Black Characters Segregated On TV Shows, Report Finds

Jet, March 20, 2000

Blacks characters on television are often limited to appearing on sitcoms and on fledgling networks with small audiences, finds a Screen Actors Guild (SAG)-sponsored study.

"The African American Television Report," conducted for the Guild by University of Southern California sociology professor Darnell Hunt, examined all comedy and drama series that aired on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX, as well as WB and UPN, the two newer networks, during a five-week review period in 1999.

The report was released shortly after the NAACP and other civil rights groups wrapped up agreements with the four major networks to commit to more ethnically diverse programming and hiring.

Hunt found that Blacks were numerically well represented on the networks. While Blacks make up 12.2 percent of the U.S. population, Blacks accounted for nearly 16 percent of the characters seen on the six networks during the review period.

But about half of those Black characters appeared in comedies, in contrast to fewer than a third, 30 percent, of all White characters.

The Black characters were concentrated on UPN and WB. The networks produced less than a third of the total episodes aired, 29.4 percent, but accounted for more than 44 percent of all Black characters in prime time.

Seven predominately Black sitcoms airing Monday and Friday nights on UPN and WB represent nearly two-thirds of all Black primetime characters who appear for a substantial amount of time, more than 10 minutes.

While every show on UPN featured a Black series regular, less than half of WB's shows had Blacks as regular characters. That suggests "the WB lineup is largely segregated into `Black' and `White' shows," the study reported.

Among the major networks, the study found that Blacks are the most underrepresented at FOX and NBC. Fewer than 10 percent of the characters on FOX, and about 11 percent of those on NBC were Black, and most were not central to story lines. Nearly 15 percent of all characters in ABC series and 13 percent of CBS characters were Black.

The study "seems to go right to the heart of what our effort has been all about," said Frank Berry, NAACP's Western region executive director. Blacks "are being steered, for whatever reason, into comedies."

Berry said Blacks need to branch out not only into dramatic acting roles, but into writing and directing jobs to ensure their experience is accurately portrayed.

Actress Anne-Marie Johnson, chair of SAG's Ethnic Employment Opportunity Committee, told the Los Angeles Times that the report would be taken to network executives, producers, writers and casting directors to show "missed opportunities" in not hiring Blacks.