Do Multicultural Audiences Watch TV Differently than Whites Do?

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Summary

For decades, researchers and media planners have debated whether television-audience measurement has kept pace with the nation’s increasing diversity. Citing differences in triggers between Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Whites that impact their TV consumption, this study called for a measurement standard that incorporates the multiculturalism of the audience, programming genre, technology use, and demographics. The authors noted that because of media fragmentation, “television properties now typically deliver less than one third of the audiences they did in the past”. As a result, “more advertisers are placing resources in digital media instead of television to reach multicultural segments.” A measurement standard could validate or better inform that practice. To examine the relationship between television viewership and multiculturalism, mediated by programmatic and media-fragmentation influences and covaried by demographics influences, a nationally representative dataset measuring multicultural viewership was used in a multistep mediation model, considering both viewers’ uses and gratifications and the technology used for daily viewing. Among the study’s practical outcomes:

This mediation model better explains the behavior of multicultural television consumption.
Multicultural consumers watch television for the uses and gratifications they receive from watching particular genres of television programming.
This predicates a use of technology and results in less television being consumed.
The research “should prompt advertisers to segment ethnic audiences by demographics, psychographics, and attitudes—just like they do for the overall, general-market population.
“This, in turn, will challenge media agencies to find the very lucrative, appropriate, and brand-loyal ethnic audience through the appropriate television programming and note relegate multicultural media planning solely to ethnic-media networks.”

J. P. James is an assistant professor of marketing at Salem State University. James conducts research on multicultural marketing and marketplace diversity. He has been published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of Management Policy and Practice, and Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications, among other journals.

Tyrha M. Lindsey-Warren is a clinical assistant professor of marketing at the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University. Lindsey-Warren’s research streams are rooted in storytelling and its effects on millennials, empowerment, health edutainment, movies, media, and advertising. She also spent more than 15 years working as a practitioner for the likes of Quincy Jones, David Salzman Entertainment, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and UniWorld Group. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Cultural Marketing Strategy and the book Entertainment Values (Palgrave UK).