As Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month comes to a close, a new Horowitz Research study shows that streaming services are in position to take advantage of the growing appeal of content targeted to Asian TV viewers.  

Nearly six out of every 10 hours of viewing time among Asian Tv content viewers are spent watching streaming services, according to Horowitz’s Focus Asian Volume 2: Viewing Behaviors study. Overall, 69% of Asian viewers subscribe to at least one SVOD, with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus among the most popular services Asian viewers are also subscribing to Asian-targeted SVOD services such as Zee5, Voot, Rakuten Viki and OnDemandKorea.

Also, seven in 10 Asian TV content viewers are watching free streaming services, and 45% of viewers are viewing free, ad-supported streaming TV services (FAST) such as Tubi, Pluto TV and Samsung TV Plus, according to the survey. 

The report, conducted in April among 500 Asian TV content viewers, also stated that Asian-language content is very important to the Asian TV content viewers, with six in 10 watching Asian-language content at least occasionally, In addition, two in three Asian-language dominant/bilingual consumers reported that Asian-language content is important to them. 

“Clearly, there’s been an explosion of interest in Asian content – driven not only by Asian audiences but audiences in general,” Horowitz Research Insights & Strategy Lead and executive VP Adriana Waterston said. “As media companies continue to lean into the Asian content opportunity, we anticipate that this will lead to even more varied and diverse stories that represent the entirety of Asian experiences, cultures and communities globally and in the U.S.” 

A week after its May 27 launch, the HBO Max app ranked as No. 1 in the Apple TV App Store, according to research company App Annie.

Simultaneously, some pundits were knocking HBO Max’s performance in the mobile realm, with Sensor Tower reporting only 87,000 first-day downloads for the HBO Max app on iOS and Android.

Does that mean the new AT&T and WarnerMedia streaming service is a dud? Is it a hit? That’s real tough to say.

Given the complicated engineering of HBO Max distribution, it’s difficult to get a clear picture of the platform’s early performance. The typical comparison model — the Nov. 12 mega-successful launch of Disney Plus — is hardly applicable.

While The Walt Disney Co. rocked the media technology world by revealing that its brand new direct-to-consumer streaming service signed up 10 million paid users on its first day in the North American market, it’s unlikely WarnerMedia will be able to tout a similarly clean, simple tour de force benchmark.

For Disney Plus, every new app download could be tied to a new customer: There was no overplayed legacy “Disney Now” service to cloud the benchmarks. And Disney Plus distribution was primarily direct to consumer, occurring in widely visible OTT and mobile platforms, not diffused into proprietary pay TV systems.

Because HBO Max is overlaying the legacy HBO Now and HBO Go apps, things are confusing.

For example, the Sensor Tower mobile app figure is somewhat misleading. It doesn’t include Max updates to WarnerMedia’s legacy HBO apps. HBO Now has infiltrated millions of smartphones since launching back in 2015, and was averaging around 16,000 app downloads per day before the launch of Max. Another way to look at it: the launch of HBO Max spiked daily WarnerMedia OTT app installs by 71,000 downloads.

In the connected TV realm, HBO Max measurement is even more shrouded.

Start with the fact that WarnerMedia has not been able to strike agreements to include HBO Max in the top two OTT device ecosystems, Roku and Amazon Fire TV.

The high ranking on Apple TV— one of the bigger OTT device ecosystems — does indicate high living-room demand for the $14.99-a-month WarnerMedia subscription video service.

Much of HBO Max’s distribution is tied to linear pay TV services, with a WarnerMedia spokesperson telling Yahoo Finance, “HBO subscribers of our distribution partners—Comcast, Charter, Cox, Altice, Verizon and others all had immediate access to HBO Max on the day of launch.”

Indeed, with the HBO Max natively integrated into the proprietary video systems of these operators that don’t use off-the-shelf OTT devices, such as Altice One, it’s hard to get a clear picture as to how many pay TV users are accessing the service in these early days.

“This is a unique platform in many ways, including the way it is distributed,” recently appointed WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said in a statement. 

We’ve heard loudly from both Roku and Amazon that their respective connected-TV platforms each have around 40 million active users globally.

