Multicultural Viewers Streaming to Digital

Multicultural viewers have always been cable’s most loyal customers, even in the midst of the growing popularity of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. A new Horowitz Associates report, however, shows that urban multicultural viewers are quickly migrating to digital platforms to consume video content.

Horowitz’s “State of Cable & Digital Media: Multicultural Edition 2015” reports that 51 percent of Hispanic viewers, 46 percent of Asian viewers and 45 percent of black viewers spend more than 20 percent of their total TV viewing time watching OTT services, compared with only 39 percent of white viewers. Plus, more than 88 percent of urban multicultural TV viewers have the ability to stream video content to a computer, mobile device or directly to a TV. “Multicultural consumers have always paved the way for new technology, especially when it comes to television and entertainment,” Adriana Waterston, Horowitz’s senior vice president of Insights & Strategy, said. The report comes as a recent Nielsen Total Audience Report showed that traditional TV viewing is down among multicultural viewers. For example, while African-Americans continue to watch far more broadcast and cable TV than any other group, monthly viewership among African-Americans was down by 12 hours in the first quarter compared with Q1 2014, Nielsen officials said.