Multicultural audiences are bigger streamers than general market audiences, according to a new report from App Science.

For example, Hispanic American households have seven connected TV streaming apps, compared to six in general market homes.

Hispanic homes are 17% more likely to have streaming apps than the general market. At the same time African American homes are also 17% more likely to have streaming apps and Asian American homes are 33% more likely to be streaming.

Sports, crime and drama were the most popular CTV viewing genres among multicultural audiences, according to App Science, a subsidiary of Sabio Holdings. 

App Science’s first Multicultural Trends Report said that viewers in each of those multicultural groups were at least four times more likely to watch shows in those genres than general market viewers.

In Hispanic American households, the most popular CTV streaming apps were Dazn, HGTV Go, VRV, Movies Anywhere, Freeform and Showtime. Top streaming apps on mobile include Canela TV, Univision Now, Telemundo, Vix, YouTube Kids and Viki.

In African American households there were seven CTV streaming apps on average. The most popular CTV apps were Showtime, Livestream, Epix, Xfinity Stream, Pluto TV and Freeform. The top streaming apps on mobile were Worldstar, Starz, Buzzvideo, Xumo, Crackle and Tubi.

Asian American households averaged eight CTV apps, compared to six for the general market. The most popular apps in Asian American homes were Hotstar,  Roku, Dailymotion, Sling TV, Vimeo and Fox Sports. The top streaming apps on mobile were OnDemand Korea, Viki, iQIYI, Dailymotion, HBO Max and Crunchyroll.

“With this report, we aim to help advertisers to better understand multicultural audiences, so they can learn how to best connect with them and drive more effective advertising,” said Helen Lum, executive VP at App Science.

Data for the report was sourced from App Science’s proprietary 55 million household graph, which is powered by human behavioral signals from mobile and CTV device databases and enhanced with third party consumer data to provide consumption habits of U.S. households. ■

After a year that saw the largest civil-rights demonstrations and protests against police brutality since the 1960s, new research is highlighting the need for programmers and operators to do a better job of serving multicultural audiences if they want to thrive in the emerging streaming and digital landscape. 

“The size of opportunity [with multicultural audiences] just continues to grow,” said Adriana Waterston, senior VP of insights and strategy at Horowitz Research, which has researched multicultural audiences for several decades.

Horowitz Research surveys show that multicultural audiences are embracing pay TV and digital technologies at higher rates than the normal population. For example, 42% of the population subscribes to a cable operator such as Comcast, but higher subscription rates than that can be found among African-Americans (50%), Asian-Americans (47%) and Hispanics (43%). Multicultural audiences are also avid consumers of streaming media, with 72% of African-Americans streaming weekly, 73% of Asian-Americans and 70% of Hispanics, versus 68% of the overall population, according to Horowitz. 

“Obviously viewers have been migrating to consume content on digital platforms, and COVID-19 has really has really accelerated that trend,” Romina Rosado, executive VP of entertainment and content strategy for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, said. “But some of these trends hit Hispanic media brands such as Telemundo in a different way, because our audience is just so much younger. The median age of the U.S. Hispanic is 29, which is significantly younger than the non-Hispanic white audience, and they are consuming content in completely different ways.”

That has helped produce a record-setting year on digital media, with streaming on the Telemundo app showing a 38% jump between January and November of 2020 compared to a year earlier. 

“We crossed 134 million followers this year on social media, and we’re seeing over 31 million engagements every month on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook,” Rosado noted. Telemundo also has about 11.3 million subscribers on YouTube, according to audience-based social media measurement firm Shareablee.

Despite the importance of multicultural customers with their avid consumption of video, a recent survey from Horowitz Research found widespread discontent with TV and the media. Fifty-one percent of African-American respondents, 36% of Hispanics, 64% of Asians and 58% of LGBTQ individuals said they are not represented enough in U.S. TV shows and movies. 

A Nielsen analysis of the 300 most-viewed programs on TV and streaming reinforced those perceptions. Even though Hispanics comprise 18.8% of the overall population, Hispanic talent appeared in only 5.1% of the screen time on broadcast TV programs, 3% on cable shows and 10.1% on SVOD programs. African-Americans, with 14.1% of the total population, were on screen just 7.8% of the time on cable shows, versus a 24.7% screen-time share on broadcast and 18.8% on SVOD. 

“I think 2020 has shown light on the fact that these audiences have not only been underserved and redlined,” Waterston said. “These audiences are well aware of the problems. If you are not doing the due diligence to understand what these different diverse groups need, then you need to examine the implicit biases or systemic structural reasons that are preventing you from addressing the needs of these consumers.”

The Latino-led management of Fuse Media headed by CEO Miguel Roggero has acquired a controlling stake in the company, which plans to create original content and become a minority-owned leader with the growing multicultural millennial and Gen-Z demographic.

