Latinos hardly visible on prime-time television, UCLA study finds - noteworthy news - research conducted by Chicano Studies Research Center

Black Issues in Higher Education, May 22, 2003

LOS ANGELES

Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States yet they make up only 4 percent of regular prime-time characters on network television, according to a new study by UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center.

"Looking for Latino Regulars on Prime-Time Television: The Fall 2002 Season" also revealed that more than one-third of primetime television series have no minorities as regular characters, or minority regular characters. Minority regular characters are concentrated on relatively few shows and within only a few genres, according to the analysis. Nearly nine out of 10 series have no Latino regular characters, the study showed.

"The Latino population is now the largest minority group in the United States, accounting for 13 percent of the national population," writes Alison Hoffman, the study's author and a research assistant in the Chicano studies center. "Its proportion in the Western United States is even more dramatic, nearly one-third of California and the plurality of Los Angeles. Yet, while located in L.A., prime-time television turns its cameras away from the city's largest ethnic/racial group and presents a fictional world without Latinos."

The study was conducted from October to December 2002 and focused on the top 10 genres on television; it found that Latino regular characters or hosts are missing from six of the top 10 genres. These genres are sketch/variety, animation, teen, medical, news and reality.

"Shockingly, Latino characters are missing from both ends of the programming spectrum--nonfiction series and the make-believe world of cartoons," says center director Dr. Chon Noriega. "In other words, television fails to include Latinos in either its documentary function or its vision of our collective fantasies. That is bound to have an impact on how Latinos are perceived."

Latinos make up 7 percent of regular characters in the situation-comedies genre, the highest percentage of any genre, the analysis showed. Two Latino-themed shows--"The George Lopez Show" and "Greetings From Tucson" --accounted for less than 2 percent of the total prime-time series in the fall 2002 line-up; yet, these two situation comedies account for 44 percent of Latino characters on all prime-time television. A cancellation of one of these shows would almost erase Latinos from the genre and from prime-time television, Hoffman writes in the study.

The study is the first of the center's research report series, which will make available timely research findings on the Chicano and Latino communities.

The report is available on the Web at: <www.sscnet.ucla.edu/csrc>.