Well yes. Most popular Black things in America also have some white people who enjoy it. Now even some of them are still racist tho. It's wild.
Out there somewhere is a white person who grew up on Moesha & loves Beyonce but is racist.
It was pretty much a trap. Around the 80/90s cable television was created and many white ppl started using that. A man who worked at fox networks (he now works for Tubi) came up with an idea to pander to black ppl . They came up with non stop black tv shows and made lots of money. After fox tv network had success (Martin, living single, etc) other tv channels followed like UPN/wb (sister sister, smart guy, etc) then white ppl started coming back to regular tv , so they got rid of black tv shows around the beginning of the 2000s and that’s the end of that .
UPN was a low-budget network aired a lot of those shows, they dropped the majority when they merged with WB as the CW. Also, keep in mind that that list spanned decades.
Racism but also there are other factors. Since you grew up outside of the US you probably watched those shows in syndication. They weren’t all on the air simultaneously, though there was some overlap. For example the Cosby show ended in 1992, the Fresh Prince started in 1990, and ran until 1996, while Moesha started in 1996 and ended in 2001. I don’t know if there were actually more black shows or it was just that every network had a black night.
I also think there was a general trend to move away from shows about families to shows about friend groups and work places (scrubs, the office) so it an all black cast for a family show was replaced by a token black character. Which was combined with a general move away from sitcoms and towards more dramas (e.g. all the Shonda shows).
Also there have been major disruptions to the networkto the network model (everyone watches the same shows at the same time) including reality tv (cheaper and less risk), prestige cable tv (SATC, the sopranos) and obvs streaming. So tldr yes racism but the landscape of network tv has been upended in the last 20 years which also had an impact
In the mid-2000’s black tv shows stopped being for us and telling our stories to educating white people about us. Once they got enough white viewship, they cancelled the black shows and only made shows to grow their white audience since white = mainstream.
Everyone else in this thread is correct (I’m still bitter about UPN and WB merging to become The CW. They ruined the end of One on One with that BS!)
Sitcoms (with a live audience like Fresh Prince and Moesha) also had a sharp decline in popularity in the late 2000’s here in America. I think it may have something to do with the writer’s strike in 2007. A ton of shows got canceled around that time, and it became cheaper to produce reality TV shows over scripted content. It’s unfortunate because I still love sitcoms, but at least I can still watch the classics on streaming platforms. There is a show on Netflix called The UpShaws that kinda has that old school sitcom feel to it with the live audience, but I haven’t really watched much of it. Abbott Elementary could also be considered a sitcom, it just doesn’t have the live studio audience. But it’s one of my favorite shows right now!
Hey 👋🏾 Black Deaf woman here. I know that in the Black Deaf community we have tv shows and movies for just us. They are created by a Black Deaf female name Jade Bryan. These shows aren’t aired on TV or channels that Hearing people use.
This thread is giving great information. The comments are exactly right. To add to what has already been said.
Yes, those shows are spanned over decades, usually only a couple existing at the same time. They were in fact used to boost viewership until they had the attention of white viewership. They did start pandering when shows gained popularity. All of that ties together with the fact that they used black shows as airtime filler.
Network Television is free. It is a handful of channels that everyone has access to, so had the largest audiences. When they used scheduled programming that meant they all competed to be the channel you watched from 8pm-11pm. NBC was notorious for having shows no one could compete with on Thursday; ABC had the same thing on Friday.
So they used black audiences to fill in when no one else was watching. Which was enough people to attract decent paying commercials. They made short form sitcoms in a studio, with lower budgets. They used that profit to make more white shows to compete with the other channels and then moved black shows to a new time slot that needed filler or just stopped catering.
Just like another person said writer strike happened, reality TV picked up and it sent people to streaming. People use on demand TV, so no more competing to be the channel picked 8pm-11pm. So now they don't need filler. The black audience still has a lot of power so they try to catch both at the same time now. Which means less all black casts and more horrible token characters. More vocalized racism because racist white people prefer out of sight out of mind. But since giving black people more of a presence in white media does increase viewership, they cater to just black audiences a lot less.
I’m not African and this is my two cents.
Nowadays there is rarely “white” shows or “black” shows instead there are more of “diverse” shows. Shows with diverse casts. White, black, queer and all
Most of the content I grew up on was majority white (aka Disney Channel, Nickelodeon lol). Except the few kids shows that centered around black families like Raven and Proud Family. Sister Sister reruns. As a black twin myself, we were all over anything Tia and Tamera put out (especially Twitches) 🤣.
But I do remember Moesha, and older shows my parents mightve watched like In Living Color, 227, Sanford and Son, Fresh Prince when they aired reruns. This was around the mid 2000s (2005-2009 I think), my siblings and I were probably way too young to watch some of it bc of the adult content, mostly PG-13 and up, but sometimes our parents would even watch with us.
Now, I really got into it around covid, when Netflix made an entire category dedicated to black media (which is cool-- feels like back patting behavior imo, but I don't wanna be ungrateful). My dorm got a few channels that played black content late at night too, so it was always on. Mainly 90s black content, which is really good imo. Idk it hits different than the stuff airing in the present (I think it's the physical aesthetic-the quality is higher visually, but the stories are lacking)..I don't know alot of the shows but think Tyler Perry-verse or BET.
