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Disturbing the peace: television, disruption, and the roles of Black women

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DISTURBING THE PEACE:

TELEVISION, DISRUPTION, AND THE ROLES OF BLACK WOMEN

by

Nikita T. Hamilton

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

December 2017

Copyright 2017 Nikita T. Hamilton
ii

iii
DEDICATION
I dedicate this document to my Mother for her steadfast support, continual prayers, and
unwavering belief that I can accomplish anything I set out to accomplish.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I have to thank God for walking beside me every step of the
way through this process. Without my faith, I know that I would not have reached the
finish line.
The completion of this dissertation was not just the work of one person, but was
the compilation of the perseverance of my entire village. I am grateful to my advisor,
Henry Jenkins, for ushering me into the Henry-advisee fold. I still do not have the words
to express how much that meant to me. I will be forever thankful for the faith you had in
me and my abilities when oftentimes I did not have it in myself. Thank so much to my
other committee members Randy Lake and Chris Smith. You both stuck with me through
the unproductive and productive times. I have no doubt that it was a challenge, but we
made it to the end! I must also make a most special thanks to Debra Langford for being
an integral part of making this project happen. Without your mentorship and outreach,
this dissertation would not have had all of the fantastic interviews I was able to draw
from.
I have to thank my #1 cheerleader, my Mommy, for her steadfast support. You
ran this race with me through the good and the bad. No one on the planet believes in me
like you do and I will never be able to show the full breadth of my gratitude. I am grateful
to my grandma and the rest of my family for supporting me and my goals no matter what
I set out to do. I am overwhelmingly thankful to Joel Lemuel for his hours of advice, help
throughout this process, and general big brother nature. You never thought I could not
accomplish this feat and here I am. I have to thank Janeane Anderson for being the
ultimate living example of Black Girl Magic and one of my best friends. You will never
v
know how much you mean to me. I am so grateful for the encouragement I have received
from Marcus Shepard and the Shepard family. You all adopted me as a daughter and a
sister and you will never be rid of me! I also have to give a huge thanks to Janeane, Jamil
Baldwin, and Katherine Elder for putting roofs over my head when I did not have one of
my own. You made space for me in your hearts and your homes allowing me to work and
continue writing when I would have been unable to do so.
A warm thank you to Jakita Morgan and Billie Shotlow for lifting my spirits
throughout my years at USC and also giving the best hugs. Thank you to my
USC/Annenberg/GSG friends for your encouragement and all of the laughs through the
stress. Thank you to my Penn family for being examples of striving for your dreams. I am
still thoroughly convinced that Penn kids can do anything. Thank you to my Philly family
for your love and support from the beginning of this Ph.D. program to the very end.
Thank you to my mother’s church and Bible study group for their continual prayers.
There is no greater blessing than having prayer warriors surrounding you. Thank you to
my LA friends who have provided solace from school and been constant inspiriters.
Thank you to Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and the Gamma Chapter for ingraining in
me that no distance is too far for me tread and no mountain too high for me to climb.
Finally, thank you to my some of my best friends in the world—Ana Nettles, Yaw
Turkson, Katerina Rojas, Ashley Beard and Felicia Wrice—for their unshakable
sustentation. Each of you has been integral part of me getting to this point.
I could not have done any of this on my own. I am blessed to know each and
every one of you mentioned whether by name or group. Thank you for being a part of my
village!
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication iii
Acknowledgments iv
Abstract viii
Chapter One: Introduction 1
Literature Review 5
The Conception of Disruption 5
Disruption, Negotiation, and Representation 10
Theoretical Contribution 26
Research Questions 28
Methodology 29
Critical Cases of Disruption 29
Interpretive Community’ 31
‘Above the Line’ Community 33
Chapters 34

Chapter Two: Critical Cases of Disruption- 1990 to 1995 and 2010 to 2015 38
Past Critical Cases of Disruption: 1990 to 1995 40
Technological 40
Economic 41
Societal 44
Present Critical Cases of Disruption: 2010 to 2015 47
Technological 47
Economic 55
Societal 61
Similarities and Differences Between Critical Cases 66
Conclusion 69

Chapter Three: Behind the Screens 71
Methodology 73
Participants, Materials, and Procedures 73
Analysis 75
Negotiation within the Landscape of Dysconscious Racism 75
Peers and Upstream 77
Creators and Downstream 81
Advertising Sales 87
Conclusion 92

vii
Chapter Four: Representation- A Negotiation 93
Audience Research Models 93
Methodology 98
Participants, Materials, and Procedure 98
Analysis 99
Individuality 100
Impact on Real Life 116
Black Female Executives and Their Negotiations as Audience
Members 124
Individuality: Black Female Audience Members 124
Impact on Real Life: Black Female Audience Members 128
Conclusion 132

Chapter Five: Conclusion 135
Listed Research Questions 139
Chapter Summations and Interpretations of Findings 140
Limitations 148
Suggestions for Future Research 149

Bibliography 152

Appendices
Appendix A: Black Female Executive One-on-One Interview Guide 165
Appendix B: Black Female Audience Small Group Interview Guide 168

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ABSTRACT
The aim of this dissertation is to examine the relationship between disruptions—
technological, economic, and societal—to the television ecology and the negotiations—
industrial, textual, and reception—that black women engage in when dealing with
representations of black women on television. One-on-one interviews and small group
interviews with black female executives and black female audience members,
respectively, were conducted in order to explore their negotiations within their respective
components of Christine Gledhill’s framework of negotiation. The analyses of these
interviews revealed nuanced negotiations conducted by black women on multiple levels
within different components that had yet to be directly interrogated. The analyses also
reinforced arguments for the need to invest in television as a continuing site for struggles
over representation and visibility and the capacity of representations to empower the
marginalized generally, and black women more specifically, due to their own readings of
the text.

