Sunday, March 07, 2004
TV Barn, Redux
I occasionally write for a terrific web site called TV Barn.com. It's published by the very talented Aaron Barnhart, Television Critic for the Kansas City Star. While Aaron frequently indulges my rants and raves, he is sometimes forced to edit the pieces for space or clarity ( of course I always think I make things perfectly clear!) But since the only person I have to please in this posting is me, you can always find the unabridged version of my various ramblings here. Here's the most recent.
********************************
The Way It Is....And will be..And.........!
Two items caught my eye this week. The first was an article by Andrew Grossman, writing for the Hollywood Reporter. He observed that "minority viewers are largely ignored by the mainstream cable news
outlets."
Duhhhh-hh!! What a revelation!!
He went on to suggest that MSNBC might kick-start and
redefine it's identity by getting a "dynamic host to
address cultural, political, social and economic
issues of importance in an increasingly multicultural
society...." What a concept!
Although Mr. Grossman may have only recently
discovered that the multicultural audience is
routinely ignored by the mainstream news channels, the
piece does take note of the fact that,
"Cultural segregation in America is all but finished
in the marketplace of ideas: White urban wannabes
watch hip-hop on MTV and dress in gangsta duds while
meaty topics like affirmative action, the lack of jobs
and terrorism energize debate across all groups. The
problem is that on TV, only white people are forming
and defining the debate."
Peter Johnson writing for USA Today had the second “newsflash” of the week.
“Black Visibility Dips on Network News
African-American correspondents were seen less last year on the network news than in any year since 1994, and women and minorities overall were less visible on the evening news.......”
A year ago we wrote in a TVBarn.com commentary,
"Unlike the multicultural, multiethnic population that
makes up the American television audience, too often
many of those who run television news operations
continue to give the audience anchors, reporters,
analysts and commentators who reflect their reality
and that reality is white."
What's sad about this whole discussion, is that it's
nothing new. We revisit this topic year, after year
after year with little change. I doubt MSNBC, CNN, Fox or any
of the network news operations will pay any more attention to Mr.
Grossman's observations in 2004 that they did back in
1999 when we wrote a tongue-in-cheek "open letter" to
the cable and network news chiefs asking for,
"the budget and resources to produce an hour of
diverse and inclusive news/information programming a
night. It's an amount of time that is a blip on the
radar for you purveyors of modern global
communications. After all you give time to
conservatives/liberals, politics, pets, fashion,
entertainment economics, historic news plus Monica and
O.J. ad nauseam (my opinion).* You can spare one
hour a night so we, Journalists of Color can offer our
“rainbow” perspective on the day's events.
*(change and insert, "Britney, Janet and Justin")
Will MSNBC or for that matter, anyone else answer the
call to create diverse and inclusive programming? Mr.
Grossman answers his own question,
"cable programers tend to gravitate to the usual
suspects: media elite types like Tina Brown, who drew
20,000 viewers on CNBC last week, or adman Donnie
Deutsch, who's reaching fewer than 100,000 on the same
network."
To quote Mr. Cronkite, "..and that's the way it is..."
I occasionally write for a terrific web site called TV Barn.com. It's published by the very talented Aaron Barnhart, Television Critic for the Kansas City Star. While Aaron frequently indulges my rants and raves, he is sometimes forced to edit the pieces for space or clarity ( of course I always think I make things perfectly clear!) But since the only person I have to please in this posting is me, you can always find the unabridged version of my various ramblings here. Here's the most recent.
********************************
The Way It Is....And will be..And.........!
Two items caught my eye this week. The first was an article by Andrew Grossman, writing for the Hollywood Reporter. He observed that "minority viewers are largely ignored by the mainstream cable news
outlets."
Duhhhh-hh!! What a revelation!!
He went on to suggest that MSNBC might kick-start and
redefine it's identity by getting a "dynamic host to
address cultural, political, social and economic
issues of importance in an increasingly multicultural
society...." What a concept!
Although Mr. Grossman may have only recently
discovered that the multicultural audience is
routinely ignored by the mainstream news channels, the
piece does take note of the fact that,
"Cultural segregation in America is all but finished
in the marketplace of ideas: White urban wannabes
watch hip-hop on MTV and dress in gangsta duds while
meaty topics like affirmative action, the lack of jobs
and terrorism energize debate across all groups. The
problem is that on TV, only white people are forming
and defining the debate."
Peter Johnson writing for USA Today had the second “newsflash” of the week.
“Black Visibility Dips on Network News
African-American correspondents were seen less last year on the network news than in any year since 1994, and women and minorities overall were less visible on the evening news.......”
A year ago we wrote in a TVBarn.com commentary,
"Unlike the multicultural, multiethnic population that
makes up the American television audience, too often
many of those who run television news operations
continue to give the audience anchors, reporters,
analysts and commentators who reflect their reality
and that reality is white."
What's sad about this whole discussion, is that it's
nothing new. We revisit this topic year, after year
after year with little change. I doubt MSNBC, CNN, Fox or any
of the network news operations will pay any more attention to Mr.
Grossman's observations in 2004 that they did back in
1999 when we wrote a tongue-in-cheek "open letter" to
the cable and network news chiefs asking for,
"the budget and resources to produce an hour of
diverse and inclusive news/information programming a
night. It's an amount of time that is a blip on the
radar for you purveyors of modern global
communications. After all you give time to
conservatives/liberals, politics, pets, fashion,
entertainment economics, historic news plus Monica and
O.J. ad nauseam (my opinion).* You can spare one
hour a night so we, Journalists of Color can offer our
“rainbow” perspective on the day's events.
*(change and insert, "Britney, Janet and Justin")
Will MSNBC or for that matter, anyone else answer the
call to create diverse and inclusive programming? Mr.
Grossman answers his own question,
"cable programers tend to gravitate to the usual
suspects: media elite types like Tina Brown, who drew
20,000 viewers on CNBC last week, or adman Donnie
Deutsch, who's reaching fewer than 100,000 on the same
network."
To quote Mr. Cronkite, "..and that's the way it is..."
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