According to research company Conviva, Roku-enabled smart TVs, boxes and sticks made up 44% of U.S. connected-TV viewing time in the first quarter, while Fire TV usage accounted for 19%.

But what about the fast-rising Android TV platform?

Conviva doesn’t even include Android TV in its connected-TV device rankings (there’s a small category called “other” that accounted for 3% of OTT usage in Q1). And while Google actively touts how many users there are globally for its Android-branded smartphone operating system (2.5 billion), it doesn’t talk much about Android TV, outside of its pay TV operator partnerships for the platform (more than 160 globally at last count).

Three percent or less seems awful low for a device ecosystem that not only controls a lot of pay TV set-tops (such as those associated with the new AT&T TV service) and smart TVs and a lot of niche connected-TV devices, notably Dish Network’s AirTV, Xiaomi Mi and NVIDIA Shield.

Consider Google’s latest revelation: 50 million active YouTube accounts have been initiated via Android TV since the app was first introduced in the Google Play Store on Android TV back in 2015.

This isn’t just a measurement of how many times the app has been downloaded for various devices. It’s the number of accounts that have been established from an initial app download.

The number is meaningful, in that it suggests that usage of Android TV, at least globally, might be somewhere on par with Roku and Fire TV.

Of course, the 50 million figure would mean more if there was something to triangulate against. The next most popular Google Play Store app on Android TV is Chromecast, which has been downloaded to 10 million accounts. Google doesn’t include any signposts from 10 million to 50 million, however.

Cable news networks are leading a surge in TV viewing as more people are staying home and tuning in because of the Coronavirus crisis, according to data from Comscore.

Comscore says that cable news viewing was up 73% in the week of March 16, compared to the same week a year ago. They are also up 39.8% from a month ago and 7.8% from the previous week.

The biggest increases for the seven news networks tracked by Comscore came in daytime and early fringe.

With the stock market plunging, financial news networks, in particular, were drawing viewers. The two highest networks were up 95% from last year, with an 137% increase in daytime. Comscore did not identify the two of the “highest rated financial news networks” it looked at, but they were most likely CNBC and Fox Business.

The Big Four broadcast networks have seen a 19% increase in viewing compared to a year ago, reversing a long-term trend of viewership erosion. In primetime, the broadcast networks are up 9.4% from a year ago and 3.5% from the previous month, but down 0.7% from the prior week.

The broadcast networks’ biggest gains were in early fringe and daytime. Overnight rating were down as the networks’ late night shows were mainly in reruns.

With most schools closed, children’s programming was up 31%, with a 30.6% gain in daytime. 

African-Americans -- already voracious consumers of video content -- also over index in their use of apps on their smartphones, according to a new Nielsen Media Pulse report.

African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian American adults spend more than 2 hours and 20 minutes per day using apps or accessing the web on their smartphones, above the 2 hours and 19 minutes generated by the total U.S. population, according to Nielsen. African-Americans however, are driving the trend, averaging 2 hours and 47 minutes on smartphones -- more than any other individual group, said Nielsen.

The high use smartphones by African-Americans to access apps and the web isn’t surprising given the group’s overall consumption of media across all platforms. 

African-Americans dwarf all other groups in per day usage across all media -- including live TV viewing, radio listening, and use of TV connected devices and smartphones -- averaging nearly 12 hours and 50 minutes of media consumption. That’s 23% more time than the average adult, according to Nielsen’s most recent Total Audience report for second quarter 2018.

Further, African-Americans spend more than seven and a half hours per day viewing video across all platforms, two hours more than the average viewer, reported Nielsen.

In other Nielsen’s Media Pulse report findings, Asian-Americans are more proficient when it comes to tablet use. The group spends at least 45 minutes per day using a tablet, outpacing all other groups as well as the total U.S. population.

Also, adult women spend 6% more time using handheld platforms for apps and accessing the web than men, according to the Nielsen report.

With a new president generating a lot of attention, news viewing rose 6% in 2017, according to an analysis of Nielsen figures by analyst Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group.