1

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
When Evelyn, one of the executives interviewed for this project, was asked what
her incentives are for doing the work that she does behind the screen she said the
following,
“…the reason why I’m personally working in this space is that I know that
television really represents what this country is and can be and I want to make
sure that I am showing the widest picture, the broadest range, and providing
opportunities for black women that have been marginalized for so long… That’s
why I’m doing it. I’m a black woman. I want my daughter to see that, her friends,
everyone. And I think that that’s what’s important. It’s not just for us, it’s for
everyone to witness.”
For Evelyn, the work that she does is not only about business, but also must be done
because she has a daughter and she wants her to see women on television who look like
her. She wants her daughter’s friends and everyone else to see black women represented
as whole and dynamic people because that is what she and her daughter are—dynamic,
complete people. Evelyn understands that since its inception television has become not
only a source of entertainment, but also a medium through which social norms are
communicated, consumers are informed, news is delivered, and people around the
country, and the world, can be connected to one another. She may exist on the plane of
reality, but knows that what happens on screen affects the real world. She sees it as a part
of her job to bring the two into closer alignment. Though the entire statement is moving,
one particular piece sticks out in terms of this project: “… I know that television really
2
represents what this country is and can be…” Television is a space for presenting
realities, windows into the past, and visions of the future. It is a place of flux and
negotiation on, behind, and in front of the screen.
My reasoning for choosing the medium of television for this project mirrors some
of Evelyn’s thinking. Television plays such a central role in the kinds of representations
and discourses people in the United States commonly encounter. Television is a powerful
cultural institution and there is no denying the symbolic power that it holds. In refining
the debate over the hegemonic functions of entertainment television and focusing
specifically on women, Andrea Press (1991) writes, “…decades after the first attempts to
research mass media effects, we still know very little about how mass media in general
and television in particular influence individuals and social groups,” (p.9). Though that
statement was written over 20 years ago, there is still much to be learned about the
television industry, its texts, and its reception. This project foregrounds the question of
how disruptions to the television market have resulted in opportunities for black women
to make black female characters be more visible (i.e., leading roles) and have more
diversified roles on television. There are scholarly works that address either race or
gender and fewer that focus on the intersection of both. However, there are none that
interrogate all of the components of negotiation and purposely apply both a production-
focused and reception-focused approach while dealing with issues of representation. This
dissertation does both.
Additionally, part of what led me down the path to this dissertation was one of my
first experiences at Annenberg. I was told that reception studies are navel gazing; that we,
or more specifically I, as a token representative black woman, am supposed to know what
3
all black women want and think. I was told that any inquiries made into the black female
television audience would simply uncover requests for “more and better” and that
political economy and producers should be the sole focuses of television studies. My
belief was that it had to be a bit more complicated than that not only because I have no
idea what all black women want, but also because I was observing an evolving television
ecology and changes in black female representations. These representations motivated me
down the path to complete a project that strongly argues against such a limited gaze of
black women and what they see, want, and can do when it comes to their representation
on television.
The current phenomenon began with the show Scandal created by Shonda
Rhimes, which premiered on ABC in April 2012 and had the first black female lead
character on broadcast television in over 30 years: lawyer and White House consultant
Olivia Pope. Being Mary Jane was created by Mara Brock Akil and premiered on BET in
July 2013 with the black female lead character on-air journalist “Pauletta” Mary Jane
Paul. Both of these shows sparked oppositional debates about black cultural politics that
resonated throughout news outlets, blogs, and social media. The shows and their black
female leads offered a contested terrain for discourses and politics surrounding the
production and exhibition of black female representations.
Olivia is an educated, successful black woman with her own firm and is also a
consultant to the President of the United States, who she happens to be having an affair
with for much of the show. Scandal’s popularity at its start was fueled by a
predominately Black active Twitter audience and the engagement that the cast members
and creator Shonda Rhimes made sure to have with them (Goldberg, 2013). By its second
4
season, the show typically ranked 1
st
with 18-34 year-olds in the Thursday 10pm spot and
was the highest rated show among African-Americans (Vega, 2013).
1
The show also
received Twitter engagement around 2,200 tweets per minute of the show during that
season (Goldberg, 2013). Article after article was published about the show and it
remains a source of conversation as it prepares to enter its seventh and final season.
Mary Jane is also an educated, successful black woman who has her own show on
a major news network. She addresses black cultural politics much more directly than
Olivia Pope, but she too navigates the world with the knowledge that she must work
twice as hard to have half as much. Being Mary Jane premiered as a 90-minute movie,
ranking as the 2
nd
highest show on all of television in the coveted demographic of 18-49
year olds that night (Fox, 2013). During its 3
rd
season, it was ranked the #1 scripted cable
show among black viewers 18-49 years old and has repeatedly ranked in the top 5 cable
shows alongside hits like The Walking Dead (O’Connell, 2015). It draws steady Twitter
engagement, but did extremely well the day of its season 3 premiere with over 113,000
tweets, and just like Scandal engendered article after article (Nielsen SocialGuide
Intelligence, 2015).
These two shows and others, like Atlanta and Blackish, are examples of black
cultural expressions produced within the dominant mainstream space of television that
provoke highly contentious disputes about black cultural spaces and images both within
and outside of the Black American community. However, Scandal and Being Mary Jane,
as well as more recent shows like Insecure, are also a part of the rise in the number of

