At this point, it should be no surprise that representation is important in television, but Samba TV is highlighting how more diverse casts can benefit studios in its State of Diversity report from Samba TV.
One of the report’s key takeaways after examining viewing patterns for households of different ethnicities is that audiences are much more likely to engage with content where they see themselves represented. More specifically, the study found a positive correlation of 43% among households of diverse ethnicities watching programs with higher percentages of non-white stars.
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Samba reports that Black households saw the strongest correlation, with 67% watching programs with a higher percentage of Black leads.
For Asian and Hispanic households, this correlation was lower, which Samba conjectures may be impacted by a more “sporadic” representation for these groups on screen.
Overall, this correlation was higher on streaming, where the positive correlation between diverse households watching shows with diverse leads was 53%. On linear, that number was 38%. However, linear was heavily boosted by Black households, which were extremely likely to watch cable and broadcast programming with Black leads. More than one in four of the lead actors on linear television was Black, led by series like Snowfall and BMF, which ultimately paid off by encouraging Black viewers to tune in.
Hispanic households also had a stronger positive correlation to linear television, though it was far lower than for Black households. As for Asian households, they were more likely to find their representation on streaming — led by the success of series like Beef, which Samba says over indexed among Asians.
Despite these findings, non-white leads in TV are still incredibly hard to come by. Within the top 50 TV shows, 42% of top-billed actors were Hispanic, Black, Asian, or another ethnicity such as mixed, while 58% were white, according to Samba.
Black leads made up 14%, which was the second highest in terms of representation. Hispanic actors were dramatically underrepresented, making up only 10% of TV leads despite comprising nearly 20% of the population. That goes for both linear and streaming.
Samba specifically praised Netflix for leaning into more diverse casts in series like Beef, Sweet Tooth, Shadow and Bone, Obsession and Kaleidescope.
“The data shows that greater on-screen representation will tend to increase viewership overall and among diverse populations,” said Samba TV CEO and co-founder Ashwin Navin. “Audiences are deeply connected to what they watch on TV. Although we live in the golden age of content, diversity on-screen still does not adequately represent the population in all its identities.”
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