Forum to address lack of minorities on TV
By Sommer Mathis
Oct. 29, 2002 9:00 p.m.
The only thing missing from a forum on minority representation
in the media may be a dissenting opinion.
The panel discussion is to be held at the L.A. Public Library
this Saturday. It is billed under the title “Can Equal TV
Representation Be Demanded As A Next Civil Right?” and will
help kick off the month-long “TV or NOT TV” festival
being put on by the experimental media advocacy group L.A.
Freewaves. While panelists will include scholars and professionals
from a wide variety of mediums including TV, film, radio and
newspaper, don’t expect any one of them to stray too far from
the forum’s premise.
“No one’s going to say we shouldn’t be
demanding (equal representation),” said Anne Bray, founder
and executive director of L.A. Freewaves.
Whether that fact is an oversight or merely a reflection of how
much the issue’s importance is still universally acknowledged
is open to debate.
UCLA Film & Television professor Chon Noriega, who also
serves as the director of the Chicano Studies Research Center,
believes the latter to be true. He plans to participate in the
panel because he thinks that while the concept of increasing
minority representation on television has been talked about since
the 1960s, it has never really been addressed or resolved.
“Since this issue was first addressed, minority levels
(within the population) have doubled,” said Noriega.
Noriega went on to suggest that according to data he has
recently compiled and will soon release as a policy brief from the
CSRC, the levels of minorities appearing in television shows have
not been keeping up with that high rate of growth. Some of that
shortfall, he says, may have something to do with the fickle nature
of the television season.
“You tend to see changes here and there, but what if
they’re only happening on four TV shows, and they all get
cancelled? TV is such a risky thing. Seventy-five percent of new
shows are going to fail. You can’t get any riskier than
that,” Noriega said.
But, even in a business as risky as television, the American
people may be more powerful than they realize.
“These (television) airwaves are rented to the different
corporations that put out the broadcast and the cable. I feel like
people in the United States don’t even know that principle,
which is that it is their property, the same way that the air is
their property,” Bray said.
A wide variety of solutions will be offered by the panelists,
ranging from the possibility of launching a new channel that first
and foremost embraces diversity to enacting legislation that would
place strict rules on existing broadcasters about the number of
minorities that would be on the air.
Other panelists will include TV writer and producer Vince
Cheung, KCRW radio DJ Garth Trinidad, and L.A. Weekly columnist
Erin Aubry Kaplan. Professor Noriega looks forward to the
discussion, but isn’t worried about butting heads with any of
them.
“I don’t see there being any conflict, per se,
though there will certainly be different approaches,” he
said.
The panel discussion will be held Saturday, 3-5 p.m. For more
information on the TV or NOT TV festival, check out
www.freewaves.org.