1
Scandal had a viewership of 10.1% of black households, or about 1.8 million people, by
its second season.
5
black female leads. This particular phenomenon not only matters because television is a
powerful cultural tool and black women are one of the most marginalized groups in
America, but also because my examination of this phenomenon interrogates the
negotiations, or give-and-take, with representations that black women engage in. These
black women are presenting communication and cultural studies scholars with a
marginalized group that understands that they are operating within a neoliberal system,
regardless of whether or not they can label it as such, and can comprehend the influence
of black female images on society. These women also often place added value on their
own entertainment and empowerment.
Literature Review
The Concept of Disruption
Beginning in the 1980s, the media industry saw a new cycle, or some would even
say cycles, of innovation that uprooted business models that had been in place since the
beginning of film and television. These cycles can be thought of as predicted and
identifiable repetitions of disruptions. It is because of this newest cycle that I am looking
to conceptualize the relationship between what Raymond Williams (1977) labels the
dominant, residual and emergent, which exist in culture more generally, and the
television ecology. The dominant is the standard mode of production, the overarching
social order, and the accepted ideologies of a culture. For example, major media industry
corporations such as The Walt Disney Company and 21
st
Century Fox would be defined
as the dominant in the current television ecology because they have set the rules,
procedures, and even the culture of the ecology. Williams best describes the dominant by
explaining what it is not—the emergent and the residual—and then writes,
6
“…a way of understanding the character of the dominant, is that no mode of
production and therefore no dominant social order and therefore no dominant
culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all human practice, human energy, and
human intention,” (p.125).
This definition can be applied to dominant ideologies and representations on
television, which are used to construct black identities and stories about black people
(Carpenter, 2005). The representations and stories of black people that have been created
and repeatedly reified on television are most often those constructed by the dominant and
not those of the human practice, energy, and intention that reside outside of the dominant
(e.g., marginalized groups of people). The residual, “has been effectively formed in the
past, but it is still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element
of the past, but as an effective element of the present, “ (Williams, p.122). With regards
to television, the residual would not only include the continuation of 30 minute or 60
minute long show formats, but also the continuity of stereotypes like the “Mammy” who
was present in a film as recently as 2008’s Sex and the City through the character of
Louise played by Jennifer Hudson. These residual paradigms are a part of what Black
American women, who are both members of the audience and members of the television
industry itself, are working to dismantle through the use of negotiation. Finally, the
emergent encompasses new meanings, values and practices that represent the human
experiences, aspirations and achievements that the dominant culture undervalues,
oppresses, neglects or just cannot recognize (Williams, 1977). The emergent can be
credited with “forcing” the dominant to shift and change. The emergent will be referred
to as “disruption” throughout this project.
7
Though the emergent is in the subordinate position in culture, and often elements
of emergence are incorporated into the dominant for the purpose of bringing it under the
dominant’s control, there are times when the emergent is able to change what is
considered to be the dominant practice. I equate the emergent to disruptions to the
television ecology. When Williams (1974) examined television, he began with the
question of technological determinism versus symptomatic technology. Technological
determinism is defined as, “new technologies [that] are discovered, by an essentially
internal process of research and development, which then sets the conditions for social
change and progress,” (p.5). The effects of technology are what make the modern man
and the modern condition in this view. The symptomatic technological view is that, “any
particular technology is then as it were a by-product of a social process that is otherwise
determined,” (p.6). Both views, as Williams notes, are dependent on the isolation of
technology and he calls for a different interpretation using the particular case of
television. His interpretation differs from technological determinism by restoring
intention to the process of research and development. His interpretation also differs from
symptomatic technology in that the purposes and practices stemming from technology
would be seen as direct: “as known social needs, purposes, and practices to which the
technology is not marginal, but central,” (p.7). I agree with Williams’ interpretation as it
takes technology from a theorized place of isolation into an intentioned and directed
space. I argue that the social and the technological are closely entwined with one another
and this calls for further examination of what society does with new technologies that
shift the status quo whether they are the product of intentioned research and development
or directed at specific social needs and practices.
8
Williams describes the social history of television as a technology, detailing the
invention of television not as a single event, but as a series of events that depended on
complex inventions and developments in other technologies such as photography and
motion pictures. When he outlines the social history of the uses of television technology,
he does not simply begin with broadcasting, but with the question, “what then were the
new needs which led to the development of a new technology of social communication,”
(p.14). He makes clear the integral nature of the social to the technology that is television
and I agree with its importance. He believes in a social based model because he is able to
track a history of social needs and purposes that drove television to where it was at the
time of his work and he could foresee its future prospects. I believe in this model not only
because of the history of television, but also because we are witnessing marginalized
members of society actively negotiating with components of the television ecology
directly or by utilizing disruptive technologies to either effect it indirectly or to
circumvent it completely.
Though the sole disruptors of interest are not only technological, the definition
Clayton M. Christensen (1997) penned for disruption was for technologies. Disruptive
technologies are defined as, “innovations that result in worse product performance, at
least in the near-term… [that] bring to the market a very different value proposition than
had been available previously,” (Christensen, p. xviii). They offer features that fringe and
new customers value and are usually cheaper, smaller, simpler, and often more
convenient to use for consumers (Christensen, 1997). Unlike sustaining technologies,
which improve the performance of established products, disruptive technologies have a
tendency to upend established products completely or to destabilize a previously held
9
market-share. For example, the personal computer was a disruptive technology that
displaced the typewriter. Once the personal computer appeared, there was no reason to
ever purchase typewriters again save for the sake of nostalgia. In addition, the computer
did more than the typewriter ever could as it allowed for design, game play, and
