Despite calls for more diversity on prime-time network television, African Americans continued to be overrepresented and concentrated in situation comedies while other ethnic groups remained underrepresented, according to a new UCLA study.
African Americans and Anglo Americans represented 92 percent of all prime-time characters in the study, yet they comprise 82 percent of the nation’s population. In contrast, Latinos were the most underrepresented group in prime-time television. They accounted for 2 percent of all characters, although their national population is 12.5 percent. Asian Americans comprised about 3 percent of all characters, and Native Americans were invisible.
“Much of the promise of change on behalf of the networks has been lip service to appease people,� said Darnell Hunt, the study’s author and director of the UCLA Center for African American Studies. “There’s been all this anticipation of change and there has been very little. Most of the networks have thrown out a few symbolic gestures and left most of the programming practices intact.�
The research, titled “Prime Time in Black and White: Making Sense of the 2001 Fall Season,� was based on a content analysis of 224 episodes of 85 fictional series, which aired on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN and the WB in October and November 2001. It is the inaugural report of a five-year study that will track the on-screen presence of black Americans in prime-time network television and issues pertaining to behind-the-scenes control. Hunt was also the author of a Screen Actors Guild study in 2000 with similar findings.
Despite the large number of African Americans on television, they continue to be “ghettoized.� They are more likely than other ethnic groups to appear on situation comedies. The research also found that African Americans were concentrated on UPN and appear largely on Monday and Saturday nights.
Black characters were concentrated on UPN. They represented 28 percent of the characters on UPN compared to about 12 percent on other networks. Thirty-seven percent of series regulars on UPN were African American. Fifty-two percent of all African-American characters who appeared on the screen for more than 10 minutes per hour of programming were on UPN.
“The most prominent black characters were ghettoized on the least-watched network (UPN), in situation comedies, and on Monday nights,� Hunt said. “With a few notable exceptions, the black characters appearing on other nights, other networks, and in dramas were much less prominent.�
CBS was the network with the second-largest percentage of all African-American characters, or 17 percent. In the 2000 report, which was based on the 1999 fall television season, African Americans were more concentrated on UPN and the WB.
Monday and Saturday nights were when more African-American characters appeared on prime-time television. These two nights accounted for nearly 40 percent of all black characters during the 2001 fall season. Saturday, the least-watched night on television, featured “Early Edition� and “The District,� two CBS dramas with largely black casts. In the 2000 report, African Americans were concentrated on Monday and Friday nights.
African Americans were more likely than their white, Latino or Asian counterparts to appear in situation comedies during the fall 2001 season. Thirty-nine percent of all black characters appeared in sitcoms, compared to 31 percent for whites, 23 percent for Latinos and 21 percent for Asians. However, about 61 percent of African-American characters appeared in dramas in 2001, compared with about 50 percent in the 2000 report.
The study also examined whether African Americans were stereotyped by occupation and the degree to which black life is integrated into mainstream society.
Black characters were not stereotyped by occupation. Nevertheless, about 30 percent of black characters had occupations that were not clear from the sampled episodes in the study. With the exception of criminals, who accounted for 3 percent of all black characters, each of the other significant occupations suggested a middle-class to upper middle-class lifestyle. For instance, student portrayals accounted for 10.4 percent of the characters, and police officers for almost 8 percent.
Despite the overrepresentation of blacks in prime-time network television, relatively few images were provided of life inside the African-American home. When a black character first appeared in an episode, she or he was most likely seen at some place other than home or work.
The study also found that while about 92 percent of all episodes were multiracial, most of these episodes featured ethnic characters who were typically included as “props� in the background. These characters were not important to the story line.
The overrepresentation of whites in positions of power within the television networks continues to hamstring efforts to diversify it, Hunt said. For instance, although white males made up only 34 percent of the U.S. population in 2000, they accounted for 80 percent of all television directors in the 2000–01 season, according to a recent Directors Guild of America study.
Anglo Americans similarly control the all-important executive producer ranks. Although official figures were unavailable, African-American executive producers could only be identified for five of the 85 shows covered in the study. Four of the shows were black-oriented sitcoms.
“The underlying fact is that white control of prime time continues to make it difficult to diversify it,� Hunt said. “Recent gestures toward change have left the underlying structures untouched.�
The final report will be released this summer.