All ethnic groups are represented in Nielsen Media Research's samples in proportion to their percentage of the population being measured. Target marketers require detailed and frequent information about the characteristics of ethnic audiences in order to make intelligent advertising and programming decisions.

African-Americans are the largest minority segment of the U.S. television household population, comprising approximately 12.87 percent of the 108.4 million TV households. Nielsen Media Research includes African-American television audience viewing data as a standard reported category in its national reports. This information enables the media industry to evaluate African-American viewing patterns and preferences and make informed advertising and programming decisions.  African Americans generally watch more television than any other segment of the population, and their viewing behavior, in terms of the most watched television programs, differs from the rest of the population (see African-American Audience).

In the fall of 1992, Nielsen Media Research launched the first national Hispanic-American television service (Nielsen Hispanic-American Television Index) in the U.S. designed to measure the diverse viewing habits among Hispanic-Americans living in the United States and to report their viewing to Spanish and English television sources. The viewing habits of this population, in total and separately, in homes where Spanish is the only or dominant language spoken, are now reported on a national level. Separate samples of Hispanic-American households are used to collect information about local-market viewing (see Hispanic-American Audience).

While Nielsen Media Research regularly reports the viewing estimates of just the two largest ethnic audiences, custom analyses are available on other ethnic segments of the television audience upon request.

  Sampling...