration, click for larger image. This is the third day of a series which concludes in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Magazine section Wednesday. Day One: Brand new 60s for baby boomers Day One: Four enter decade feeling that life begins at 60 Day Two: First wave of baby boomers pursues a high-energy lifestyle Day Two: Whatever you do, don't dare call me Grandma Tomorrow in Magazine: Stories on boomer politics and where they want to live conclude the series. Join the writers of the series in a live chat at noon Thursday.

Baby boomer culture is American culture, and it isn't going anywhere. Unless it's in a Cadillac SUV blasting Led Zeppelin.

Movies and television are still dominated by boomers. Popular music is less so, since it is a young person's game, though artists who had their heyday in the '60s and '70s are still popular today -- the Rolling Stones are even older than their aging baby boomer fans, and they're playing the Super Bowl.

But as the first boomers (born in 1946) start turning 60 years old this year, won't their Vulcan death grip on pop culture finally weaken? Cadillac may be able to use Led Zep's "Rock and Roll" in luxury car commercials now -- tapping into the boomer weakness for the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll vibe -- but will marketers still use it a few years from now to sell motorized wheelchairs?

Yes they will, says Michael Gross, New York-based author of the boomer book "My Generation."

"Rock, of course, will be used. ... Sex is unstoppable (as Viagra, etc., prove). Fact is, as long as boomers work at ad agencies, their tastes will be reflected and their signifiers used to sell things, even if they themselves have outgrown them," he e-mailed last week.

"Marketing and hypocrisy was and is us, still. (Along with some better attributes.)"

Boomers, of course, have driven American pop culture for decades.

They were the first generation raised with television and directly affected its development and programming. Ratings grids from the '70s through '90s -- from "All in the Family" to "thirtysomething" to "Seinfeld" -- read like a boomer growth chart. Current, cutting-edge stars from Larry David to Ricky Gervais and Jon Stewart are all members of the generation.

Boomer directors should rule Hollywood for years. Besides the generation's poster child, Steven Spielberg (born in 1946), plenty of others in the prime of their careers were born before the boomer cutoff in 1964, including Peter Jackson (1961), Ang Lee (1954), Michael Gondry (1963) and Quentin Tarantino (1963).

Some boomers remain active pop music stars -- including U2's Bono and R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, both born in 1960 -- but it's the influence of the generation's old tunes that really resonates.

It's hard to find a respectable indie rock act, for instance, that does not name-drop Neil Young, the Kinks, Zombies, Stooges or the Ramones. Two weeks ago, a bunch of hipster bands gathered at a New York festival to un-ironically cover Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska."

While boomers are still stirring the cauldron of art, custom and behavior that makes up the country's pop culture, there are some signs that they are losing hold.

Technology -- led by titans such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, both born in 1955 -- has become a huge part of the pop culture mix, and that will only increase as it is more integrated into daily life, through cell phones, digital media players and downloadable TV and movies.

But it is one major facet of life where boomers are starting to lag, argues Santa Monica, Calif., music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz.

Boomer attitudes about paying for music downloads are completely different from young fans, who not only want their music free, but like to discover it by Internet word-of-mouth, instead of from top-down marketing campaigns from major labels.

"All the future trends will emanate from technology, which almost all baby boomers are backward when it comes to," says Mr. Lefsetz (1953).

"Baby boomers cannot get their head around that there's a different business ethic. It's funny when you think about them, because music was supposed to be free in the '60s, and then they made millions selling the stuff. When somebody else gets control, they're bitching."

Boomers remain active music consumers, especially of older "legacy" acts. Sony/BMG Music recently created a new label called Burgundy Records just to sell older titles and new work by artists such as Chaka Khan and Aaron Neville, saying there is an underserved market for them.

Boomers are a "huge part of the music market," according to analyst Russ Crupnick of the NPD Group in Port Washington, N.Y., buying some 41 percent of physical (non-digital) music. But their purchases are slowing down: They support a finite market of older acts -- how many Fleetwood Mac and Eagles CDs can a sane person own? -- who are beginning to fade away.

"The icons are dying off. It started with George Harrison," said Jeff Ritter, associate professor of communications, media and technology at La Roche College.

"Wavy Gravy, Donovan, Cher -- watch out. They're all going to be dropping like flies. We're going to see a tribute for them every few months."

Many boomers have also fallen behind the latest round of the digital music revolution.

According to NPD, boomers get about 75 percent of their music from CDs, while teens and twentysomethings get only 20 percent of theirs that way, preferring to download music from pay sites, peer-to-peer services and burned CDs.

"The younger generation is going digital very, very heavily. It's the exact opposite for the older crowd," Mr. Crupnick says.

Fault lines are showing in TV shows as well. Boomers have always supported character-driven shows that "tapped into the boomers' fascination with their own psychology," wrote Steve Gillon in his book "Boomer Nation," but started losing pace with the introduction of reality shows in the early 1990s.

As younger viewers moved on to different, less-navel-gazing kinds of narratives, boomers have retreated, going back to the police dramas of their youth -- such as the omnipresent "CSI" shows -- and other character-driven programming.

"You're already seeing the influence of aging baby boomers on TV," says David Shumway, professor of literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon University. "CBS is the ratings leader, and through 'CSI' and other shows it's really geared toward an older audience."

In coming years police shows will reach a saturation point, Mr. Shumway went on, but networks will go after boomers with "similar kinds of familiar, high-quality shows, with decent acting. Shows that are adult oriented, with adult characters will continue to be very popular."

Boomers' tastes in music will also mellow, says Mr. Shumway (born in 1952), first leading them to embrace soft rock, easy listening and then the mellowest stuff on the planet -- repeats of the old "Lawrence Welk" show, which he says are already re-gaining popularity.

Mr. Gross, the boomer author -- holding true to the youth and rebellion-obsessed baby boomer spirit -- goes bonkers when asked about the generation breaking down and losing touch, let alone shuffling off the Earth listening to "Bubbles in the Wine."

"The spirit of rebellion is generally a youthful spirit, but just as we had William Burroughs and other fogey forefathers, some of 'our' cohorts will remain rebels, even as their bodies break down and rebel."

Tomorrow: Stories on boomer politics and where they want to live conclude the series.