Sports viewing declined 12% in a year without the Olympics. Removing the Olympics from the equation, sports viewing was still down 6%, Wieser said in a report Wednesday (Jan. 3).

News and sports are key categories for TV, accounting for about 23% of all viewing, based on live-plus-same-day metrics. Those two categories are mostly viewed live, as opposed to entertainment programming, which is increasingly viewed on a delayed basis or on demand.

“News is important for media owners because of the absolute scale of the genre, its potential for profitability, the political influence that follows from these divisions and because of the significant growth they have recorded in recent periods,” Wieser said.

Related: New Year, New Trump Attacks on Media

In the news segment, Weiser said NBCU’s MSNBC was the biggest beneficiary of the surge in news viewing, gaining 49%. Fox News Channel viewership grew 8%, and CNN rose 4%. Overall, viewing of the three big cable news networks was up 15%.

The big three broadcast networks’ news programming was down 7%.

Among individual shows, ABC’s Good Morning America was most popular, but was down 12% year over year. The second most popular news show was Fox News’s Fox & Friends, which was up 25%.

"In contrast to news, sports has struggled generally, although the genre still remains an important source of viewing of traditional TV," Wieser said. "In aggregate, it represents an outsized source of costs, revenues and strategic leverage between networks and distributors."

Disney networks, including ESPN, accounted for 33% of all sports viewing; nonetheless, sports viewing on Disney-owned nets was down 8% despite a 1% increase in programming hours.

Related: Return to New Year’s Day Boosts ESPN's Bowl Games

NBCU properties accounted for 16% of sports viewing and were down 39% because of the absence of Olympic programming. Viewing was down 11% on average in non-Olympic weeks on NBCU networks.

Fox-owned networks had a 21% share of sports viewing, and average viewership was up 13%, thanks in part to the Super Bowl.

Football accounted for 42% of sports viewing, with NFL programming generating 27% of total consumption. NFL viewing was down 8% despite 9% more programming hours. College football programming accounted for 12% of consumption and was flat year to year.

ESPN has been looking into the way politics has affected its viewership, and the network’s latest research indicates little impact.

A survey conducted May 3-7 by Langer Research Associates for ESPN found that about 64% of those responding believed ESPN was “getting it right” in terms of mixing sports news and political issues. About 10% said they had no opinion, and 8% said ESPN does not cover enough politics in its programming.

Related > Iger: ESPN’s Eyes Wide Open

ESPN said the survey found that the portion of viewers who see political bias in ESPN programming is unchanged since the survey was last conducted in October 2016.

Since the presidential election, numerous press reports have tied ESPN's declining subscriber count and lower ratings for its studio shows to a left-wing bias, indicated in part by the number of women and minorities it employs as anchors.

In May a study by research company Deep Root Analytics that found that Republican viewers were disproportionately tuning out ESPN.

Related > Live Sports Still Score Big-Time on Cable

In a blog post, ESPN said its study found that of those who see a bias, 30% said ESPN expresses a conservative viewpoint. And those who identify themselves as conservative or Republican rate ESPN higher than in October.

ESPN also noted that in 2016, for the third straight year, it was the highest-rate full-time cable network among adults and men in the 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54 age brackets.

Set-top box data on viewership is becoming an increasingly important tool in programming carriage negotiations, Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit told an industry audience Thursday, adding that while it hasn’t totally swung the pendulum in favor of distributors, it has given them a new tool to determine a network’s worth.

 “What’s happening is we’re going into the conversations with much more data, and more facts and we’re better informed over the value prop of the content and that makes a big difference,” Smit said at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications conference in New York. “Good content is always something we’re going to want more of; comprehensive content and across more platforms.”

Smit stopped short of claiming that the pendulum has swung in favor of distributors over content providers, but added that as programming is spread out over several different platforms its worth can be diluted.

“As it goes out across OTT players and whatnot, it can diminish the value to us because it’s less concentrated,” Smit said.

Smit said he believes OTT isn’t going away any time soon, but said it “I think there are going to be a handful of players revolving around the space,” Smit said.  “We haven’t seen a model yet that is as profitable for us as packaging video within our footprint with HSD or phone or home security. We think the best return for our dollar is delivering within our footprint.”