Roggero’s management group acquired a majority interest from the private equity firms and hedge funds that owned Fuse after it emerged from bankruptcy last June. How much money changed hands was not disclosed. The private equity groups still have a minority stake in Fuse Media and will remain long-term investors, he said.

“It was important for us to take control and align the ownership with the leadership team with our target audience. There aren’t a lot of examples of that,” Roggero told Broadcasting+Cable. “A lot of times ownership wants you to go in this way when you want to go in that way and it can slightly dilute your focus. And so we don’t have that any more and we will continue with the mission that we started with 16 years ago.”

The Fuse management team includes Judi Lopez, head of content distribution; Fernando Romero, head of ad sales; Marc Leonard, head of programming; marketing chief Mark McIntire and Patrick Courtney, who runs digital.

The shift to minority ownership will be felt by the audience in subtle ways, Roggero said. 

“We probably will be able to go faster, be less distracted and do more,” he said. We’re a content company at the end of the day and we have a vast audience,” he said. “It’s the fastest-growing demographic in America and we have an opportunity to be the leading brand for this target audience. There’s a lot of white space and fertile ground. The election shows you the importance of this audience.”

The company’s new board  includes Latino business leaders Tony Nieves, president of marketing agency MARCA, and Emeli Colletta, former head of marketing for Univision Interactive.

”In a complex and diverse society, media plays an important role in amplifying authentic storytelling and Fuse Media does the work to ensure Latino representation in front of and behind the camera,” said Congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY), chair of the House Small Business Committee. “I’d like to congratulate them on their transition from Latino-led to Latino owned. Minority-owned businesses like Fuse Media are the heartbeat of our nation and the backbone of our economy,”

As a minority owned company, Fuse now may have access to additional financial resources as well as government and business set-aside programs. “I think that's an opportunity we have to explore,” Roggero said.

Fuse has a long history of ownership changes. It started in 1994 as MuchMusic USA, a joint venture of Cablevision’s Rainbow Media unit and CHUM Ltd. of Canada. CHUM sold its stake to Cablevision in 2000 and it rebranded in 2003 as Fuse, a music TV alternative to MTV. Fuse moved from Rainbow to Cablevision’s Madison Square Garden Co. in 2009.

Fuse was acquired for $226 million in 2014 by SiTV, backed by creative officer Jennifer Lopez. SiTV’s NuvoTV was merged with Fuse in 2015. The network lost distribution in 2018 and filed for bankruptcy in 2019. CEO Michael Schwimmer resigned and was replaced by Roggero, who had been COO and CFO.

The bankruptcy process let Fuse reduce its debt, Roggero said.

“That freed us everything and really just re-energized us. We emerged refreshed without the burden of debt and we’ve been full steam ahead,” he said.

Fuse will look to put more original content on its schedule. It creates much of its content through its own studio, which is more economical than buying from the outside. It also ensures that its programming consists of “the best entertaining and authentic stories that we can deliver to our audience,” Roggero said.

The company will also be focusing on expanding the Fuse brand oversees and is looking forward to the return of live events.

Fuse last year made a deal to create a branded channel on Pluto TV. It’s priority at this point is linear, but “as streaming platforms continue to grow, it’s definitely an area that’s important. We need to make sure we have a way to reach our audience across any platform.”

El Rey Network is adding a pair of new pop-culture evening talk shows, one built around East Los Angeles TV/radio personality Chuey Martinez and the other a geek-fandom panel show. They debut on Thursday, May 2, at 10 p.m. ET and 10:30 p.m. ET on the network. 

The Chuey Martinez Show (30 minutes) "aims to celebrate all things music, gaming, art, culture, and entertainment along with a healthy smattering of off-the-wall comedy and irreverent skits," El Rey Network said. El Rey Nation Show, also 30 minutes, will feature "a diverse ensemble of social media stars discussing and dissecting the worlds of gaming, film, and comic books. The talk show is an enthusiastic celebration of fan culture and full of impassioned opinions. It was created to tap into the larger pop-culture conversation and serve as a platform and a voice to the loyal viewers and all of El Rey Nation." Both are produced in Los Angeles.

“From its launch, El Rey Network has created opportunities for Latinos in front and behind the camera,” Daniel Tibbets, the president and general manager of El Rey Network. “We are continuing that mission by introducing our fans to the extraordinary talent featured on both of these new shows.”

