Don't bet on Obama's election pushing media toward better diversity

A long time ago, I heard a TV critic talk about how most media follows society, they do not lead it.

What that means, is because outlets such as television depend on the purchase of advertisements, they must offer content that both the advertiser AND the viewer find compelling and appropriate. And you can guess how particular the CEOs of companies such as McDonald's and Coke are about the value of their brand name.

Movies -- and, in the same vein, subscription cable channels such as HBO -- only need to draw viewers. So they can jump ahead of society's mores to offer images that the masses might not yet be ready to consume.

Why am I talking about all this now? Because it comes to mind as I read my pal Richard Prince's coverage of Barack Obama's press conference Monday, where the national security team he assembled had more ethnic diversity than the press corps asking questions.

As I noted on Sunday, Obama's election puts race on the table with little effort on his part. So TV writers have begun looking at programming schedules lacking in stars of color and wondering why the government officials leading America increasingly look more representative of the country's diversity than the media informing and entertaining it.

The Los Angeles Times' Greg Braxton -- one of my favorite TV reporters for coining the phrase BBF,  or Black Best Friend, to describe all the sidekick roles for black folks on network TV -- asked on Sunday Where are TV's Obama-like characters?  The meat of the story seems a reiteration of a trend I outlined back in September.

Bill Carter in the New York Times sounded a bit more optimistic, citing a handful of series under development starring or co-starring black actors as evidence TV may be trying to catch up with a post-Obama America, including a televised version of a satirical book, Miaking Friends With Black People.

But when I spoke to the book's writer, Nick Adams, last week, he said the Obama tie was more an inspiration for his producing partners, who hoped to use the historic moment as away to convince NBC that a buddy comedy about racial differences between a white guy and a black guy would be successful.

"I always think about how it was handled on a show like Scrubs with the characters Turk and J.D.," said Adams. "They were friends and they knew they could talk to each other like friends. They can speak to each other and be honest with each other. That’s kinda what America has lacked for a some time . . . So often, you may have a white person you know from work, and you don’t go beyond that causal interaction. Hopefully, we can try to get beyond that . . . really mine the humor of race."

I hope Nick is right. Because it's long past time for the TV suits to catch up with the rest of us on this one.

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Comments

[Monica D. Hardwick]

I was thinking something similar...as far as programming. I do believe however, I have seen more commercials with people of color, specifically black people, since the election. Even on the night of the election where it appeared to be a deliberate campaign with products being used by black Americans.