eventually connection to the Internet. Disruptions challenge the old and attempt to
overthrow what is already in place. Christensen studied disruptive technologies in order
to explain the demise of great technology firms, but the concept can also be applied to the
television ecology in the form of technological disruptions as well as societal and
economic ones. In June 1944, the GI Bill was signed into law by President Franklin D.
Roosevelt and became the economic disruptor that helped give rise to the American
middle class. The bill provided benefits that included payments for education and loans
for starting businesses (Suddath, 2009; NPR, 2016). Advances in the automobile
industry, such as General Motors’ assembly line, also aided in this disruption by allowing
cities, like Flint, Michigan, to become middle class boomtowns. The consequence of
these disruptions was a piece of the ‘American Dream’ that would then become a part of
television with shows like I Love Lucy (1951) and Leave it to Beaver (1957). The
decision of the court case Roe v. Wade in 1973 was a societal disruptor that fueled
conversation and legislation about women’s rights in addition to later influencing
television programming. In the popular show Murphy Brown (1988), the lead female
character makes a decision as to whether or not to get an abortion after finding out that
she is pregnant. Even a more recent show, Girls (2012), dedicated an episode to dealing
with a potential abortion. Abortion and the decision of Roe v. Wade continue to be a
societal disruptors and a source of conversation within the nation. All three kinds of
10
disruptions have the ability to bring the television ecology to a different value proposition
than it once had.
Disruption, Negotiation, and Representation
It is important to note that Williams is a Marxist and both previously mentioned
works—Television: Technology and Cultural Form and Marxism and Literature—
critique the Marxist framework in an attempt to expand its analysis of culture past
economic determinism. Williams’ research and the works of other scholars, such as
Stuart Hall and Herman Gray, make way for disruption, negotiation, and representation
by laying the foundation for their interrelated consideration and usefulness to the
examination of the representation of black women on television. Williams’ work provides
reasoning for interrogating how television, a mode of production and an ideological
apparatus, can be disrupted and how negotiation may be one of the interactivities between
entities. For example, Williams (1977) suggests that Marxist theory should change its
way of thinking about culture by moving from a hierarchal model that holds the base and
superstructure as completely separate entities, to a more interactive one where these
entities mutually influence one another. A social, interactive model recognizes the
complexity of culture and some of the dynamic interrelations that establish and reify race
and racism within a society. Additionally, Williams’ (1974) makes the case for moving
past ‘epochal’ analysis because, “it is necessary to examine how these [movements and
tendencies] relate to whole cultural process rather than only to the selected and abstracted
dominant system,” (p.121). In order to conduct an authentic historical analysis, Williams
calls for the acknowledgment of the complex interrelations between different movements
and tendencies, “both within and beyond a specific and effective dominance,” (p.121).
11
The emergent, or disruption, and the residual are ways of examining the actual process
that is taking place because they reveal characteristics of the dominant and give a sense
of the hegemonic.
Stuart Hall (1980) also critiques the economic determinism central to classical
Marxism and formulates his own framework for considering race and culture called the
‘articulation of different modes of production’ (p.322). The ‘articulation of different
modes of production’ maintains the parts of Marxist theory that, “insists that racial
structures cannot be understood adequately outside of the framework of quite specific
sets of economic relations,” and the historical premise, “that the specific forms of these
relations cannot be deduced, a priori, from this level but must be made historically
specific,” (p.308; p.322). However, Hall acknowledges that economic structures alone
cannot adequately and sufficiently provide of level of explanation of the racial features of
the social formations. Therefore, he includes an aspect of the sociological, which he
refers to as ‘structures in dominance.’ He writes, “the object of inquiry must be treated as
a complex articulated structure which is itself ‘structured in dominance,’” (p.320). Hall
uses the example of slave plantation owners to illustrate his point because they
participated in the general movement of the world capitalist system, but on the basis of an
internal mode of production (i.e., slavery in its plantation form), which is not itself
“capitalist” in character. The slave planation is, however, still structured in dominance
and contains formulations of race and culture and a social hierarchy. Hall calls for
analyses that consider both economic structures and sociological structures because both
are involved in formulation and continuance of race and racism; both are involved in
representation. He writes, “for racism is also one of the dominant means of ideological
12
representation through which the white fractions of class come to ‘live’ their relations to
other fractions, and through them to capital itself,” (p.341).
Both Williams and Hall are offering frameworks grounded in Marxism that make
room for an analysis of culture that is not purely economy-based. However, Williams
presents a framework that considers how the dominant is, and can be, disrupted and
argues for a lowering of the hierarchal walls that once separated the base and
superstructure. Hall (1980) is more concerned with why racism has been specifically
“overdetermined and articulated with certain capitalisms at different stages of their
development,” (p.338-339). He calls for showing the articulations of racism within the
different structures of social formation, such as legal, political, and ideological systems,
in order to address the question. I make no claim as to whether one framework is better
than the other since their central focuses differ, but Williams’ framework considers
disruption, lays a foundation for the contested ground of representation, and allows for
the examination of negotiations between the marginalized and the dominant free from a
rigid hierarchal structure. This is not to say that the differing focus of Hall’s
framework—articulations of race and racism—will not be taken into account alongside
Williams’ framework. The representation of black women is indeed tied to race and
racism and structures of dominance within modes of production.
Herman Gray also theorizes within a Marxist framework and utilizes some of the
works of both Williams and Hall to inform his conceptions of culture, cultural politics,
blackness, and more (Gray, 1995, 2005, 2013). Though he agrees with some of Williams’
and Hall’s conceptions, they disagree on the investment in televisions as a site for the
struggle for representation and visibility as Gray eventually calls for its abandonment. In
13
many ways, Gray and I begin at the same conceptualization of the world. Gray (2005)
describes one way the present moment is distinguishable from the past due to,
Recognition by the cultural dominant of the sheer influence and pervasiveness of
black presence in mainstream American culture… [and] perhaps for the first time
a small but highly visible cohort of black cultural workers enjoys access to
institutional resources, especially the forms of legitimization, prestige, and
recognition that such institutions bestow (p.13).
We both agree that there is a complex terrain of cultural struggles (i.e., discourses,
