Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture

Where Have All the Black Shows Gone?

HERMAN GRAY Where Have All the Black Shows Gone? The members of various political and cultural communities whose job it is to monitor commercial network television seem constantly surprised by the episodic nature of black and minority representation in the commercial arena. Close monitoring of the performance of the commercial networks by media watchdog groups, television critics, and civil rights activists is often followed by public notice—in the form of a crisis of representation —about the diminution of the numbers of black and minority characters, shows, or themes on commercial network television. Such notice is then followed by a period of threatened political action—usually in the form of a boycott of the network—followed by negotiation between the networks and some advocacy group. Then comes a promise by the networks to do more, which is followed by a period of notable increase in the number of black (and minority) faces on television and in some token management positions. Several seasons later there is the announcement of yet another network lapse and the process begins once again. I am interested in this cycle, especially the institutional conditions and cultural assumptions that structure this dance and set the terms in which it is repeatedly played out. Contained in this relationship are a number of instructive examples of theoretical and methodological commitments that con‹ne, to earlier historical periods and analytic paradigms, the cultural analysis of race and, by extension, the cultural politics that ›ow from it within television studies. What persist are theoretical and political assumptions about commercial network television as a utopian site of possibility for racial and cultural diversity, the social responsibility of the networks as cultural producers to deliver this vision of possibility, and media activism as a political practice that aims to insure its realization. I take the 1997 television season as a case example of these theoretical 311 and structural dynamics because it anticipates if not precipitates the political struggles that would occur late in 1999 and early 2000 over diversity and representation. I also offer 1997 as a case because it points to the limits of prevailing theoretical and methodological categories that continue to stress networks, characters, programs, race, and certain forms of activism as the most salient units of analysis in the new social, ‹nancial, and representational conditions of production and circulation of network television . In other words, with the case example of the 1997 season I explore the operation of these dominant cultural assumptions about diversity and representation in network television—in today’s cultural environment— with the aim of showing their limits for thinking about cultural media and the politics of representation. Although I do not remark directly on more recent contemporary television seasons or representations (i.e., after 1999), I present this case analysis in relationship to these more recent television offerings as a way to measure the distance that our critical understandings of media, race, and politics have, or more likely have not, traveled since the late 1990s. Much about the world of American network television changed in the years since the close of the 1992 television season.1 In subsequent seasons black-oriented shows like The Cosby Show and It’s a Different World moved from premiere network schedules to the ‹nancially lucrative orbit of reruns and syndication. Although a perceptible shift in focus from middle class to urban youth appeared for a while, urban youth were replaced in the network schedule with black shows preoccupied with domestic families , parenting, and social relationships. For a while Fox Television continued its quest for legitimacy and ‹nancial pro‹tability with black shows like New York Undercover and a stable of hip-hop youth and urban-oriented comedies. Inevitably, these offerings gave way to the cash cow of reality programming, old staples like feel-good comedies (aimed at white youth), and big-ticket items like sports. Two new mini-networks—Warner Brothers (WB) and Paramount (UPN)—joined Fox in challenging the dominance of the three major networks . To wage this challenge, the new networks used black-oriented programming to anchor their ›edging evening schedule. Using such programming (especially situation comedies) to get a scheduling toehold in a network’s formative years continues the strategy that the Fox News Corporation used in its nascent years. With a calculated ‹nancial risk and little to lose in terms of their reputation as a television network, Fox TeleviBLACK CULTURAL TRAFFIC 312 sion pursued...