While new OTT services seem to come on the scene every day – Hulu, of which Comcast is a part owner, recently announced plans for its own OTT service – Smit isn’t convinced an out-of-market play is in the cards for the operator.  

“We get the best return out of the capital we’ve already invested into the network where we pass 45 million to 55 million homes where we’re only 42% to 43% penetrated,” Smit said. “We see a lot of growth in that.”

Derek Jeter's last season for the New York Yankees helped the club's regional sports network become the most-watched of those services in the nation for the 11th time in 12 years.

YES Network rang up double-digit gains in both primetime and total-day within the New York DMA during 2014.

YES’ scored a 16% rise in average primetime delivery to 58,000 households in the DMA from Dec. 20, 2013 through Dec. 28, 2014, up from 50,000 during Nielsen's 2013. According to YES officials, that was 23% more than the second-most-watched RSN in the country.

On the demo watch, YES registered advances of 22% and 16% among men 25 to 54 and persons of that age, respectively.

Measured on a total-day basis, the RSN, which also televises Brooklyn Nets' NBA games, posted a 10% gain to 23,000 households in 2014,, an average that was 44% great than the RSN runner-up. Deliveries for men 18 to 49 and persons 18 to 49 climbed at 17% and 13% clips in 204.

·      

For their part, Yankees' game telecasts grew 15% to 223,000 New York DMA households from 194,000 in the 2013 campaign. Demo growth was ever greater: men 25 to 54 improved 28%; men 18+ jumped 20%; adults 25 to 54 increased 20%; persons 2+ were ahead 18%; and persons 18 and older moved up 17%.

Bronx Bombers' support programming also connected in 2014:  the pregame shows rose 25% to 45,000 from 36,000 in 2013, while post-game coverage advanced 23% to 86,000 from 70,000.

Yankees Batting Practice Today on YES enjoyed a 6% year-over-year increase to 18,000 in 2014 from 17,000.

Jeter’s final game at Yankee Stadium last Sept. 25 -- the captain delivered a game-winning single to right in the bottom of the ninth -- was the most-viewed program ever on the YES Network, averaging a 10.84 rating and 1.25 million viewers in the New York DMA.  The game telecast peaked at 1.99 million viewers from 10:15 to 10:30 p.m. (ET)  and a16.55 average rating, making it  the most-viewed quarter-hour in YES’ history 

·     

YES officials believe the Jeterian Yankee Stadium finale is the most-watched game in the history of RSNs.

Cord-cutting has proven to be much less of an issue than many people were predicting just a few years ago, prompting some analysts to raise their projections for multichannel subscribers. But if the cord isn’t getting widely cut, the business models that have long sustained the multichannel TV industry are showing some signs of fraying, with the launch of new over-the-top ventures from Sony, Dish Network, CBS and HBO.

How successful these products will be remains open to question, given the problems faced by some earlier OTT offerings like Redbox Instant, which was shut down last year. But the plans are a clear sign of widespread unease about the growth potential of multichannel TV in an era in which Magna Global’s upwardly revised multichannel counts still show a drop from 103.6 million in 2014 to 102.9 million in 2019.

In the light of those worries, we hope that Multichannel News’s annual Viewer Watch Special Report, with its focus on the impact of the changing use of video, will be even more valuable than ever in helping our readers navigate changing audiences in 2015 and beyond.

As in earlier years, the report includes an extensive compilation of data covering virtually every aspect of the pay TV industry, from trends in multichannel subscribers and over-the-top homes to online video ad projections and the use of new consumer electronics devices. In addition, it includes two features based on extensive interviews with more than two dozen top TV executives and researchers.

As always, the goal has been to dig deeply into the data to uncover insights that often upend conventional wisdom about consumer trends and to provide readers with a deeper understanding of how the business is really changing.

Like previous versions of this annual report, this year’s Viewer Watch was made possible with the help of a number of researchers. Among the research organizations that were particularly helpful in providing data were Horowitz Associates, Magna Global, PwC, Frank N. Magid Associates, Nielsen, Fox Cable Networks (which compiled some Nielsen ratings data for this report), and NBCUniversal president of media research and development Alan Wurtzel, (who provided some charts).

