All minorities are underrepresented on television. The media especially the news present stereotypical images of people of color. One of the problems is a lack of diversity among writers. Because how can you tell the story, if there isnt anyone who can truly write it.
The typical writer is generally white and middle aged or possibly ivy league educated where they have little interaction with other minorities. The characters that are developed is what they think a person of color should be. The character would be full of stereotypes and then some show will add a token black character after a few seasons.
Black shows seem to be used by networks to draw an audience and then disappear from the schedule suddenly.
NBC is really pushing Undercover, as if they're saying we offered a show featuring two black lead characters. The ratings are very low among 2.1 among 18-49, but nielsen ratings boxes are randomly assigned to people and homes. The development of characters needed to appeal to a universal audience that writers don't understand. Everybody hates Chris on cw/upn drew higher ratings than Joey an NBC sitcom with the lead from the very popular friends which ended. CW created a block of black shows on a certain night which ultimately killed all the shows. If you create the characters than people will watch and give it time to draw an audience.
Also, I think it should be more than just situation comedies that present these images. I feel there should be dramas, films and other programming that show what makes us unique and also very similar. I think all people have universal and seperate cutural experiences.
1 comment:
I feel that the responsibility is more on African Americans. They have not taken enough initiative to dominate and maintain an everlasting impact in their status in this field. I do think the current writers are very knowledgeable with education and research under their belts. I do not feel that they are completely clueless about the lifestyles of other ethnicity and cultures. I do feel that no one can represent African Americans better than African Americans. Even though the writers do studies, statistics, and abundant amounts of research on different the ethnicity of cultures, I strongly feel that they will never retain the essence of them. The essence of a culture can not be studied in my opinion.
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