The El Rey Nation Show panel features: Hector Navarro, who's worked with Geek & Sundry and Nerdist, hosted an animation podcast for Nickelodeon and currently can be seen on DC Daily; Kelly Nugent, an actor, comedian, gamer and podcaster who can be found GMing or Role Playing on HyperRPG and Saving Throw Show; Vanessa Gritton, a writer, stand-up comedian and sketch performer, notably with Nightchurch, a sketch horror-comedy team; Cameron Rice, a director and photographer who’s performed and written in the Los Angeles comedy scene as well as in the San Francisco Sketchfest, Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) and the Sacramento Comedy Festival; Vivian Martinez, a stand-up comedian from Los Angeles who has opened for Nick Thune and performs throughout the city; and Omar Najam, a writer, director and avid RPG player from the Bay Area who has performed improv and produced videos for companies such as Geek & Sundry, DC Comics, BBC America, FOX and Disney XD. 

El Rey Network is jointly owned by Robert Rodriguez and FactoryMade with a minority stake held by Univision Networks & Studios Inc.

Tears were flowing from the eyes of actress Gina Rodriguez as she talked about the final season of The CW’s Jane the Virgin during the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour.

When it debuted in 2014, Jane the Virgin was one of a few scripted series featuring a Latina lead, but by the time it departs this spring, it’ll have a lot of company.

Today, more TV programs are featuring people of color in leading roles and behind the television camera than ever before in the history of the medium.

In the 2016-17 television season, people of color comprised 21.5% of the lead actors in broadcast scripted series, according to the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report 2019. That’s up sharply from just 11.4% of lead actors in 2014.

That growth has been seen across the Hollywood strata. The success of shows featuring actors of color in lead roles or strong multicultural casts such as Jane the Virgin, ABC’s Black-ish and Starz’s Power — along with an increase in outlets offering diverse images and stories — has led to a proliferation of multicultural-themed television shows across streaming services, as well as broadcast and cable networks.

A Screen Reflecting Everything

“Once upon a time there was a very vanilla look at our world through three broadcast networks,” Marc Berman, editor of TV industry website Programming Insider, said. “Now with broadcast, cable and digital streaming services, television is beginning to resemble how the world really looks like, and that’s changed the face of television.”

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Despite the explosion in multicultural content, though, actors and creators of color remain cautiously optimistic that this growth period is not just a trend that will eventually phase out in a few years, as has happened in the past.

“I don’t know if we’re having a moment or a trend,” Tanya Saracho, showrunner and executive producer of Starz’s Latina-themed drama series Vida, said. “We’ve always gone in cycles regarding [inclusive] content — every so often we’re excited and say it’s great to see this and that show on the air, and then it goes away.”

For now, multicultural-themed TV programming is thriving. Nearly half of the top scripted broadcast series of the 2017-18 season in the 18-49 demo featured a multicultural lead character or prominently featured multicultural actors in its cast, led by NBC’s This Is Us and including Fox’s Empire and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, according to Nielsen.

On cable, Starz’s gritty crime drama Power — starring a predominantly multicultural cast and helmed by African-American director Courtney Kemp and hip-hop artist 50 Cent — is the second-most-watched series on premium television among adults 18-49 and the most watched among African-American viewers, according to Nielsen.

“Starz originals attract the most diverse audience of the premium networks with the highest composition of women and African-American audiences, and they also rank No. 1 in African-American households,” Starz president of programming Carmi Zlotnik said at the TCA tour.

Behind the camera, networks and streaming services are inking creators of color to lucrative, long-term production deals, from Netflix’s exclusive multiyear deal with Shonda Rhimes, to BET’s signing of prolific producer Tyler Perry to a long-term production deal, to Showtime’s first-look deal with Emmy award-winning producer Lena Waithe.

Showtime president of entertainment Gary Levine said shows such as Waithe’s inner-city drama The Chi — which launched its sophomore season this past Sunday (April 7) — have shown wide crossover appeal. The network has already greenlit a second Waithe series, How to Make Love to a Black Woman (Who May Be Working Through Some Sh*t).

“The Chi has enormous appeal for us — it’s by no means just African-American, so what we try to do is have a mix of shows and a creative portfolio that really offers a wide range of tastes and tones, and our goal is to make at least one of those shows your favorite show on television,” he said.

The result has been a substantial increase of multicultural images and storylines across scripted series on both digital and traditional platforms.

More Shows, More Roles

During the 2016-17 TV season, people of color doubled their share of lead roles in scripted fare on digital platforms to 21.3% in 2016-17 from 12.9% in 2015-16, according to the UCLA 2019 Hollywood Diversity Report. On cable, the number jumped to 21.3% from 20.2% and on broadcast, the number increased to 21.5% from 18.7% year to year.

The numbers mark the first time actors in lead roles surpassed the 20% mark across all platforms since UCLA began monitoring in 2011-12, according to the report.