representation, and politics) that affect the conditions of black cultural production and
bear directly with questions of power (Gray, 2005). Gray also steps beyond the
dichotomies of positive versus negatives images of black people on television and gives
insight into the politics of representation. In Watching Race, he views television as a
‘contested terrain’ rather than a finished effect of powerful determinants (p.xiv). Here, he
believes that television is a decisive area in which struggle for representation and
struggles over the meanings of representation are waged at varying levels of national
politics, moral authority, and expressive culture. He sees television representations of
Blacks and people of color as operating within structured and discursive relations of
power where alternative and subversive possibilities are constantly being displaced, but
still views television as appealing to utopian possibilities and expressing contradictions
and contestations of the hegemonic racial order (Gray, 1989; Jameson 1979; Fiske,
1987). Commercial television is deemed central to the cultural struggle as he writes,
14
In the 1980’s claims and representations of African Americans were waged in the
glare of television. Those representations and the cultural struggles that produced
them will, no doubt continue to shape the democratic and multiracial future of the
United States (Gray 2005, p.173).
Gray simultaneously categorizes television as a part of dominant media where the images
of blackness are repackaged narratives of state power while seeing it as important to the
cultural struggle (Lubiano, 1992). Television, I argue, may be a structure of dominance,
but it is not an impenetrable one.
However, Gray (2005) then suggests that we move past strategies of media and
political activism that center traditional television networks, and question the privilege
that has been given to representation as a primary site for hope and critique. He shifts
from arguing that we should engage with the structure of dominance that is television to
arguing that we should solely look to emerging black public spheres that challenge
traditional representations. Gray (2013) writes,
I reconsider the assumptions and political investment in a cultural politics of
recognition that seek correctives to images and increased visibility for
communities of color—African Americans in particular—in dominant media
platforms and institutions of representation because these very institutions are
now in the throes of dramatic and far-reaching social, cultural, and industrial
transformations (p.773).
Gray calls for us to move beyond, “mere recognition to challenge, disrupt, and unsettle
dominant cultural representations and institutions,” and looks to jazz, experimental art,
15
and cyberspace as some of the new frontiers for access to visibility and recognition for
black people though he eventually expresses cynicism towards cyberspace as well (2005,
p.3; 2013). Neither Williams’ nor Hall would request the abandonment of such an
integral site of cultural struggle and representation in our society. Williams’ (1977) posits
that the emergent will continue to appear and that its influence on culture is, “always of
major importance and always complex,” whether or not it is eventually absorbed by the
dominant or remains resistant (p.125). Hall would likely argue that the abandonment of
television would not stop it from being a structure of dominance through which
articulations of race are made and that Gray’s rejection of television makes no
consideration for the differing receptions of the audiences receiving these televised
images.
In Hall’s Encoding/Decoding, he proposes four stages of communication:
production, circulation, use, and reproduction. For him, each stage is relatively
autonomous, but still determinant in that the message is subject to the complex formal
‘rules’ by which language signifies (p.92). Hall describes a system of reception that
involves a merely analytic distinction of denotative and connotative meanings for the
purpose of, “distinguishing, in particular contexts, between not the presence/absence of
ideology in language but the different levels at which ideologies and discourses
intersect,” for receivers (p.97). The denotative level contains extremely complex, but
limited codes. The level of connotation of the visual sign is where already coded signs
intersect, “with deep semantic codes of a culture and take on additional, more active
ideological dimensions,” (p.97). On the connotative level, which is bounded but more
open, active transformations, which exploit polysemic values, can take place. Polysemic
16
values or interpretations being those that are intentionally subversive or alternative as
opposed to pluralistic interpretations, which can be different, but are still bound to
cultural preconceptions (Hall, 1977). Hall argues that despite any culture/society
imposing, to varying degrees, its classifications of the cultural, social, and political world,
none are “univocal or uncontested,” and receivers have the capacity to engage in both
denotative and connotative levels in their interpretative work (p.96).
Hall proposes three hypothetical positions—dominant-hegemonic, negotiated, and
oppositional—from which the decoding of televisual discourse may be constructed for a
receiver or audience member. The hegemonic-dominant position is a complete
acceptance of the dominant message as it was encoded while the negotiated position is,
“a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it acknowledges the legitimacy of
hegemonic definitions… while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes
its own ground rules,” (p.102). The oppositional position is when the viewers perfectly
understand the denotative and connotative inflections of a discourse, but utilize a
preferred code and decode the message in a, “globally contrary way,” (p.103). Hall
claims that one of the most significant political moments is when events that are normally
decoded in a negotiated way begin to be decoded in an oppositional way. Hall
emphasizes the importance of reception and the agency, though bounded in varying ways,
that the audience holds. He establishes a theory that provides an explanation for the
presence of resistant readings and resistance from audience members. Gray (2005)
acknowledges the presence of an active audience, but does not view the acting out of
difference as necessarily being an act of resistance and deems discourses that pressure
commercial networks to create and schedule programming featuring people of color,
17
women, and the LBGTQ community both in front of and behind the camera as only
aiding in the exploitation of difference and reinforcing neoliberalism (Gray, 2013). The
active negotiations of the audience that for Hall and myself signal the presence and
possibilities of resistance and change signal a poor use of investment for Gray. I argue
that struggles over representation need to continue to take place on the playing field
called television, but we must shift our focus from solely engaging in critical
interrogations of media representations at their face values while holding a limited view
of audience reception to examining negotiation—an act made easier by disruptions (i.e.,
the emergent)—and those who engage in it.
Christine Gledhill (1988) defines negotiation as the on-going process of give-and-
take that arises from a grappling between competing frames of reference, motivation, and
knowledge. Negotiation furnishes a cultural exchange as the crossing of the processes of
production and reception that she values because of, “its avoidance of an overly
deterministic view of cultural production,” (p.67). She utilizes the concept of hegemony
developed by Antonio Gramsci (1971) within her framework because hegemony presents
the processes of production and reception as ever-shifting, ever-negotiating plays of
