Gender Differences in the Demand for Broadcast Media Content

• Authors: Ignacio Balaguer, Sully Calderón, Rosa Ferrer and Aida Moreu
• SERIEs, Vol. 16, No. 3-4, 827 - 872, December 2025

This paper uses a discrete choice model to recover gender gaps in viewers’ preferences for prime-time media content. First, we document that Spanish female viewers have a stronger preference for watching prime-time television relatively to males. We also find gender differences for specific channels, content genre, and programs. Our results hold both for weekdays and weekends, as well as when controlling for measures of content quality such as program age and program fixed effects. Finally, we use a nested logit model to analyze gender differences in substitutability patterns. The results indicate lower substitutability between mainstream channels for males. That is, male viewers exhibit greater substitution between their preferred mainstream channel at a given time and the outside option, reflecting a stronger male propensity to switch toward alternatives outside mainstream free-to-air broadcasting.