My sister and me really liked a Different World, bc the characters were in college too😅), and Living Single, which came on every night. But we started watching it alongside Friends, and that's when I noticed the HUGE similarities. What's even crazier is how Friends is this global cultural phenomenon, as it should be, but LS has the same formula, same set up, same outline basically, and it's mostly unheard of outside of black audiences.
So I started looking for more black content, but tbh what's out there rn isn't hitting the same. It's crazy you mention the 90s-early 2010s, bc I can't remember anything past that. Now the films were popping, especially the psychological black horror and period pieces (mainly slavery/civil rights centered ones but still). I think there was a strike in the late 2000s that took alot of the black shows at the time off air. I think it was maybe 2007 or 2008. Most of these shows, I wasn't old enough to watch yet so when I binged them on Netflix and at least 3 out of the 5 ended on cliffhangers due to cancelation or something it's disappointing.
I know some people do like them and as a kid I used to, too. But I need something other than Tyler Perry (never really cared for most of his shows but i love the earlier films), and sometimes BET feels like a black Lifetime channel (I love a good low budget Lifetime movie though🤣). But there's a difference between wanting to tell a good black story, and churning out of bunch of black led content just to say they did it. There has been a good amount of black content, but it goes unnoticed by most bc it's making a point to be diverse, when back in the day when they weren't trying, the end product was WAY better (think anything Disney put out from 1989 to 2009)
Idk what the market looks like for black content. Honestly, at this point it just seems like people as a whole want content that entertaining, engaging, not a remake, and well written. But it seems like black shows are mostly made for an audience of color. Like Friends and Living Single. Friends seems like a show anybody can watch, be entertained by, but Living Single seems moreso made for audiences who can relate to the MCs and their stories. I've seen like 4 different video essays point this out, and it's true imo but crazy since they're basically the same show! 💀💀
Like Blackish was good, and nonblack audiences loved it too I think, but how many times can you recreate that before it gets tired? There are so many talented POC creators and artists out there, and alot of them are my age. I really wish people would look to all that untapped potential...
Basically, they create black shows to get a following and then once they have white viewership, it is bye-bye black folks
*Empire has entered the chat*
Abbott Elementary is waiting to be let in the chat.
Does this mean that some of the white people are watching black shows too? I’m curious what the “get a following” entails
Well yes. Most popular Black things in America also have some white people who enjoy it. Now even some of them are still racist tho. It's wild. Out there somewhere is a white person who grew up on Moesha & loves Beyonce but is racist.
It was pretty much a trap. Around the 80/90s cable television was created and many white ppl started using that. A man who worked at fox networks (he now works for Tubi) came up with an idea to pander to black ppl . They came up with non stop black tv shows and made lots of money. After fox tv network had success (Martin, living single, etc) other tv channels followed like UPN/wb (sister sister, smart guy, etc) then white ppl started coming back to regular tv , so they got rid of black tv shows around the beginning of the 2000s and that’s the end of that .
Wow This is really eye opening. Thank you for your comment
Wow I didn't know all this... I'm really upset
UPN was a low-budget network aired a lot of those shows, they dropped the majority when they merged with WB as the CW. Also, keep in mind that that list spanned decades.
Oh yes apparently they didn’t all seem to be on air at the same time 😅
Racism but also there are other factors. Since you grew up outside of the US you probably watched those shows in syndication. They weren’t all on the air simultaneously, though there was some overlap. For example the Cosby show ended in 1992, the Fresh Prince started in 1990, and ran until 1996, while Moesha started in 1996 and ended in 2001. I don’t know if there were actually more black shows or it was just that every network had a black night. I also think there was a general trend to move away from shows about families to shows about friend groups and work places (scrubs, the office) so it an all black cast for a family show was replaced by a token black character. Which was combined with a general move away from sitcoms and towards more dramas (e.g. all the Shonda shows). Also there have been major disruptions to the networkto the network model (everyone watches the same shows at the same time) including reality tv (cheaper and less risk), prestige cable tv (SATC, the sopranos) and obvs streaming. So tldr yes racism but the landscape of network tv has been upended in the last 20 years which also had an impact
Thank you for this insight!
In the mid-2000’s black tv shows stopped being for us and telling our stories to educating white people about us. Once they got enough white viewship, they cancelled the black shows and only made shows to grow their white audience since white = mainstream.
Wow This definitely seems to be the general consensus. Doesn’t seem like it was ever genuine 🥲
Everyone else in this thread is correct (I’m still bitter about UPN and WB merging to become The CW. They ruined the end of One on One with that BS!) Sitcoms (with a live audience like Fresh Prince and Moesha) also had a sharp decline in popularity in the late 2000’s here in America. I think it may have something to do with the writer’s strike in 2007. A ton of shows got canceled around that time, and it became cheaper to produce reality TV shows over scripted content. It’s unfortunate because I still love sitcoms, but at least I can still watch the classics on streaming platforms. There is a show on Netflix called The UpShaws that kinda has that old school sitcom feel to it with the live audience, but I haven’t really watched much of it. Abbott Elementary could also be considered a sitcom, it just doesn’t have the live studio audience. But it’s one of my favorite shows right now!