Contributor George Winslow compiled the data, conducted the interviews and wrote the articles.

To view the full Viewer Watch report, please click here.

It was a good year in Bristol, Conn., where ESPN topped the Nielsen primetime charts among total viewers.

But that wasn’t the case for most of cable’s top 25 networks in 2014. Whether they lost eyeballs to original fare on Netflix, other unmeasurables on video-on-demand, tablets and mobile platforms, viewership that extended beyond  live+7 metrics or watchers who strayed to smaller networks, 18 of cable’s top 25 channels took it on the chin, losing footing versus 2013 levels – with notables like No. 2 USA Network, No. 4 Disney Channel, No. 5 History and No. 6 TBS all sustaining double-digit erosion.

For its part, ESPN saw its primetime audience edge increase 5% to 2.32 million viewers from 2.21 million in 2013, when it finished third, behind its puissant array of pro and college pigskin games.

Other gainers, according to a Disney Media Networks analysis of Nielsen data -- live +7 from Dec. 30, 2013 through Dec. 14, 2014 and live+same-day from Dec. 15 through Dec. 28 – were ninth-ranked Discovery, up 2% to 1.39 million viewers from 1.37 million in 2013, and No. 10 HGTV, which grew 5% to 1.34 million from 1.28 million.

Elsewhere, No. 18 TLC inched up 1% to 1.07 million from 1.06 million. Spike rose 4% to 905,000 from 873,000 to finish 22nd, ahead of No. 23 Hallmark Channel, which benefited from a strong performance from its cadre of Christmas movies, to notch 3% improvement to 894,000 from 868,000 in 2013. ID, though, was the big gainer, scoring a 13% advance to 821,000 watchers from 724,000, as it ranked 24th overall.

For the rest of the top 25, the numbers skewed wrong.  No. 2 USA fell from its usual top perch, shedding 21% to 2.13 million watchers from a sector-best 2.69 million in 2013. With its competitors losing more ground, TNT moved up from fifth to third, averaging 1.99 million, 4% less than its 2.08 million mark the prior year. Leading the pack, TNT registered six of basic cable's top 15 original dramas, with stalwarts like Rizzoli & Isles, joined by newcomers The Last Ship and The Librarians. 

Sliding from second in 2013, fourth-ranked Disney Channel saw its total viewership decline 22% to 1.91 million from 2.44 million, while fifth-place History was off 14% to 1.82 million from 2.02 million in 2013, when it ranked fourth.  TBS stayed sixth, even though it decreased 10% to 1.817 million from 2.02 million.

ESPN and USA were the only cable networks to average more than 2 million watchers in primetime during 2014, versus six the prior year.

Cable news leader Fox News Channel lost 1% of its average audience to 1.78 million from 1.79 million, but remained in seventh place. FX maintained its eighth-place spot, despite a 4% decrease to 1.40 million watchers from 1.47 million.  

Missing the bump from the final run of Emmy winner Breaking Bad,  11th-ranked AMC dropped 4% to 1.33 million from 1.39 million, despite the runaway success of The Walking Dead, which tallied 16 of cable’s largest  20 audiences in 2014.

Cartoon Network was 12th with 1.28 million, down 8% from 1.40 million in 2013. A&E, seeing docuseries hit Duck Dynasty cool, plummeted 30% to 1.26 million from 1.79 million.

ABC Family was No. 14, dipping 2% to 1.20 million from 1.22 million, ahead of Syfy, which lost 7% to 1.113 million from 1.19 million, despite the publicity and social whirl for the second Sharknado telefilm.

No. 16 Lifetime and No. 17 Adult Swim were both off 13% to 1.111 million and 1.08 million. While No. 18 TLC pushed up, the next three services, Food Network, Nick at Nite and Bravo, receded at respective clips of 5%, 2% and 4% to 1.067 million, 1.065 million and 968,000 watchers.

With Spike, Hallmark and ID all to the good, MTV was the last member of cable’s top 25 to retreat, down 4% to 778,000 from 813,000.