Comedies, dramas, documentaries top entertainment genres with US consumers

It is no surprise that Americans enjoy watching comedies and dramas, but a range of genres — spanning anime, documentaries, horror/suspense and reality TV — also resonate with different age groups and ethnicities. Kagan's Consumer Insights survey of 2,529 U.S. internet adults conducted in September 2021 showed 70% of households enjoyed watching dramas and comedies, with documentaries (55%), horror/suspense (40%) and reality (39%) rounding out the top five most enjoyed genres.

Segmenting respondents by age group highlights various generational differences in genres enjoyed — important factors for traditional TV programmers and streamers alike as they look to engage audiences and attract new viewers. While comedies were widely popular across all age brackets, older viewers favored dramas, although a fairly robust 50% of Gen Z respondents did report enjoying dramas.

Gen Z viewers diverged from other generations in several ways, such as being the most likely to enjoy horror/suspense (53%) and anime (18%) but the least interested in international fare (15%). Millennial, Gen X, boomer and senior viewers were roughly similar in genres enjoyed, although millennial and Gen X respondents were more likely to enjoy anime, kids and family, and comedies compared to boomers and seniors, who gravitated more toward dramas, documentaries and international fare.

Analyzing results by reported ethnicity of respondents tells a similar tale of broad trends cutting across groups — dramas and comedies were the top two genres followed most often by documentaries — with some key differences across more niche content.

Black/African American respondents were among those more likely to enjoy horror/suspense, reality, anime, and kids and family programming. Hispanic/Latino respondents were the most likely to enjoy documentaries, while also showing comparatively high interest in reality and kids and family content.

While households with children represented a minority of total U.S. households surveyed at just 29% (6% single adults with at least one child and 23% multiple adults with at least one child), these respondents were far more likely to enjoy kids and family, anime, and horror/suspense than their childless counterparts.

Homes with multiple adults and no kids (39% of total surveyed households) were the most likely among household types to enjoy dramas, documentaries and international content, while homes with a single adult and no children (32% of surveyed households) displayed similar trends, albeit with a slightly reduced appetite for some genres including comedies and documentaries.

Top subscription video-on-demand operators — including Amazon.com Inc., Walt Disney Co. and Netflix Inc. — are spending billions on streaming libraries each year, looking to build out big catalogs with thousands of movies and TV series spanning numerous popular genres. Survey results suggest those efforts have been broadly successful for Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max as very few differences exist in most enjoyed genres among users of each service.

Users of select services were within a few percentage points of one another across most genres other than kids and family, for which Disney+ viewers unsurprisingly led the pack. HBO Max and Hulu viewers were more likely to enjoy horror/suspense, while Disney+, Hulu and HBO Max users tended to enjoy anime more than Netflix and Prime Video viewers.

^{Consumer Insights is a regular feature from Kagan, a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence's TMT offering, providing exclusive research and commentary.}