Are You on TV?
by Roger Martin
OK,
there's this anthropologist from Mars, see? And it's never set foot
in these United States. But it's watching prime-time television. So
what will it conclude about the makeup of our country?
- That there are darned few kids under 13.
- That elders over 65 are scarce as hen's teeth.
- That more than a third of us are 25 to 34 years
old.
- That more middle-aged, white guys are running around
down here than actually are.
- That most of our women are about 10 years younger
than most of our men.
- That there are few Asians and Latinos among us --
despite the fact that as segments of our population, they're growing
rapidly.
Our Martian would get an accurate
picture of the ratio of blacks to other races in the population -- but
would discover that black people on TV are confined to a relatively
few shows.
Jake Harwood, a KU associate
professor of communication studies, and graduate student Karen Anderson
came up with these findings. They counted exactly who showed up on one
episode of each of the 61 prime-time TV programs that ran between 7
and 10 p.m. central time on the four major networks in 1999.
On the shows, folks over 65 were
the most massively underrepresented group -- they're 12.6 percent of
the actual population but only 2.8 percent of the TV characters. Tykes
under 4 are 6.9 percent of the population but less than half a percent
of the TV characters.
Meanwhile, the 25- to 34-year-old
age group, which makes up only 13.6 percent of the population, constitutes
35.9 percent of the folks on prime-time programs.
In TV land, people stick with
their own kind, Harwood notes. There were 95 African American characters
out of the 800-plus he counted -- but 50 percent of those were in just
seven shows.
Harwood says, "You get some really
sophisticated black characters, like the doctor in 'ER,' and then you
get buffoonish stereotypes -- almost reactionary portrayals -- in many
shows. There are few average black characters -- the Cosby family kind
of thing -- right now."
One response is to say, Well,
it's just TV after all -- a funhouse mirror warped by advertiser frenzy
to court certain markets.
Harwood replies, "If I were an
Asian woman in my 50s and I turned on TV and never saw anybody who shared
my basic characteristics, I think that would start to register. My feelings
of pride in my cultural heritage or age group might be dampened."
If he were czar of television,
what would he mandate?
First, that shows contain complex,
fully realized children and adults. He praised the program "Home Improvement"
for doing that.
Harwood also said, "If you could
get three-dimensional white and black characters on the same show, you
could get both groups watching and still make a profit."
And think about this. If folks
actually saw much of that on TV, you might even get actual black and
white people in actual living rooms talking about things that matter
to all of them.
Just imagine.
