Americans Are Consuming More Foreign Content than Ever

Content from abroad is boosting its share of the American entertainment diet, thanks in large part to streaming, the pandemic and the creator economy. From a report: “As ‘American exceptionalism’ has become less of a truth geopolitically, the same goes for entertainment,” says Brad Grossman, founder and CEO of ZEITGUIDE. The U.S. demand share for non-U.S. content was higher each quarter in 2020 than in the previous two years, according to data provided to Axios from Parrot Analytics, which measures demand for entertainment content “This trend started in mid 2019, so it pre-dates COVID-19, but the strong upward trend has continued into 2020,” says Wade Payson-Denney, an insights analyst at Parrot. In Q3 2020, non-U.S. shows accounted for nearly 30% of demand in the U.S. The data shows that U.S. audiences are discovering content from previously unfamiliar markets, like India, Spain and Turkey. The top 5 international markets in the U.S. by Q4 2020 were the U.K. (8.3%), Japan (5.7%), Canada (3.2%), Korea (1.9%), and India (1.5%), per Parrot.