Noted TV ratings survey company Nielsen just released its first results for tracking the viewing habits of same-sex households. In a big surprise, the shows watched by queer people, wait for it, really weren’t all that different from straight folks.
Game of Thrones ranked first among cable programs in surveyed same-sex households, while the NCAA Basketball Championships came in first among the major networks. The same two shows also proved the most popular with straight households as well.
For the most part, all the most watched shows by queer households aligned with their straight counterparts, with two notable exceptions. Both RuPaul’s Drag Race and its spinoff Untucked ranked much higher among same-sex homes. (Big surprise there.)
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Last November, Nielsen announced that it had partnered with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination (GLAAD) to track the viewing habits of queer people.
“As the media marketplace continues to evolve, our clients are increasingly looking to better understand consumers of all types to effectively reach new and unique audiences,” Nielsen VP Brian Fuhrer said in the initial announcement.
“This enhancement will help both programmers and marketers gain LGBTQ audience insights and provide the industry with a better understanding of the compelling opportunity these consumers represent.”
Note that the Nielsen survey does not include statistics from streaming services like Hulu and Netflix, as those companies keep their own data private.
Given the amount of LGBTQ-themed shows available on streaming platforms, the results reported by Nielsen could likely have a much different outcome when streaming-only programs are taken into account.
TomG
My partner & I were Nielsen people for 18 months, and our watching did not vary much from what everyone else (straight people) watch. If a show was good, we watched, if not, we didn’t.
Terrycloth
Netflix has lgbtq movies. But they are old and never change.
Doctor Benway
No, i’m shocked, lgbt people aren’t different that straight people when it comes to watching TV show, what a surprise !!!! (Full sarcasm here)
How much money did they spend to find out what every intelligent people already know?
(It’s 2019 and there is still people who still don’t ger that gay means we prefer guys than girls, that’s all. Apart from that, we are human beings)
(I knew Queerty was very stupid but it always managed to surprise me)
GentlemanCaller
Nielsen confirms: LGBT people are just like real people!
ShowMeGuy
Wait, what? You mean us queers don’t spend al our time watching RuPail’s Drag Race and HGTV?
Evji108
If there was more queer content on TV we would be watching it. Then you would see a difference.
Aires the Ram
@Evji108, Logo and Here! channels which started out as all gay programming, have all but given up on gay programming, not enough people were watching, so now Logo has become the Golden Girls channel, and God only knows what Here! is doing these days. So having “more queer content”, as you say, doesn’t necessarily bring in more viewers and therefore more advertising dollars. As they say, “money talks and bullshit walks”.
Tombear
Bitchy queens arguing over stupid stuff is essentially RDR. I can get that in real time down at my local leather/ bear bar.
WanderSon66
My partner, our daughter and I wore the monitors for almost two years (our twins were too young at the time). We didn’t watch either GoT or RuPaul. In fact, they probably didn’t capture anything coming from our ‘Gaye’s household unless we were out somewhere because it’s all streaming … Netflix, Prime, BitTorrent, Pandora, TuneIn, and Slacker. But we are probably representative of the way the (first) world is changing. Too bad for Neilson.
Daggerman
…men want sex with other men so much but they definitely wanna tell the World about it! They want to say look being Gay whatever is just as f***ing normal as you being straight…OK!!! Lets have more man to man action on our screens…..please for crying out loud…..