This is a really interesting special report in Entertainment Weekly on the lack of diversity on network television's upcoming fall lineup of new shows: Diversity in Entertainment: Why Is TV So White? Wow. They're right. TV is really white!
As the title implies, it's pretty much the same old story. I found it particularly sad to learn that among the big five TV networks, there's only one minority character anchoring a new series for the 2008-09 season. His name is Cleveland Brown, from Fox's The Cleveland Show. And he's a cartoon.
According to EW's study of scripted-programming casts for the upcoming fall 2008 season, each of the five major broadcast networks is whiter than the Caucasian percentage (66.2 percent) of the United States population, as per the 2007 census estimate. Is anyone really surprised by this statistic?
I like the fact that a mainstream entertainment-focused publication is covering this issue. What's disappointing is that while it points out the huge disparities in Black and Latino representation on TV compared to Caucasians, there is barely a mention of Asians. (Hey, just like television.) Throw us a bone here.
No doubt, it's getting better—the article cites diverse casts in shows like Lost, Heroes and Grey's Anatomy—but how many Asians can you count on network television who can be considered the "star" of a series? Not even a cartoon character. That's racist!
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