When it comes to ethnic diversity in the television industry the marks aren’t that great. Does that surprise you? It doesn’t surprise me (more on that later). The official word from civil-rights groups that monitor ethnic diversity on television is that the major broadcast networks are making improvements, but not enough, and it’s time they made greater progress.
“I don’t want to wait 10 years until we’re close on television to the 15% of the population we are in the U.S.,” an official with the National Latino Media Council (NLMC) told reporters at a news conference on the subject yesterday.
For the past eight years the NLMC along with the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, and American Indians in Film & TV have been lobbying to increase minority hiring and representation in the broadcast TV industry. Their statement to the media was clear: “only marginal progress has been made over the years.” Representatives from the civil-rights group agreed: “We’re still far from where we need to be, with far too many all-white shows.”
The groups did applaud the creation of minority characters in such shows as ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” which was created and produced by a black woman, Shonda Rhimes. In addition, “Desperate Housewives” and the freshman hit “Ugly Betty” were listed as stand outs for its Hispanic characters.
In the groups’ annual “report cards,” ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox were graded in areas including their hiring of minority actors, writers and directors, development of programs with ethnic diversity and overall commitment to diversity issues.
Here are the results for network shows airing from fall 2005 to fall 2006:
The National Latino Media Coalition gave ABC the highest overall grade, A-minus, followed by a B-plus for CBS and a B each for NBC and Fox.
The Asian Pacific American Media Coalition gave NBC, ABC and Fox a C-plus each, while CBS earned a C.
This year’s results are a vast improvement over the coalition’s first report card, in 2000, when the networks received mostly Ds.
For their part the four major networks responded by “reiterating their commitments to diversity and pledged continued efforts.”
Do you think the coalition’s marks are warranted? Besides the aforementioned ABC shows that were praised for making strides in hiring minority actors, what other programs can you think of that feature diverse ensembles? I could only think of a three: “Lost,” “Scrubs,” and “ER.”
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