Diversity takes a step back; world shrugs

© St. Petersburg Times
published June 13, 2002

For somebody who often writes about TV and diversity, it was a shock that felt a little like a bucket of cold water dashed in my face.

I'm not talking about the news that Brian Williams' designation as heir to Tom Brokaw's NBC anchor chair means once again a middle-age white guy will be delivering to America its evening news.

My shock: I barely noticed it.

To be sure, Williams' ascension was written in the stars years ago; nearly from the moment he joined NBC in 1993, insiders knew he was the Chosen One. Unofficially, of course.

So, when NBC announced that the tanned, well-tailored Williams would take over TV's highest-rated network newscast in 2004, few critics blinked. Frankly, considering all the rumors about CBS courting him as his contract wound down, the bigger news would have been NBC not naming Williams to the job.

But it says something that few industry watchers, myself included, even expected the network to consider a female or a person of color for that job.

"I'm amazed and disappointed. . . . It really does astound me that no woman was even named as a potential contender," said Connie Chung, one of two women ever named permanent anchor of a weekday network newscast. (Barbara Walters is the other.)

Chung's two-year tenure as co-anchor of The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather ended badly. She was forced off the show in 1995 after controversies that included airing an interview with the mother of then-U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich in which Mrs. Gingrich called then-first lady Hillary Clinton a "b--" after Chung assured her the comment was "just between you and me."

"My friends at CBS tell me anyone put next to Dan Rather after he'd had the chair to himself for (12 years) was not going to have an easy go . . . (but) he might have had a harder time extricating a male," said Chung, who will debut a show on CNN on June 24.

"I don't know why it's such a male bastion. That one area . . . remains antiquated."

If only that were so. But recent reports that ABC News' journalist-in-training George Stephanopoulos is likely to be named host of the network's Sunday morning political show, This Week, only adds to the problem.

Initial buzz indicated the onetime Clinton aide would be paired with national correspondent Claire Shipman, who could help the network pretend it wasn't turning This Week over to someone with fewer years in journalism than your average unpaid intern.

But, as the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out, installing Stephanopoulos solo this fall means that every Sunday political show will be hosted by white males: Tony Snow on Fox News Sunday, Bob Schieffer on CBS' Face the Nation, Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Late Edition and Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press.

It gets worse.

When ABC announced that Man Show co-host Jimmy Kimmel would take over the time slot once occupied by Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect, it missed another opportunity to hand a major show to a woman or a person of color.

It also solidified network TV's dominance by white males in late night: Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Craig Kilborn, Jon Stewart, Carson Daly, Ted Koppel. You have to look all the way down to Leno's musical director-guitarist-sidekick, Kevin Eubanks, to find a chocolate chip in that vanilla-filled cookie.

Late-night advertisers have long been focused on young male viewers. So it makes a certain sense that every late-night host (except old newsman Koppel) seems cut from different parts of the same smart-alecky white-guy cloth: a select fraternity weaned on MTV, Maxim magazine and Saturday Night Live (substitute Johnny Carson and Mad magazine for old-school dudes Letterman and Leno).

Still, didn't Arsenio Hall break down any doors? Or were they slammed shut by Keenen Ivory Wayans and Magic Johnson?

In a New York Times story, one expert decried the network news-anchor chairs as "the last all-male preserve in all of television," but the sad truth is, they aren't. There are lots of little corners where white males are still the sole proprietors.

And despite crushing negative publicity in recent years, things are only slightly better in prime time. Among 34 new shows coming to the six biggest networks this fall, 41 percent (14 shows) feature no people of color, barring last-minute casting adjustments.

Among the 18 shows that do include people of color, more than half (10) feature just one non-white character in the core cast, leading to suspicions of tokenism.

Only three new shows, the WB's Greetings From Tucson, UPN's Half and Half and Fox's Cedric the Entertainer, have ethnic minorities as lead characters, based on a survey of promotional photos released by the networks and viewings of screening tapes.

Two studies of last year's TV lineup confirmed these trends. One, by the advocacy group Children Now, found that just 7 percent of situation comedies had multiethnic casts (excluding series where the entire cast is one ethnicity, whether white, black or another); half the Hispanic characters in prime time have low-status positions or occupations; African-Americans and Hispanics are often shown as unskilled laborers and criminals; and American Indian women don't exist.

Another study, by UCLA's Center for African American Studies, found black characters slightly overrepresented on TV compared with percentage of overall U.S. population (by 3.6 percent) but often relegated to low-watched networks or nights of television. Hispanics were overwhelmingly underrepresented, comprising 2 percent of TV characters and 12.5 percent of the population (white people, at 68 percent of the population, fill 76 percent of roles).

And as CBS prepares to replace Bryant Gumbel -- perhaps the most powerful black man in the history of morning television -- I'm left to wonder how many women or people of color are on that short list.

Which leads to another important question: Where's the outrage?

Why haven't the NAACP, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists or La Raza raised the roof the way they did when the TV networks advanced a slate of mostly white prime-time TV shows a few years ago?

Can it be that we've accepted late night, Sunday morning and evening news as the province of white males? Are we so tired of talking about this issue that we don't have the energy left to fight another battle?

Consider this column an attempt to turn the tide. Much as it may sound like a broken record, we must demand better from network television in the 21st century.

Otherwise, we may look forward to a TV future where we don't even notice how homogenous everyone is. And that would be the real tragedy.

- To reach Eric Deggans call (727) 893-8521, e-mail deggans@sptimes.com.

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