ideological and political forces where negotiation takes place (Gledhill, 1988). Gledhill
describes three components, or planes, of negotiation—institutional, textual, and
reception—where different kinds of back-and-forth take place depending on the plane.
Institutional negotiations involve not only the possibly contradictions between the
needs of the media industry and those of consumers, but also matters within the media
institutions themselves. Often times, the visions and practices of creative personnel come
into conflict with the economic and ideological purposes of companies. The struggles of
18
the CBS show Cagney and Lacey are chronicled by Julie D’Acci (1994) and included
conflicts between CBS network executives and their advertisers stemming from the
producers being influenced by, “the public spread of ideas circulated by the women’s
movement,” and the advertisers’ desire to strictly have their products advertised during a
buddy comedy and not a show touting issues of feminism (Gledhill, p.69). Textual
negotiations involve the contradictory pressures of recreating the familiar while being
innovative and realistic. The meanings of texts are not fixed items released at the will of
the communicator according to Gledhill, but are instead, “products of textual interactions
shaped by the range of economic, aesthetic and ideological factors that often operate
unconsciously, are unpredictable and difficult to control,” (p.70). In the case of Cagney
and Lacey, definitions around gender roles, heterosexual relations, and the nature of law
and policing were involved in the negotiation of the text. Reception as negotiation is
viewed by Gledhill as potentially the most radical moment of negotiation because it is the
most variable and unpredictable. The reading, or reception, situation of an audience
member affects the meanings and pleasures they draw from what they are seeing. These
differences between readers stem from their social and cultural constitution, which is
affected by age, race, gender, class, and more. Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding
align with Gledhill’s view of reception because it also includes the potential for audience
determinations that are, “potentially resistant or contradictory,” (p.70). Negotiation has
value as an analytical concept because it allows space for the subjectivities, identities,
and pleasures of the audience (Gledhill, 1988).
D’Acci (1994) utilizes the concept of negotiation when examining the correlation
between television’s depictions of “women” and society’s conception of what “woman”
19
and “women” are and can be in her case study. For example, she describes how there was
a tendency in network primetime during the 1970s and 1980s to make controversial
programs accessible to more audience members, which for Cagney and Lacey meant
toning down its feminism despite the second wave of the feminist movement taking place
simultaneously in the real world (D’Acci, 1994). She combines primary research, such as
corporate memos and fan letters, and theoretically sophisticated analysis of the results for
the study. D’Acci specifically uses textual negotiation as she analyzes the decisions of the
creators of Cagney and Lacey: Barbara Avedon and Barbara Corday. These women
decided to create a female buddy pair within a cop series leading to negotiations around
gender roles, women’s social discourse and culture, sexuality, and the law as well as
policing within the text itself. Though these women were the creators of the show, they
also had to deal with the executives and the bottom line of the studio. The meanings
coming from these texts were not simple deployed at the will of the communicators, but
were instead the products of textual interactions molded by an amalgamation of
economic, aesthetic and ideological factors that often operate unconsciously.
D’Acci focuses solely on women in her study, but there are scholars such as Stanford
W. Carpenter (2005) who interrogate the images, representations, texts, and discourses
that shape black identity using negotiation as a part of their framework. All of these
images, representations, etc. are the result of the work of human agents who made
decisions about which texts, which images, which representations and which discourses
would be, and will be, used to construct black identities and tell black people’s stories.
Carpenter describes how the construction of black identities and stories about black
people are simultaneously a, “negotiation, a vocation and a creative enterprise,” which
20
makes them exist in both the realms of entertainment and society (p.46). His particular
artifact, or medium, of interest is comic books, but his description applies to television as
well. These references to issues of power and the control of texts, images and
representations return us once again to hegemony, the foundation for the concept of
negotiation as an analytical tool in the first place. These negotiations involve power, how
it shifts, and how those shifts enable different people to have more or less power to
influence changes and transformations at different times.
Bringing together women and blackness, black women are the subjects of Mia
Mask’s work Divas on Screen where she, like Gray, seeks to push past the dichotomy of
“good, politically progressive role model” versus “bad, regressive black stereotype.” Her
focus is on a small number black female actresses or “divas”—Dorothy Dandridge, Pam
Grier, Halle Berry, Whoopi Goldberg, and Oprah—and captures how they negotiate the
uneven and sometimes tumultuous terrain of racial, gender, and class stereotypes across
decades of film. Mask includes the argument that all of the various forms of popular
culture are a part of a single cultural industry meant to ensure the continued obedience of
the masses to market interests by, “providing a distraction that lulls people into
complacency,” alongside more optimistic methodologies in her explanation of
American’s preoccupation with the lives of the famous (Mask, p.5). She examines the
divas careers in a way that is historical—using biographies, black newspapers, black
press, and interviews—and theoretical. Mask utilizes feminist film scholarship from
scholars such as Carol J. Clover (1992), Yvonne Tasker (1993), and Marguerite Rippy
(2001), to allow for close textual readings against the grain of the mainstream, patriarchal
discourses.
21
Her work takes a more narrow scope than that of historian Donald Bogle in his
germinal study Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretative History
of Blacks in America Films, which is one of the most comprehensive discussions of
African American representation in the movies. Mask views the “divas” as unique
phenomena to be studied in isolation. This approach results in not only a more in-depth
view of the “divas,” but also provides information about their audiences’ negotiations in
reception though negotiation is not Mask’s focus. In the chapter examining Dorothy
Dandridge, it is noted that previous scholarship saddled the reading of Dandridge into a
dichotomous structure of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ representations that also omitted the
response of the public and more specifically black spectators from the analysis (Hadley-
Freydburg, 1985). Dandridge could be categorized as the ‘Black Marilyn Monroe’,
defined by a, “distinct brand of sexuality at a moment when sex was increasingly entering
the domain of popular culture,” (p.20). Dandridge became the figurative screen on which
discourses of miscegenation, class mobility, and race relations in society were played out.
She symbolized black participation in the armed forces in the role of army wife in Since
You Went Away (1944) and embodied miscegenation taboos as the object of white male
sexual desire in films like Tarzan’s Peril (1951) and Island in the Sun (1957). Mask
interviews black women spectators who went to see Dandridge’s films in the 1950’s in
