A new frontier for ethnic media

The Good: Ethnic media readership is growing

The Great: Which means ethnic media can reach more people and grow too

The Even Better: Which means more coverage of issues related to these minority groups

This ethnic-media-usage poll was commissioned by San Francisco-based New America Media and designed and coordinated by Florida-based Bendixen & Associates. A National Study on the Penetration of Ethnic Media in America was a telephone poll of 1,329 people in three broad ethnic categories: African-American (400), Hispanic (400) and Asian-American (529). To accommodate language barriers, the study incorporated eight languages: English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese, Hindi and Tagalog.

Sergio Bendixen of Florida-based Bendixen & Associates, speaks about the ethnic media usage poll at the New America Media's National Ethnic Media EXPO & Awards in Atlanta, June 2009.

Sergio Bendixen, of Florida-based Bendixen & Associates, speaks about the ethnic media usage poll at New America Media's National Ethnic Media EXPO & Awards in Atlanta, June 2009. PHOTO BY NEW AMERICA MEDIA

The study examined the usage of ethnic media among the 69.2 million U.S. adults who are African-American, Hispanic or Asian-American (which includes Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino and Indian). Overall, the adult ethnic population has grown by 8 million since the last national study in 2005.

The significance:

Ethnic media reach 82 percent of their audience, or 57 million adults, who fall into the three ethnic groups, a 16 percent increase from 49 million adults in the 2005 study.

Television:

Television programming aimed at Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino adults has grown 30 percent since 2005.
The poll found that news coverage of the native country was one of the main reasons Asian-Americans watch ethnic television.
Spanish language television headed by Universal and Telemundo have expanded as well.
The poll found more adults in each ethnic group have cable or satellite service at home too.

Radio:

Spanish language radio has grown in states such as North Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Washington and New Hampshire, where the Hispanic population has also expanded.
African-American radio has grown their audience to reach two-thirds of their demographic.
Asian-American radio now reaches one-fourth of their audience.

Newspaper:

Newspapers across all ethnic groups have expanded circulation, increased frequency of distribution or otherwise grown in the past four years.
Chinese newspapers reach 70 percent of their ethnic group; Korean newspapers reach 64 percent of their ethnic group.
Spanish language newspapers reach more than one-third of Hispanic adults.

Online:

Web sites aimed at Hispanic (in Spanish) and African-American adults have grown since 2005 but only one-fifth of these adults actually visit these sites.
More than half of Chinese adults visit sites in Cantonese or Mandarin and one-third of Korean and Vietnamese adults regularly visit sites in their native language.

English Language:

2.8 million Hispanic adults and 500,000 Asian-American adults (mostly Filipinos and Indians) get their news regularly from English-based publications that cater just to their ethnic group.

Browse the graphs above for more information. To find out more about the study, take a look at their poll presentation.