Monday, September 20, 2010

Diverse Programming: Create Your Own Opportunities by Wendy Todd

As Wednesday’s General Session of the NAMIC conference was populated by a female panel, moderator, Don Lemon of CNN said, “women are going to take over the world.” (Uh, we created the world!) Now that we have that cleared up, let’s talk about “The New Originals”.

I asked the question about the approach to creating quality programming for people of color. Because as we know, a lot of times when we get black programming, it’s not great quality. Loretha Jones, President of Original Programming at BET talked about the channel’s foray into scripted programming stating, “When I have these meetings in L.A., I tell the people I meet with that I want you to stop thinking the network BET stands for Black Entertainment Television, (but better yet) Best Entertainment Television. If people are coming to us and bringing us a show just because it’s black, that’s not what we’re interested in.” And Jones reiterated that, “Quality trumps color.” She qualified that the quality has to be there first, but it’s “equally important” to represent ethnic experiences. I was happy to hear that. BET showed a sneak peek of their sitcom starring Malcolm Jamal Warner and Tracee Ellis Ross (of Girlfriends) about a married couple with two teenage children entitled, Read Between the Lines. I think it has potential.
Regarding the challenges of getting more diverse programming on the air, Ligiah Villalobos, Writer and Producer of Go Diego Go explained that, “A lot of these networks are not willing to take a risk. The shows that were hits were not copy cat shows.” Latinos will be 50 million strong and there isn’t one Latino show (non-animated) on air.” That’s really interesting. Villalobos, whose working on her own remedy to that situation, went on to point out how there are several new daytime talk shows in the works and there are NO Latino hosts. That’s amazing, and hard to understand. She talked about how one show is about moms, and they managed to find a lesbian mom, but no Latina mom, when Latinos, “make babies like rabbits!” The audience laughed.

Geraldine Moriba discussed and showed a clip from a CNN documentary to air soon, All Mighty Debt, about African American’s loss of wealth. Moriba said, “African Americans have the highest rate of unemployment, foreclosure, and education debt,” which plays into why the black middle class is shrinking. The story about the 17-year old boy, Fred who can’t afford college broke my heart. I hate how people can’t afford what is due to them—it’s a person’s right to get an education. I felt a bit sad after watching the clip, which shows how moving and effective the series will be.

“The New Originals” was a really good panel that attendees continued to discuss later. It was good because it was “real talk” peppered by a somewhat tense exchange between Don Lemon and a man who asked him why he was upset about the lack of diversity on television, if in fact “quality trumps color”. Lemon had to quickly break it down to the gentleman and explain that, as Ms. Jones had explained - it’s about quality and representing diversity of the audience. Lemon lobbed that seemingly contentious inquiry right back with a poised and intelligent explanation.
I had a good time at this panel. And, I think regarding programming, things have to change. Don Lemon summed it up nicely by opening up the panel and stating, “It’s not about joining the club, it’s about creating the club.” Well said, Don. Well said.

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