From Sidekick to Spotlight: The Rise of Diverse Leads in Digital Streaming Platforms

Our research analyzes the degree to which the unique economic characteristics of streaming platforms have allowed for the distribution of movies — in our case movies with diverse casts — that wouldn’t have been economically feasible in traditional time- and space-bound physical channels. To do this we combine several datasets documenting cast diversity in movies, the consumption of movies across theatrical and streaming platforms, and detailed information on promotion of movies within streaming platforms. Our results show that racial diversity is 15.3% higher for movies made by streaming platforms compared to movies made for theatrical channels. We show that this difference is driven by market factors in physical channels, notably limited shelf-life and accessibility constraints — factors which can be relaxed in streaming platforms. Finally, using causal mechanisms, we show that streaming platforms use strong positive preference externalities conferred by powerful algorithms to promote discovery and consumption of diverse movies.