Every year the NAACP and several other large organizations that advocate for African American rights and respect release a report with the same bad news: There are no Black folks on television anymore.
Oh the
theme varies from time to time: There are no Blacks on primetime sitcoms. No
Blacks on nighttime dramas. No Black head writers or producers. But the story
has been the same: For the last decade there seems to be a steady decrease in
the number of African American men and women in prominent visible spaces on
nightly cable television. While this is a dire issue, these reports often fail
to address why the news stations are doing what they are doing, or more
importantly why it should even matter to have Black talent on the air. Only
once those arguments are made will we see any changes.
In a
recent press release, the NAACP expressed dismay that CNN's new primetime
line-up didn't include any African American men or women as anchors or even
co-hosts of their programs. This wouldn't be such a problem if it weren't for
the fact that the same applies to MSNBC, Fox and the “Hopefully Keith Olbermann
will make us relevant again” Current Tv nightly line-ups. In fact there are no
African American hosts or anchors of any cable or network news show between 5
p.m. and 11 p.m. today (unless you want to count Real Sports with Bryant
Gumble, but that's sports and it's HBO!) I respect the NAACP pointing this out
but how we got to this point and where we go from here is as important as
pointing out the problem.
To be
fair, primetime television has never had a surfeit of African American anchors
or hosts. Once you move past the Bryant Gumbels and Ed Bradleys there haven't
been many Black faces on cable spaces at any point in history. The reasons for this are the same old
tropes you've heard about Blacks in Hollywood: White audiences won't watch
Black people. Even though we know this to not be true, news outlets that are
notoriously skittish about any kind of change whatsoever are not trying to rock
the boat by adding any flavor or color to the nightly news no matter what.
Which seems strange because at this point there are more gay (Anderson Cooper
and Rachel Maddow) and foreign (Fareed Zakaria is Indian American and
Christiane Amanpour is part Iranian) anchors on television than African
Americans or even Latinos. I doubt there is an advertising executive in America
who'd tell you that on the surface white Midwestern viewers are more
comfortable taking news and cues from gays and foreigners than Blacks.
What
makes this trend even stranger is that just three years ago the nighttime press
seemed to be moving in another direction. The campaign of Barack Obama put more
people of color on nightly television than ever. African American consultants,
academics and commentators popped up every night to discuss the campaign and
the early stages of the presidency. The likes of Roland Martin and D.L. Hugely
were anchoring or hosting major programs. The problem is, oddly enough, the
economy, which has affected every aspect of the United States and yes even our
nightly cable and network news programs. As jobs have gotten more scarce and
less secure, networks have gone back to what is tried and comfortable. This is
why we have a network environment where Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann are
ratings winners but are let go due to controversy, but former Governor Eliot
Spitzer is kept on three various transformations of the same failing program.
Unfortunately
the only way to fix this problem is to remind the networks of what they already
know but refuse to acknowledge: Black People Sell. Forget the moral arguments
and just talk real numbers. When African Americans see themselves on television
we will become loyal viewers; that's why the Real Housewives of Atlanta was a
hit, and why Don Lemon is the hottest thing on television right now.
With so
many networks struggling you would think some producer would realize putting
someone on the air besides Roland Martin to talk about Obama might bring an
uptick in the numbers. Until then we'll just have to rely on NAACP press
releases but it's become pretty clear at this point that no one is listening.
Jason
Johnson is an associate professor of political science and communications at
Hiram College in Ohio, where he teaches courses in campaigns and elections, pop
culture and the politics of sports.
