Image: Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1, New Line Cinema
Using Parrot Analytics’ Audience Solutions we can see the age and gender profile of the audience for shows and movies. Often a title will have a relatively balanced audience, but for this analysis we’ve identified movies that don’t just slightly tilt towards an age demographic but those where the share of audience is heavily skewed toward a particular generation. To do this we only considered titles where a generation made up more than twice its average share of audience. So for example, if Gen Z makes up 25% of the audience across all movies on average, we only considered a movie Gen Z skewing if 50% or greater of the movie’s audience belongs to this generation. Doing this we can get a better sense of what types of content are strongly preferred by each age group.
Let’s begin with Gen Z. The youngest cohort has a clear love of animation that sets it apart from other generations. Over 40% of the movies with a heavily Gen Z skewing audience were animated. This is significantly greater than the share of movies with audiences skewed toward other generations that are animated.
Zennials are the micro generation sandwiched between Gen Z and Millennials. The share of shows with strongly Zennial skewing audiences sometimes tracks more closely with Gen Z and sometimes with Millennials which can make it difficult to tease out unique content tastes for this cohort. However, one genre where this generation clearly sets itself apart is romance. 31% of movies with a strongly Zennial skewing audience were in the romance genre. The share of movies that have older skewing audiences and are in the romance genre is significantly lower.
Millennials set themselves apart with their love of the horror genre. Nearly 20% of titles with a heavily skewing Millennial audience are horror films. Fewer than 10% of titles with audiences skewed toward the other three age groups we measured were horror.
Fewer than 1% of the movies with audiences skewed toward each of the youngest three generations are westerns. Over 3% of the movies with Gen X+ skewing audiences are westerns. This might not sound like much but it is a clear distinction in genre preferences that sets the oldest generational cohort apart. As a point of comparison, only 1.5% of movies with audiences skewed towards Gen X+ are animated. This is less than half the number of westerns that have audiences strongly skewed toward Gen X+. The two genres that best illustrate the divergent tastes of the youngest and oldest generations are westerns and animation.
Another question worth asking is whether there are any genre preferences that clearly shift over time as audiences age. For example, the history genre is barely a blip on the radar of the youngest generations. For Millennials the share of movies with extremely Millennial audiences that are in the history genre rises to 5% and by the time we’ve reached the Gen X+ age group we’ve hit peak nostalgia and fully 10% of titles that are heavily skewed toward this generation are in the history genre.
There is a clear shift in preferences for the comedy genre from the youngest to the oldest audiences. Over 50% of movies with Gen Z skewing audiences were comedies. This share drops slightly for Millennials and Zennials but then falls by nearly half for the oldest generations (25.6%). The relative preference for dramas over comedies also flips between the youngest and oldest generation. 42% of movies with Gen Z skewing audiences were dramas compared to 61% of movies with audiences skewed toward the oldest age group. Understanding the content preferences of different generations is key for platforms looking to curate a catalog with something for every age group.
