Black Is Beautiful

Why Female African-American Viewers Are So Hot

By R. THOMAS UMSTEAD -- Multichannel News, 11/21/2011 12:01:00 AM

During the Nov. 10 second-season premiere of We TV’s breakout reality-series hit Braxton Family Values, Evelyn Braxton was adamant that the television success that she and her five talented daughters experienced over the past year would not go to their heads and cause a rift between siblings. “[Success] can divide a family and I’m not having it,” a forceful Braxton said.

Yet the success of shows like Braxton Family Values, Basketball Wives, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, Love That Girl! and The Game are helping cable networks and advertisers unite in their effort to reach one of the industry’s emerging demographics: African-American women.

Networks such as We, VH1, Bravo, TBS and of course TV One and BET are courting influential 18-to-49-year-old African-American female viewers — who watch more television than any other demographic — with mostly reality- based programming prominently featuring black women like the Braxton clan. We TV has even dedicated a new night of original programming to shows aimed at African-American females, featuring Braxton Family Values and the upcoming reality series Mary, Mary, based on the lives of the famed gospel duo.

Advertisers are also targeting the demo, whose members have emerged as the primary decision-makers for an African-American consumer base whose buying power is projected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2015, according to Nielsen.

They don’t tune into just any programming on the cable dial, however. African-American women are very discerning about what they watch, almost exclusively choosing shows with black women in prominent roles that mirror their own lives and life experiences.

From Dr. Melanie Barnett’s difficult decision to put her medical career on hold to become a football player’s wife on BET’s top rated dramedy The Game, to diva-esque Tamar Braxton’s efforts to launch a solo music career to the chagrin of her talented sisters on Braxton Family Values, African-American women know what they like and watch it in abundance.

“Television plays a very important role in their lives,” TV One CEO Wonya Lucas said. “TV is more than just a companion. It’s how they gain knowledge and a place where they can see themselves in different situations that enrich their lives and engages them. That equals a valuable audience.”

BIG VIEWERS

It’s no secret that African-American viewers are heavy TV users — they watch 40% more television than any other group, according to Cynthia Perkins-Roberts, vice president for multicultural marketing for the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, which recently launched an African-American-based consumer research website, reachingblackconsumers.com.

What’s not well-known is that African-American women far outpace all demos in television viewing. They watch an average of 25 hours of television per month — 25% more than white women, the next-highest category, and more than twice as much as Latino women, according to Nielsen.

African-American women are also emerging as an increasingly affluent base of financial decision-makers, a category advertisers covet. They head up nearly half of all homes within the black community, according to the 2010 Census, and view themselves as the primary decision-makers across virtually all consumer segments, according to Nielsen.

Last year, cable-TV networks generated the lion’s share of national advertising dollars aimed at African-American audiences — an ad spend that was up 17% from 2009. Much of that gain was due to the growing advertiser appeal of female African-American viewers, according to Nielsen.

“Women in particular have become a valuable target, and as advertisers become more sophisticated, they’ve looked at parsing segments of the audience — if you can meet the significant needs of the advertiser by providing programming to that segment, then you would benefit from it,” media buyer Bill Carroll, vice president and director of programming for Katz Media Group, said.

Valuable, that is, for those networks that have successfully targeted the demo with content that reflects African-American women’s lives and images on-screen.

“The audience connects with the characters and connects with the shows — they feel like they know them,” Jeff Olde, executive vice president of original programming and production for VH1, said.

Four of VH1’s reality programs are among the 10 most-watched series among African-American women in 2011. Leading the way: Two iterations of the Basketball Wives reality franchise — about mostly African-American women who have been romantically linked to pro basketball players — and scripted series Single Ladies, which follows three multiethnic BFFs who have differing views on love and relationships. The other is La La’s Full Court Life, about La La (Mrs. Carmelo) Anthony.

Olde said his network is focused on giving African-American women what they want to see, so it has quickly turned around new seasons of Basketball Wives — now in production on its fourth season after debuting in 2010 — to keep the audience tuning in. Single Ladies will also return for its sophomore campaign in 2012.

While Bravo isn’t specifically targeting African-American women, it is certainly aware of its appeal for the group, especially with its Real Housewives franchise and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. The series, which prominently features several affluent Hotlanta-based African- American women, is the second-most watched show in the demographic category, according to Nielsen.

“There are more and more African-American women holding the purse strings and becoming more affluent, so you go directly to that segment, as we would toward other segments,” Ellen Stone, senior vice president of marketing for Bravo Media, said.

In November, Bravo will launch Chef Roblé & Co., which takes a behind the scenes look at famed cook Roblé Ali and his Brooklyn-based, family-run catering business. The show will premiere after Real Housewives of Atlanta, giving Bravo a two-hour block of programming on Sunday nights targeted specifically to African-American women.

We TV will take its commitment to African-American women a step further by offering year-round original content on Thursday nights targeted specifically to the demo. Its Thursday primetime programming block began Nov. 10 with the season-two premiere of Braxton Family Values, which has a rare 19-episode commitment, according to We TV president Kim Martin.

Braxton Family Values, which documents the often turbulent relationship R&B singer Toni Braxton shares with her mother and five sisters, turned in a network record-setting performance during its second season launch, drawing 1.2 million viewers and 756,000 African-American females.

“We realized that with Braxton Family Values we’re reaching an underserved audience of African-American women, and there just isn’t enough programming on television today to speak to the audience,” Martin said, adding that African-American women over-indexed on viewership for We TV’s various wedding shows.

The network will follow Braxton Family Values on Thursday nights in 2012 with a new series featuring Erica and Tina Campbell, who make up the famed gospel group “Mary, Mary.”

For networks like TV One and BET, targeting African-American women is nothing new.

With African-American women making up 60% of the audience, BET understands fully how important and influential the demo is, BET Networks CEO Debra Lee said. Driven by African-American women, BET’s football-themed scripted series The Game remains the most watched comedy series in cable history and the most watched show among the demo in 2011, according to Nielsen.

The Game, cancelled by The CW after three years on broadcast TV and picked up by BET, will begin its second season this January with a 26-episode order, Lee said.

In 2012 BET will look to further draw African-American women through the crime and justice genre with the production of an original whodunit mystery movie starring Lorenz Tate, set for the first quarter, Lee said.

BREAKING BOUNDARIES

TV One will also tap the crime drama, greenlighting Find Our Missing, a documentary reality series about missing African-Americans around the country.

As for competition from more mainstream networks, Lucas said that there’s more than enough room for quality programming targeted to African-American women.

“I think African-American women are more represented on television today, but I think there will always be a need for having a lot of African-American programming on television, because we are the bulk of TV viewership,” Lucas said.