The Need for an Inclusive Mainstream

The current uproar over the conspicuous absence of nonwhites from this fall’s network television lineup has consequences that reverberate well beyond the confines of Hollywood. Indeed, the controversy underscores broader trends in American society. For almost a generation, we have downplayed the ideal of a broad mainstream U.S. culture and instead opted for a more sectarian scheme, in which members of different subgroups were encouraged to carve out specialized niches. But the outrage over the absence of minorities in network TV may signal the beginning of the end of the ideology of “each group to its own.” With luck, it will resurrect the belief in an expansive, collectively shared American mainstream.

In the 1970s, just as cable television and videocassette recorders were becoming mainstays in U.S. homes, cultural critics and futurists welcomed the “demassification” of the American media. No longer would television viewers be force-fed programming by the three major networks. Scores of new cable channels would eschew the network practice of catering to the lowest common denominator and begin serving the viewing needs of smaller, targeted audiences. Broadcasting would give way to “narrowcasting.”

Now, with the spread of cable availability and proliferation of cable channels, network television viewership has reached an all-time low. During the 1998-1999 season, for the first time, not a single network series averaged a 30% share of the viewing audience. In the heyday of network TV, shows that failed to surpass 30% were destined for cancellation.

But today there are specialized channels dedicated not only to African Americans and Spanish-speakers but also to women, cooking aficionados, country-music fans, nature lovers, sports fiends, pet owners, baby boomers and children. It should not be such a surprise, then, that the networks, too, have been swept up in the segmentation of the television market. CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox have become the de facto white, middle-class channels.

In shunning nonwhite lead characters and themes, the networks have essentially declared they don’t need blacks, Asians or Latinos in their niche white audience. With such ethnocentric programming, the networks have abdicated their role as purveyors of American culture at large. And to the extent that Americans have collectively abandoned the ideal of a unifying mainstream culture, we have all let the networks off the hook.

Ironically, at the advent of the cable era, it was network executives who warned of the consequences of audience fragmentation. They worried that pay-cable programming would become the exclusive domain of well-to-do whites, and that networks would get the “leftover” audience. As part of their anti-cable campaign in the late 1970s, network chiefs plaintively asked where the cable age would leave residents of Harlem or Watts. In 1978, one ABC vice president asked whether the “public interest [would] be better served by a video system that only serves the most affluent.”

The answer to that question, then and now, is no. But not just because of the popular belief in some vague social goal called diversity. Television not only entertains, it conveys messages and values that people--particularly children--absorb. In a country as populous and vast as the United States, television informs millions of Americans in thousands of communities about the goings on in the rest of the nation. From Maine to California, television lifts people from their local experience and defines who they are as Americans.

In the past, network television did succeed in breaking down some national barriers--particularly those of class and region. Through network TV, postwar Americans were introduced to the same ideas on the same shows. No matter our social backgrounds, we all watched the evening news, Johnny Carson and mega-hits like “Roots” by the millions. For decades, television served as a vast public square, or commons, where Americans met nightly.

The protests over this fall’s network lineup point to a growing concern over the decline of collective American pop culture. What we once hailed as the democratization of media has also brought balkanization. After all, no one can claim that African Americans are absent from television. Rather, they have been relegated to their own niche--on their own channels or on smaller networks on specific nights. No matter that cable channels, like HBO, have excelled at producing black-themed programming over the past few ears. What seems to offend people most is that black-oriented programming is segregated from the “mainstream” networks. A generation after the start of the cable revolution, Americans of all stripes may be getting tired of seeing themselves as little more than a loose confederation of niche markets. We are becoming nostalgic for the public commons in media space.

At least the proliferation of cable can be credited for increasing the number of African Americans on television. Latino and Asian-themed shows and characters, on the other hand, are almost nowhere to be found on English-language TV. So not only has the so-called democratization of television not worked in the favor of these groups, it has eroded the networks’ sense of responsibility to the mass audience.

So what becomes of the ideal of racial integration if there is no shared space in which to integrate? How do we assimilate new immigrants if we’ve abandoned the very notion of the collective American mainstream?

In countering criticism about the lack of diversity on television, network executives like to declare they are not in the business of social reform. But from its beginnings, the Hollywood image industry has been in the business of assimilation. Author Neal Gabler, in “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” chronicles the history of the Jewish immigrants who built Hollywood and used motion pictures as a way of assimilating into--and then reinterpreting--the American mainstream. Today, the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza are threatening network boycotts, not simply because they want to be “represented” on television, but because they want to see their ethnic groups integrated into images of the mainstream.

It is ironic that as America becomes more racially and ethnically complex, mainstream television is becoming increasingly simplistic and segregated between white and black. Whites are watching white-oriented shows, and blacks are watching black-oriented shows, while other minority groups, particularly Latinos, are left out. Analysts have declared crossover television dead, but both white- and black-oriented programming have just become too parochial and ethnically exclusive to have broad multiracial appeal. Unlike today, the creators of past successful black crossover programs deliberately set out to appeal to a broad, racially mixed audience.

By its nature, television deals in idealized images. Yet, its vision has not been immune to fundamental social changes over the years. A generation and more ago, TV’s America was Midwestern, Protestant and conservative. By the early 1990s, characters were more cosmopolitan, yuppie and free-spirited. While by no means inclusive of all sectors of American society, television depictions have generally captured the Zeitgeists of different eras. To the extent that its current ethnocentric programming reflects a fragmented American culture, it continues to do so today.

Coercing ethnic diversity on television through boycotts and lawsuits is not likely to reverse the cultural breakdown that has contributed to the fractionalization of TV programming. While network airwaves are a public entity, whose licensees are held accountable to the public interest, this impasse would be best resolved by a public reexamination of American culture. We need to rehabilitate the ideal of an evolving, eclectic mainstream culture to which we all contribute. Instead of constantly pulling outward into our niches, Americans should be pushing forward to forge a unifying center. Market forces haven’t helped to alter the networks’ cold calculations. A collective shift toward a new brand of inclusive uniculturalism just might.