The color of money

Of course there are blacks on TV. You just have to pay to see them.

By Joyce Millman

Aug 23, 1999 | As you've probably heard, the 1999 fall TV season promises to be a snowy white one. Under fire from the NAACP, and with just three weeks left until the launch of their new schedules, the Big Four networks are now scrambling to add black faces to some previously all-white ensemble casts. But that doesn't change the most pertinent stat: There are no new shows on ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox built around African-American stars. In the view of the networks, white audiences won't watch "black" shows in large enough numbers to justify the risk.

The cable channels, though, inhabit an entirely different programming universe, where whites are not only happy to watch black shows, they even pay for the privilege. Showtime is running "Linc's," a sitcom about black professionals in Washington, D.C.; later this month, it's debuting the made-for-TV movie "Strange Justice," about the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill saga. Four kids' shows on Nickelodeon -- "Cousin Skeeter," "The Journey of Allan Strange," "All That" and "Kenan and Kel" -- have more African-American stars in them than the Big Four networks' prime-time lineups combined. HBO has "The Chris Rock Show" and has just premiered the original movie "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge" -- a glossy biopic about the emotionally fragile '50s movie and nightclub star who became the first black woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress (for the 1954 musical "Carmen Jones"), but who finally fell apart under the pressure of being a standard-bearer for blacks in a racist society. Halle Berry (who also produced the movie) is stunning in the title role, but what lingers isn't her full-throttle recreation of Dandridge's sizzle and sadness; it's the irony that, in the 45 years since Dandridge's nomination, there have been just five more black best actress nominees -- and no winners.

When you look at the relative abundance of African-American faces on cable, it becomes obvious that the broadcast networks' race problem isn't really a race problem at all but, rather, a class problem: Let them eat cable. The networks can't believe that there are enough disposable-income-laden black viewers out there to deliver big ratings for series about black people; already, most black sitcoms have been shunted off to downscale UPN and WB, where they exist in segregated programming blocks. High-quality shows with black lead characters are in danger of becoming TV luxury items, available only to viewers who can afford them.

"Strange Justice," a raw docudrama based on Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson's National Book Award finalist, almost didn't make it to TV at all; it was rejected by both Rupert Murdoch's Fox and Ted Turner's TNT before being given a home by Showtime, which has gained a reputation for running movies orphaned by their original networks or distributors (like Anjelica Huston's "Bastard Out of Carolina," also commissioned and rejected by TNT, and Adrian Lyne's banned "Lolita").

But what must have made Murdoch and Turner so nervous had nothing to do with race. "Strange Justice" tears the scab off one of the deepest wounds of George Bush's presidency, recreating a week in 1991 that polarized Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, men and women and blacks and whites, and set the stage for the nationally divisive O.J. Simpson trial and Clinton impeachment circus to come.

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