order to unpack the devotion they had to her despite the simplistic categorization of
characters such as Carmen in Carmen Jones as embodying, “two stereotypes of Black
women—those of whore and bitch,” by typical American film scholarship (Hadley-
Freydburg, p.54). These scholars compared what black women in “real life,” such as
Rosa Parks and Ella Baker, were doing to Carmen Jones without unpacking the
22
complexities of the character or the reception of the black audience. When Mask
conducted her interviews, she discovered that black women spectators often expressed
pride with regards to Dandridge because of her beauty and how relatable she was to them.
As adult women, they were not looking for role models and therefore instead of
concentrating heavily on the roles of actresses like Dandridge and Lena Horne they
embraced what the actresses embodied for them: idealized femininity and beauty (Mask,
2009). Ruth Jeffries, one of Mask’s interviewees, said, “I’d never seen a black woman in
this kind of role. Not that the role was profound. But it was a major role in a movie
shown in theaters around the country. She [Dandridge] was pretty. She wasn’t fat. She
wasn’t a Step-and-Fetchit model,” (p.23). Dorothy Veal, another African American
female spectator, was even more direct when voicing her disapproval of other black
actors because of their roles.
I didn’t feel she [Dandridge] was a Butterfly McQueen or a Hattie McDaniel. She
was different. She wasn’t shuffling. She didn’t have a handkerchief. She wasn’t a
handkerchief head… I can remember Butterfly McQueen and Hattie McDaniel
and Louise Beavers, Step-and-Fetchit and Mantan Moreland. I can remember
them as making me want to just disappear, go up in a puff of smoke. I know I
didn’t have the same reaction with her [Dandridge], (p. 24).
Though Hadley-Freydberg (1985) conducted a binary analysis of Dandridge,
Bogle and Mask’s presentation of the audience’s opinions reveals a binary of a different
kind. The audience engages in a surface level interpretation of the roles they see and
either dislike the role and the actor for playing it or are unoffended by the role enough to
embrace the actor themselves for what they represent in society. Bogle (1997) wrote, “the
23
star was the embodiment of the audience’s wildest hopes for itself, its dream of power,
charm and beauty… they had not yet had the pleasure of seeing Hollywood movies with
such a charismatic figure (who looked like them) at the center. Dandridge came to touch
on a dream of Black America for itself,” (p. 288).
To provide a potential theory for the readings of Dandridge by the black female
audience Mask calls attention to the scholarship of Manthia Diawara (1993), which looks
at problems of identification and resistance for the black spectator. Diawara posits the
‘Black spectator’ who historically has had to resist the images of dominant cinema. He
explores the notions of this viewer because he aims to reassess some of the claims made
about spectatorship that he believes have not accounted for black audience members and
how they may be interpreting the images that they see on screen. The issue of
intersectionality for black women also comes to the forefront as Diawara notes that
arguments around spectatorship have come to include the discussion of gender, but
remain “colorblind.” Though Mask does not delve much further into the audience’s
interpretation of images, Diawara’s work connects with bell hook’s scholarship on the
oppositional gaze and both expand on the work of Staurt Hall (1973) and David Morley
(1980). Diawara and hooks both theorize about the existence of a black audience actively
resisting dominant representations of race onscreen and both note the issue of gender and
race needing to be taken into consideration together when looking at audience reception.
However, as more black representations that are multilayered and complex come to the
screen, I argue that reception negotiation—a negotiation between the perceived image
and the cultural, racial and social constitution of the viewers, both as individuals and as a
part of their various group affiliations (i.e., race, gender, class, etc.)—is more likely than
24
direct opposition. Black character roles that are not replicas of negative stereotypes
would not require the complete dismissal of the images, but a more nuanced reading that
recognizes both the dominant-hegemonic encoding and the alternative or subversive
connotations. Diawara and hooks theorized about a landscape comprised only of negative
stereotypical images created by the dominant Hollywood structure and did not take into
consideration a potential landscape with the emergence of black characters that are not
only dynamic, but also sometimes the result of negotiations behind the screen by people
of color.
Negotiation is a mediating logic between disruption and representation.
Disruptions create opportunities and redistribute resources that produce more or less
successful negotiations. Some of the opportunities for negotiation take place in front of
the screen while other opportunities take place behind it, and the disruptions themselves
are of varying sizes and impacts on the television ecology. Scholars of television
reception, production, and text have utilized an array of methodologies for their studies.
For example, D’Acci (1994) obtained primary research on which she then conducted a
theoretically advanced analysis based primarily on liberal feminist research for her case
study. Carpenter (2005) conducted an ethnography alongside one-on-one interviews for
his work focusing on the creation and authorship of Black Captain America.
When examining the institution of film, Jesse A. Rhines (1996) described and
analyzed four instances in which major shifts allowed black filmmakers to enter into the
film scene and succeed similarly to instances in television history. One of those instances
was the Blockbuster/Independent Distributer Era in which the dependence upon
blockbuster films initiated an industry-wide shortage of movies allowing Baby Boomers,
25
like Spike Lee, to gain significant control behind the motion picture camera because
theatre owners needed film product to show.
2
Years later, a shortage of television shows
to air after FOX launched in the late 1980s would be the impetus to create shows such as
In Living Color, Living Single, and Martin (Zook, 1999). Kristal Brent Zook chose to
conduct a historical analysis focused on the FOX network in addition to interrogating key
themes she saw in black productions over the decade-long span of her research—
autobiography, improvisation, aesthetics, and drama—in order to interrogate the results
and implications of this era of television.
Quantitative methods have also been used to study the television ecology. Surveys
and ratings data collected since the 1970s have been used in reception studies to capture
what Black Americans enjoy and prefer to watch (Squires, 2009). These methods support
the conclusion that Black Americans prefer watching television shows that have black
cast members and explore black themes (Gandy, 1998; Means Coleman, 1998; Hunt
2005). However, exploration into why they gravitate to those images and what they do
with them are not best captured with these methods. An entire chapter of The Nationwide
Audience is dedicated to the problems of technique and method when it comes to
question of the mode of production of meaning (Morley, 1980). Morley attempts to
understand audience positions and potential decodings of the text in an a priori fashion
by trying to construct samples of groups according to Hall’s (1973) frameworks of
decoding. Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis (1992) allow space for empirical observation when
they turn their focus to why audiences gravitate to certain images by using The Cosby
Show as a case study to not only examine how television influences the way audiences

