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Whites, blacks tend to watch different TV
shows
Philadelphia Inquirer - April 19, 2000
By Jonathan Storm
Nearing the end of a television season that began with an outcry from the NAACP against on-screen segregation,
viewers are demonstrating that they may not want ethnic diversity in their living rooms.
The latest Nielsen demographic ratings reveal a stunning racial chasm: Seven of the 10 TV shows most watched by
blacks are also the seven programs that come in dead last among whites.
People who study television say that while the extreme statistics may be surprising, the pattern they highlight is
nothing new and will be very difficult, if not impossible, to change.
"The people of most interest to the television industry are white people with disposable income," says
Larry Gross, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communication. "Everybody else
has had to fit in around the edges of stories about those people."
People who work in television are more positive about the possibilities of integrating it, especially following
recent historic agreements to increase minority participation behind the scenes in the business.
Responding to continued pressure from a coalition representing the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, and Hispanics, Asians and American Indians, the major networks ve also boosted the presence of
on-screen minorities in shows they are developing for fall.
"I was in L.A. last week," says Stacey Lynn Koerner, vice president of TN Media, a media-buying and
planning company. "Every network had an ethnic-programming component, even if they didn't actually identify it
that way."
Among the programs, -- none of which is yet on the final schedule, are an NBC comedy starring African-American
screwball David Alan Grier, a Marine Corps drama with a rainbow cast, and an ABC drama featuring the captivating
Andre Braugher, late of "Homicide: Life on the Street."
In well-publicized moves, minority characters were also added at the last minute last summer to many new shows,
including CBS' "Judging Amy" and "Family Law" and NBC's "The West Wing," in
which the president's African-American aide is now dating his daughter.
The change did not produce a ratings earthquake. "West Wing," a solid 27th with whites among 144 shows
this season, languishes at No. 75 with blacks.
Not all viewing is segregated. White and African-American viewers do gather together to support some dramas that
reflect the reality of America's integrated workplaces: "ER" (12th among blacks, third among whites), and
"The Practice" (17th and 15th).
The new CBS drama, predominantly black "City of Angels," has a much more widely divided audience; it's
third among blacks, 91st among whites.
As blacks and whites, "we don't live together, learn, love, play or pray together," says Leonard Steinhorn,
assistant professor of communication at American University in Washington, D.C.
"Nor do we relax together. Why should we watch the same TV shows?"
Copyright © 2000 Philadelphia Inquirer. All rights reserved.
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