Is TV just getting diverse-ish for dollars?

by Ashley Canino

illustration by Grace Molteni

When I sit down every Sunday night to watch HBO’s “Looking,” I inevitably think to myself, “Wow. I’m so Patrick.” The show follows main character Patrick Murray and three of his friends as they navigate their careers, relationships, etc. in San Francisco. While Patrick bumbles along, he bears an uncanny resemblance to a former version of myself. Because I relate so thoroughly to his story lines, I make a point of watching “Looking” live, or at least close to it. In that regard, I am one of TV’s most valuable viewers: a multi-cultural millennial making a point to watch linear television.

The networks and their advertisers are after me. They have always been in the market for consumers who would park in front of a television, but that base of people has changed significantly over the last 20 years. For the time being, the television set still commands the greatest reach, and thus the most advertising dollars, but platforms like Hulu, Chromecast and apps that allow you to stream a channel’s content to any device are chipping away at television’s former monopoly on viewership. On top of having disposable income, viewers 18 to 34 have yet to develop allegiances to certain products and thus are more apt to be swayed by advertising than older adults. They’re the prime target. Americans within that age group are more diverse than ever before: 42.8 percent of the demographic are minorities versus 21.6 percent in 1980. In order to score money from advertisers, media giants have to demonstrate that their content is grabbing the attention of a young viewer, who now has an almost 50/50 chance of being a minority.

But does what’s considered high quality content change depending on how diverse the audience is? Diversity is a word we hear in many contexts: work, education, politics, media, etc. We generally use it as a neutral word that describes a scenario in which people of many different backgrounds are included. But Shonda Rhimes, creator of hit ABC shows “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal,” and producer of “How To Get Away With Murder,” took issue with the term “diversity” when she accepted the Ally for Equality award on March 14th: “I really hate the word ‘diversity.’ It suggests something…other…As if there is something unusual about telling stories involving women and people of color and LGBTQ characters on TV.” Rhimes’s shows do seem to take for granted that America is a diverse place, where peoples’ lives are influenced by their skin color and sexual orientation, but are not defined by those traits. This method of representative storytelling is almost in opposition to other programming on the same network (Black-ish, Fresh Off The Boat), which deliberately  focuses on “otherness.” For better or worse, their titles evoke diversity with a capital “D” before the viewer can even interact with their content.

According to the New York Times, broadcast networks offer far more racially diverse programming choices than they did at the turn of the millennium. Shows like “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” which peaked in the late 90s and had notoriously white casts, certainly reinforce the belief that the tides are changing today. But a slew of other 90s programs suggest otherwise. “The Cosby Show” (NBC), “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” (NBC), “Martin” (Fox), and “The Wayans Brothers” (The WB), to name a few, were all successful, running for several seasons and going into syndication. They all featured majority African-American casts. They also seem to fit the bill for Rhimes’s brand of diversity—though they all confronted race issues in occasional story lines, the shows were not preoccupied with race to the extent that it was baked into their premises or titles. If so many American households tuned into these programs, back when the composition of the country was proportionately much more white, it’s unclear what led to recent shows’ plays for diversity being so heavy-handed. Are audiences adhering to imaginary lines between what content is relevant to which viewers?

One critic, in a piece that heavily maligns “Looking” for not engaging with LGBTQ politics, quips that gay men are “contractually obligated to watch [the show]” and proceeds to break down what viewers are likely looking for in the show based on their sexual orientation. While “Looking” actively moved away from several available Hollywood stereotypes in its portrayal of gay men—in theory a progressive move—some viewers have responded by deeming the show not “gay enough.” On the surface, both sentiments are couched in a push for diversity, but both ignore the reality that segments like race and sexual orientation are not homogenous. My relationship to the Patrick character transcends those particular facets of our identities just as minority viewers of “Friends” or white viewers of “The Cosby Show” are testaments to the power of good storytelling versus divisive storytelling. Looking to the present, for an example, Fox’s “Empire” scored the highest episode rating for a broadcast drama in the last seven years with its finale and did so with a majority African-American cast.

There is a relationship between networks  generating shows to grab particular viewers and viewers clinging to the idea that TV is only for them when it, on the surface, resembles them. Perhaps the fallout from the all-white casts of the early 2000s jumpstarted that cycle. Whatever the impetus, this way of operating is holding television back from being a medium that is not only representative, but helps to confirm our identities while encouraging us to reach across certain elements of them. TV content has the potential to not only grow with Americans, but to make us see each other and ourselves differently. First it must take the leap to being inherently representative rather than diverse-ish.

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Ashley Canino is a freelance writer and media researcher living in New York. You can find more of her work at AshleyCanino.com and follow her @AshleyCanino.

Grace Molteni is a Midwest born and raised designer, illustrator, and self-proclaimed bibliophile, currently calling Chicago home. For more musings, work, or just to say hey check her out on Instagram or at her personal website.