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.

U.S. television viewers also increased by 1.3%, to a total of nearly 290 million people (age two and older), with older viewers (age 55+) showing the fastest growth rate (+2.7%).

The new figures, Nielsen’s TV Universe Estimate for the 2008-2009 TV season, will be reflected in Nielsen’s national TV ratings as of September 1, 2008. 

Nationally, in comparison to the total number of TV households, the number of Hispanic and Asian television households increased by 4.4% and 4.3%, respectively. African American TV households grew by 2.2% during the same time period.

Locally, the top 20 television markets held onto their 2007-2008 TV season ranks. Movement among lower-ranked markets reflected recent population growth in the Southern and Western United States — of the 58 markets that moved up in rank, more than half are in the Southeast or Mountain regions.

Local market estimates are projected to January 1, 2009 and will be used in metered market samples as of September 27, 2008.

View the full press release.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in Mediaweek and Media Daily News.