Off screen, creators of color are also experiencing a major boom. The number of shows created by diverse writers and producers on broadcast TV more than doubled in five years to 9.4% from 4.2% in 2011-12, according to the study. For cable and digital, the numbers jumped to 11.2% and 16.5% in 2016-17 from 7.4% and 6.2% five years prior respectively, the report said.

Yet with all the advances made in the multicultural programming genre, there’s still some hesitation and fear among TV veterans that today’s boom is a momentary blip and, much as in past years, the momentum for such content will fade along with the images and storylines.

The most recent example of this came in the late 1990s, when upstart broadcast networks Fox, UPN and The WB launched a bevvy of mostly African-American led shows such as Living Single, Martin, Sister Sister, Girlfriends and In Living Color, only to jettison those shows for programming viewed as more appealing to a broader audience.

Vida’s Saracho is not ready to let her guard down about a repeat of what transpired nearly 20 years ago. Vida, which will launch its second season this May, features a mostly Latina production crew along with a predominantly Latinx cast.

“We need to see more of these shows to come out for proof — right now, we’re the only Latinx-themed show on prime cable,” she said. “We do have [FX comedy series] Atlanta, [HBO comedy series] Insecure and other [diverse] shows and I’m hopeful, but I’m not optimistic that we’re there yet.”

While stopping short of defining this a Golden Age of multicultural television, Programming Insider’s Berman said we’re in an age where the American population is represented more accurately on the small screen than in prior years.

“We’re getting there, but we’re not there yet,” he said. “But it definitely is an improved era of multiculturalism.”

Streaming Offers an Outlet

Actress Kim Fields, who starred in Fox’s 1990s comedy series Living Single as part of her 45-year career in the television industry, said the influx of streaming distributors like Netflix, Hulu and BritBox will continue to provide increased opportunities to showcase all images and stories to be showcased.

“The onslaught of these wonderful platforms provides more opportunities for distribution for me as an actor and a content provider,” said Fields, who is currently starring in BritBox’s comedy series Living the Dream. “I’m ecstatic over all the different playgrounds that have opened up.”

Network executives are also optimistic that more multicultural-themed programming is no longer a trend but is fully ingrained into the television industry’s business psyche.

“I believe that this is the way it’s going to go going forward and not just a trend or a moment in time,” OWN president Tina Perry said. The network is aggressively rolling out scripted content targeting African-American viewers, from established shows such as Greenleaf and Queen Sugar, to new series such as the Tarell Alvin McCraney-created series David Makes Man.

“When you look at productions like ours that are having huge ratings success with the commitment of having diversity and inclusion in front of and behind the camera, it’s undeniable that others in the industry have to think about behaving in the same way,” Perry said. “I think we’re onto something that’s going to last.”

Added Showtime’s Levine: “I don’t think this is a fad. … I think this is a long overdue broadening and deepening of the range of the characters and actors that are on all of our screens.”

Disney Channel’s comedy series A.N.T. Farm  was among the big winners of NAMIC’s annual Vision Awards, the diversity organization announced Wednesday.

A.N.T. Farm, which chronicles the exploits of kids attending an exceptional high school, won two Vision Awards, including Best Children’s show and a Best Comedy performance award for series star China Anne McClain. Overall, Disney was one of several networks garnering multiple 2014 Vision Awards, which recognizes achievements in multiethnic and cross-cultural television programming that best reflects the diversity of the global viewing audience.

ABC’s Scandal was the big winner in the Drama category, while Jeffrey Wright walked away with a Best Performance in a Drama award for his work in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.

The winners were announced via online, and all winning programs will be showcased via the 2014 NAMIC Vision Awards Winners Gallery, according to NAMIC.

The complete winners list for the 2014 NAMIC Vision Awards are as follows:

Animation

Doc McStuffins – Disney Junior

Awards and Honors

2013 HALO Awards – Nickelodeon

Children’s

A.N.T. Farm – Disney Channel

Comedy

Instant Mom – Nick@Nite

Best Performance – Comedy

China Anne McClain: A.N.T. Farm – Disney Channel

Digital Media – Short Form

East Los High – Hulu

Documentary

Girl Rising – CNN

Drama

Scandal –ABC

Best Performance Drama

Jeffrey Wright: Boardwalk Empire – HBO

Foreign Language

Triquis – ESPN Deportes

Lifestyle

Leading Women: Helene Gayle, CEO Care USA – CNN

News/Informational

America Tonight: The Other America – Al Jazeera America

Original Movie Or Special

CNN Special Projects: Power Of She – HLN

Reality

Six Little McGhees – OWN

Reality – Social Issues

Urban Dove Team – ESPN

Sports

Richie Parker: Drive – ESPN

Variety/Talk Show (tie)

Oprah’s Next Chaper – OWN/Harpo Studios

Real Time With Bill Maher – HBO