Time After Time/Soap World

So it has been said for quite a many years now that African American women make up the predominate soap viewing audience.  Yet, I was unable to find the numbers.  Numbers say a lot and soap magazine's like Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly were the ones who broke the news around the end of the 20th century.  Nobody listened or even cared.  Fast forward to Novemeber 2008 and then Conde Nast Portfolio a business magazine points out in an article where they talk about how the recession is hitting the soap industry that again African American women are a large segment soap viewers.  Again there are no numbers that allow the readers to see just how large this demographic is.  Move a head again to 2009 and SOW Editor Mala Bhattacharjee writes a whole blog piece on the lack of diversity in the soap genre and she even states that African American women are the predominate audience watching soaps with no numbers to tell us how big that audience is.  So after months and months of trying to get down to the exact numbers of soap viewership by race I was finally able to get a hold of something on paper. 

BIGresearch a media market intelligence company conducts some research findings that were released back in 2007.  Their research project was in no way actually related to soaps alone.  It actually was to see if women watch soaps or sports more.  Sports won out.  That part of the research aside they provided a chart that broke down women by race and finally I had the cold hard evidence to present to the world. 

The Nelsen Media Group had done some research as well and come to the same conclusions.  Yet recent developments in general about their lack of recording true viewers and a lawsuit puts their credibility on the line.  

So below is the information you have been looking for.  Take a look at the chart and read further as I break it down for you. 

Chart Explained: (This is a psycho-social profile)

• Hispanic/Latino

• Latino women tend to watch Spanish Telenovelas more than they do American soaps.
  
• Telenovelas are more popular because they generally last between 12 weeks or 3 months.  There are a few exceptions to the rules, but telenovelas have a beginning, a middle, and an end. 
  
• More Latino women are less likely to watch American soaps as they air in the daytime versesTelenovelas that air at night.
  

• African American women make up the largest segment of viewers of American soaps at 53.8% verses 36.3 for whites. 
  
• The largest age demographic in this group is 40+ in age. 
  
• African American women are the loyalist soap viewers and are more likely to continue watching a show even when it is poorly written.  
• It is important to note that just like with some sports where African Americans are the dominate players even though they only making up 13.5 % of the entire US population, the same is true with soaps. 
  

• Asians make up 5% of the total US population.  In cotrasts to African American women though Asians make up the smallest segment of the American soap audience. 
  

• Caucasian viewership has steadily declined over several decades.  
• Caucasian women are more likely to stop watching soaps as a response to poor writing and loss of popular actors.  
• Caucasian women are more vocal about their critism of soaps which leads to the decline this segment.
• Caucasian women are less likely to return to watching soaps once they have stopped.
  

Notes:

• African American women are use to seeing soaps with mostly Caucasian cast and thus are not as affected with the loss of a Caucasian actor. 
  
• The historic issue of racism in America leads many African American viewers to believe that things won't change and that the continued marginalization in the soap genre is indicative of the systemic racism many face in their daily lives. 
  
• The only evidence of a decline of African American women watching soaps were the losses of Shemar Moore where The Young and The Restless lost 1 million viewers within a month of the actors first exit from the show and the other was Victoria Rowell where Y&R lost 200,000 viewers after her most recent exit.  
• An attempt at American versions of the telenovela genre on MYTV Netowrk was poorly recieved and lack the ratings to sustain itself.  They have since been discontinued. 
  
• The American novelas were unable to gain a strong following amoung the entire female audience it targets. 
  
• Latino women were especially less interested in this version.  
• All of the MYTV Network American telenovelas featured a mostly Caucasian leading cast and often a racially ambigious latina, south east and/or a middle eastern Asian female as the main object of interest.  

What are your thoughts on these findings?