Soap with the bigger gay viewers

[Soapsuds]

I recently noticed that Nielsen has ratings for its gay viewers. I am sure it has been counted before this but not one hundred percent sure. Does anyone know which soap now and in the past had the bigger gay audience?

[te.]

I'm not surprised that they have some form of tracking of LGBT viewers - shows like Good Wife and Madam Secretary apparently are popular in high income households, Dynasty had a surprisingly large African-American audience in the 80s (hence them bringing on Dominique), AP Bio was renewed last season despite mediocre ratings because it had a large "college educated" audience etc etc. So it makes sense, but they of course rarely release these numbers to the general public since most people aren't interested.

[j swift]

I don't know if a "bigger gay viewer"  was preferred over a larger gay audience but to each their own.  I am always willing to listen to either big or small gays

 

April 8th was the first week that Nielsen recorded and released LGBTQ ratings.  They used the same antiquated guidelines for the selection of households.  Sample households had to watch on TV, not laptops or other devices.  And DVR viewing was recorded separately from on-demand viewing.  Also, they exclude Tivo users (it is in the Tivo contract), single men or women, anyone without a cable contract, and anyone who does not grocery shop at least twice a week or spends less than 10% of their income on consumer products (after all consumer data is what they are after).  Like the overall sample, it skews toward upper middle class, non-minority households.  In fact, there were less than 10% of African-American households in the LGBTQ sample, where is they are 12% of the total sample (that's why you have to read the footnotes).  Finally, they did not release daytime figures and it was a special event, not a weekly report, so there are no plans to follow this sample.

 

From Indiewire:

Perhaps the most interesting takeaway from these numbers is that for the most part, same-sex partner household tastes align with those of the general viewing public’s, with “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “Untucked” being the only notable exceptions. 

 

Listed below are the top 5 most-watched primetime shows on broadcast and cable among same-gender partner homes for the week of April 8, with overall viewership in parentheses. All numbers are live-plus-same-day.

Broadcast

1. NCAA Men’s Championship (CBS), 176,934 (19.72 million)
2. Survivor (CBS), 120,921 (7.6 million)
3. NCIS (CBS), 116,498 (11.82 million)
4. 60 Minutes (CBS), 96,273 (8.72 million)
5. Modern Family (ABC), 95,180 (4.81 million)
 

Cable

1. Game of Thrones (HBO), 191,135 (11.76 million)
2. The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC), 66,071 (2.55 million)
3. Untucked (VH1), 65,782 (405,989)
4. RuPaul’s Drag Race (VH1), 64,082 (402,516)
5. All In With Chris Hayes (MSNBC), 34,280 (1.57 million)
 

  I find it amusing that they point out RuPaul and not Rachel Maddow.  Also, it is disheartening to only be 1.7% of the audience of the top-rated show on cable.  That does not give us much marketing power.  Especially when 84% of RuPaul's audience does not identify as LGBTQ.  The whole exercise feels like an excuse for Nielsen to tell GLAAD that never have to repeat it.

[Soapsuds]

Oh geez...please grow up.....you know I didn't mean it that way.....lawd.....you're becoming tiresome very quickly with this and your EP thread mess...

[j swift]

Thanks for the link to an interesting, if slightly dispiriting article, and have a nice day.  I know it can be difficult to read people who disagree with you, but given your opinions, I'm sure you'll get used to it.

[Soapsuds]

You know what your full of....won't see it here. You come off like a real jerk on here buddy. It has nothing to do with your opinions on things.....

[juppiter]

I’m not surprised to see Survivor on there. It is apparent from the online community that a massive chunk of the fan base is gay. I don’t know why this is, but it’s interesting to see the data confirm what I’ve observed for many years. I’m thinking it’s big in Canada too because half the online fan base seems to be Canadian. 

[Gray Bunny]

Hmm... because all gay participants of Nielsen are going to admit they're gay?  What if said gay person is closeted and has a family of 5 but he's not open? Haha... I like the idea of counting LGBTQ representation, but I think the numbers could always be off. 

[j swift]

They choose a specific sample of gay households of GLAAD members only for that week because you're right they have no idea the sexual orientation of the entire sample

[dragonflies]

So they come out and ask people if they're a gay viewer? Seriously? That just doesn't seem right

[juppiter]

 

It makes sense when you think of who Nielsen ratings are for: advertisers. Gay couples tend to be higher income on average, so advertisers of high end products would want to know what they’re watching. 

[Soapsuds]

I use to be part of the Nielsen family a while back. I remember they sent me a questionnaire to be filled out and it asked age...race....m or f.....single or married....but I don't recall them asking if I was gay ....it asked how many lived with me......and who they were.....

Edit...of course if I said I lived with my bf or husband and put I was a male...well they of course figured out I was gay....LOL

[j swift]

I would be remiss if I didn't add this information,  according to UCLA’s Williams Institute:

1 in 5 gays and lesbians aged 18-44 receive food stamps and 29% of LGBTQ adults experience annual food insecurity.  It was published in an article titled The Myth of Gay Affluence which found that the LGBTQ community is actually disproportionally impoverished (linked). 

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-gay-affluence/284570/

 

The reason I would be remiss is that, according to the article, the myth that most gay couples are wealthy has been used more often as a reason to minimize our political standing (as just another group of privileged men) rather than reinforcing our marketing power.

 

GLAAD commissioned the one week Nielsen study of a separate sample of self-identified gay households randomly selected from the GLAAD membership because the usual weekly data is only reported in the aggregate.  In other words, Nielsen had never done a prior sample of same-sex households because they treat all households in their current sample the same; regardless of if they are married or roommates.   This is justifiable because (a) before this week nobody ever asked them to separate the sample and (b) in a daily sample of over 80,000 people meters, nobody is actually interpreting each individual data point in order to surmise their relationship status, they only report according to age, gender, race, and income.  This GLAAD survey makes it clear that Nielsen is not interested in further analysis of the current data unless you pay them the big bucks.

 

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, the finding that LGBT homes mirrored the larger sample (except for watching RuPaul and Rachel Maddow), probably indicates that there is no need to continue to study the LGBTQ sample differently from the aggregate.  However, I guess we could surmise from the data that LGBTQ households are watching the same programs in the daytime as the entire sample of daytime viewers, given that we're all watching the same thing in primetime