• by Wayne Friedman , September 4, 2009

The number of Hispanic TV homes continues to outpace the market overall.

The Nielsen Co. says Hispanic TV homes showed a 2.3% increase for the 2009-2010 TV season, to 12.95 million. Nielsen's overall projections are that the entire U.S. TV home population will grow 0.3% to 114.9 million, up from 114.5 million in the previous year.

African-American TV homes will be 14.0 million, a 0.3% rise over the season before. Asian TV homes will be at 4.78 million, a 0.8% gain.

In terms of total viewers, there will be a similar rise among all TV homes. Hispanic TV viewers will climb 2.4% to 44.3 million; African-American viewers will be at 37.5 million, a 1.3% gain; and Asian TV viewers will stay the same versus a year ago, at 14.5 million.

The two biggest Hispanic markets continue to be Los Angeles and New York: Los Angeles now with 1.87 million Hispanic homes and New York with 1.25 million. LA grew about 14,000 homes and New York about 9,000 homes year-to-year. The next-biggest market -- Miami-Fort Lauderdale -- is around half of New York's numbers, at 666,230 homes.

Overall, Nielsen projects that total TV viewers in the U.S. will increase slightly to 292 million for the 2009-2010 season.

As has been previously released, the biggest changes in regard to local markets come in Southern cities. New Orleans is growing a big 5.2% from a year ago to 633,930 TV homes, as residents continue to return after Hurricane Katrina. At the same time, Nielsen says four Florida markets are down -- Tampa, Miami, Fort Myers and Tallahassee -- partly the result of declines in domestic migration.

New York -- the biggest U.S market -- added more homes than any market: 59,710, to land at 7.49 million.