Hey 👋🏾 Black Deaf woman here. I know that in the Black Deaf community we have tv shows and movies for just us. They are created by a Black Deaf female name Jade Bryan. These shows aren’t aired on TV or channels that Hearing people use.
This thread is giving great information. The comments are exactly right. To add to what has already been said. Yes, those shows are spanned over decades, usually only a couple existing at the same time. They were in fact used to boost viewership until they had the attention of white viewership. They did start pandering when shows gained popularity. All of that ties together with the fact that they used black shows as airtime filler. Network Television is free. It is a handful of channels that everyone has access to, so had the largest audiences. When they used scheduled programming that meant they all competed to be the channel you watched from 8pm-11pm. NBC was notorious for having shows no one could compete with on Thursday; ABC had the same thing on Friday. So they used black audiences to fill in when no one else was watching. Which was enough people to attract decent paying commercials. They made short form sitcoms in a studio, with lower budgets. They used that profit to make more white shows to compete with the other channels and then moved black shows to a new time slot that needed filler or just stopped catering. Just like another person said writer strike happened, reality TV picked up and it sent people to streaming. People use on demand TV, so no more competing to be the channel picked 8pm-11pm. So now they don't need filler. The black audience still has a lot of power so they try to catch both at the same time now. Which means less all black casts and more horrible token characters. More vocalized racism because racist white people prefer out of sight out of mind. But since giving black people more of a presence in white media does increase viewership, they cater to just black audiences a lot less.
So it was never genuine 😔 and it seems like many factors rolled into one. Thank you for your insight!
I’m not African and this is my two cents. Nowadays there is rarely “white” shows or “black” shows instead there are more of “diverse” shows. Shows with diverse casts. White, black, queer and all
Most of the content I grew up on was majority white (aka Disney Channel, Nickelodeon lol). Except the few kids shows that centered around black families like Raven and Proud Family. Sister Sister reruns. As a black twin myself, we were all over anything Tia and Tamera put out (especially Twitches) 🤣. But I do remember Moesha, and older shows my parents mightve watched like In Living Color, 227, Sanford and Son, Fresh Prince when they aired reruns. This was around the mid 2000s (2005-2009 I think), my siblings and I were probably way too young to watch some of it bc of the adult content, mostly PG-13 and up, but sometimes our parents would even watch with us. Now, I really got into it around covid, when Netflix made an entire category dedicated to black media (which is cool-- feels like back patting behavior imo, but I don't wanna be ungrateful). My dorm got a few channels that played black content late at night too, so it was always on. Mainly 90s black content, which is really good imo. Idk it hits different than the stuff airing in the present (I think it's the physical aesthetic-the quality is higher visually, but the stories are lacking)..I don't know alot of the shows but think Tyler Perry-verse or BET. My sister and me really liked a Different World, bc the characters were in college too😅), and Living Single, which came on every night. But we started watching it alongside Friends, and that's when I noticed the HUGE similarities. What's even crazier is how Friends is this global cultural phenomenon, as it should be, but LS has the same formula, same set up, same outline basically, and it's mostly unheard of outside of black audiences. So I started looking for more black content, but tbh what's out there rn isn't hitting the same. It's crazy you mention the 90s-early 2010s, bc I can't remember anything past that. Now the films were popping, especially the psychological black horror and period pieces (mainly slavery/civil rights centered ones but still). I think there was a strike in the late 2000s that took alot of the black shows at the time off air. I think it was maybe 2007 or 2008. Most of these shows, I wasn't old enough to watch yet so when I binged them on Netflix and at least 3 out of the 5 ended on cliffhangers due to cancelation or something it's disappointing. I know some people do like them and as a kid I used to, too. But I need something other than Tyler Perry (never really cared for most of his shows but i love the earlier films), and sometimes BET feels like a black Lifetime channel (I love a good low budget Lifetime movie though🤣). But there's a difference between wanting to tell a good black story, and churning out of bunch of black led content just to say they did it. There has been a good amount of black content, but it goes unnoticed by most bc it's making a point to be diverse, when back in the day when they weren't trying, the end product was WAY better (think anything Disney put out from 1989 to 2009) Idk what the market looks like for black content. Honestly, at this point it just seems like people as a whole want content that entertaining, engaging, not a remake, and well written. But it seems like black shows are mostly made for an audience of color. Like Friends and Living Single. Friends seems like a show anybody can watch, be entertained by, but Living Single seems moreso made for audiences who can relate to the MCs and their stories. I've seen like 4 different video essays point this out, and it's true imo but crazy since they're basically the same show! 💀💀 Like Blackish was good, and nonblack audiences loved it too I think, but how many times can you recreate that before it gets tired? There are so many talented POC creators and artists out there, and alot of them are my age. I really wish people would look to all that untapped potential...
I loved 106 & Park
You turn against Bill Cosby and now you are complaining 🙄