Rethinking Program Diversity Assessment: An Audience-Centered Approach

The marketplace metaphor that provides the foundation for the regulation of electronic media assumes not only that a diversity of content is available, but also that audiences expose themselves to this diversity. This exposure dimension of the diversity issue has been largely absent from conventional diversity assessments. This article proposes a method of assessing exposure diversity and conducts a preliminary analysis using 1995 Nielsen data for prime-time television. The marketplace metaphor that provides the foundation for the regulation of electronic media assumes not only that a diversity of content is available, but also that audiences expose themselves to this diversity. This exposure dimension of the diversity issue has been largely absent from conventional diversity assessments. This article proposes a method of assessing exposure diversity and conducts a preliminary analysis using 1995 Nielsen data for prime-time television.