Population trends have clear implications for those involved in the media and advertising industries. There are now more than 114 million U.S. TV households, with immigration continuing to play a major role in population growth. U.S. Census estimates predict that by the year 2050 more than half of the U.S.
population will be non-white.

Nielsen’s “Ethnic Trends In Media,” is a comprehensive report profiling African-American, Asian, Hispanic and White households in the U.S.  This report examines household characteristics, television usage, timeshifted viewing and popular programming genres for each group.

Key findings include:

• Household characteristics are quite different across each ethnic break.  Size, geographic territory and media ownership, such as video game consoles and DVRs, are just some of the notable differences

• TV usage is different: Persons age 18-49 in African-American households view more TV than Total U.S., while Hispanic and Asian persons in the same age group was less.

• The median age of a TV viewer is 45, but African-American, Asian and Hispanic viewers tend to be younger (40, 39, 32, respectively).

• Participation variety shows, such as Dancing with the Stars and Biggest Loser 6, are the most popular genre for total U.S. viewers, and are near the top for all ethnic breaks.  Fox NFL Sunday Football was the top or near-top program for all ethnic breaks except for Hispanics, who favored “Fuego En La Sangre” on Univision.

Download a PDF of the full report here.