2
This shortage of films provided Spike Lee with the opportunity to make his first feature
film She’s Gotta Have It, which was released in 1986.
26
think generally, but also how our society thinks about race specifically. They conducted
52 focus groups in order to capture and analyze how different audiences have different
attitudes towards the program in addition to their different understandings and
perceptions of race and social class. Though these different methods suit the questions
being asked by their respective researchers, none of the scholars attempt to specifically
capture instances of negotiation with regards to representation following disruptions or to
examine the importance of those instances.
Theoretical Contribution
The previous literature highlights disagreements between scholars about
investment in television as a site for the struggle for representation and visibility as well
as the importance of audience reception, and more specifically black female audience
perception. My research is seated within these disagreements. I argue that television is
worth continued investment for people of color not only because an absence from media
representation results in “symbolic annihilation,” but also because television is no less
influential on our society than it was in the past despite the fragmentation of the audience
(Gerbner and Gross, 1976). I argue that we must delve deeper into the what is done with
the margins that the emergent/disruption creates within the dominant, whether big or
small, to fully explore how cultural transformation within the dominant space can take
place. My contribution to communication and cultural studies is my call for a narrow
focus on representation through the use of negotiation as an analytical tool to not only
uncover more about representation, but also to reinvigorate the discourse on television
being one of the most important sites of cultural struggle in our society. The components
of the television ecology are intertwined and the negotiations of black women are often
27
not considered or misconstrued by film and television critics, like Gray, due to a lack of
understanding of their experiences and their cultural work (Bobo, 1995). In an era of
disruption, I argue that black women’s subversive capacity as cultural consumers and
their negotiations within the components need to be closely examined because they not
only reveal the state of the television ecology from one of the most marginalized
standpoints, but also uncover that the importance of black representation does not lie
entirely in its ability to change the minds of the dominant, but in its capacity to empower
the marginalized.
Recent studies have shown that the average American spends 153 hours a month
watching or interacting with their TV (Johnson, 2010). Television is a part of people’s
daily lives whether it is through a computer screen, a mobile device or the television
screen itself, and it functions as both a technology and a tool for cultural storytelling
(Lotz, 2007). Despite predictions of the oncoming death of television, it continues to exist
and put forth hit shows and other content. Internet platforms like YouTube and Vimeo
have allowed people to create, exhibit, and distribute their own content cheaply and
widely. These platforms have also allowed Internet users to seek the content that interests
them most. Television is no longer a one-way stream, but is now a two-way stream
allowing us to exist in an era of media convergence and participatory culture (Jenkins,
2006). All of this has shifted how people watch television, talk about it, create it, and
affect it. Herman Gray’s call to step away from television as a site for cultural struggle is
one that overlooks importance and influence of negotiation within a medium that is still
evolving.
28
By focusing on a group that is not only marginalized, but has also yet to be central
to a study examining multiple layers of the television ecology, this project contributes to
the literature on blackness and representation as well as the minute amount of literature
specifically focusing on black women. With an over 30 year gap between Kerry
Washington playing Olivia Pope in Scandal and the first African American woman to
star in her own series—Diahann Carrol as Julia in Julia—which premiered in 1968, there
have not been many black female lead characters for black women to grapple with on
television. Therefore, with the subsequent addition of more black female leads and
characters on television since Scandal, we must interrogate not only what is on the
screen, but also what is taking place both in front and behind it.
Research Questions
1A: How have disruptions to the television ecology resulted in opportunities for Black
American women to negotiate to make black women more visible (i.e., leading roles) on
television?
1B: How and why do these disruptions take place?
2A: How do black female audience members currently negotiate with the representations
of black female leads on television?
2B: What ability do black female audience members believe they have to communicate
with content creators and producers?
3A: How have black women, both in the audience and in the television industry, taken
advantage of these disruptions (i.e., utilized negotiation) in order to not only increase, but
also diversify, the roles for black women on television?
29
3B: What is the goal of the increased diversity of roles for black women (e.g., is it to
produce a broad range of representations or to have the representations better conform to
the realities of black female audience members)?
3C: Are there other ways, or possibly better ways, to achieve this goal?
3D: How do the black women who have taken advantage of these disruptions intend to
ensure that their changes remain?
Methodology
Critical Cases of Disruption
I selected multiple qualitative methods for this study because of its scope. In order
interrogate the chronicled evolution of the television ecology, and the multiplicity of
disruptions—technological, economic, and societal—driving changes within it, I
conducted an historical analysis similar to Rhines’ (1996) analysis within the film
ecology. This analysis also emulates the work of John Fisk (1996) by attempting establish
connections between specific moments of disruption and their affect on the television
ecology though Fisk accomplished this through the method of discursive analysis. I
juxtapose two time periods of television (1990-1995 and 2010-2015), which I label as
‘critical cases’, where anti-Black violence became more salient in American popular
culture to illustrate the influence of societal, economic, and technological disruptions on
the television ecology for the purpose of 1) describing current disruptions to television
ecology and 2) establishing current disruptions’ distinctness from previous eras.
Though it may seem more definitive to measure increases and decreases in
representation quantitatively in order to map the effects of disruption, numbers do not
30
provide a robust examination of these disruptions because how each affects the numbers
specifically remains unknown. Though there are no reports that focus on the
representation of black women on television, there are reports that provide data on
minority representation and the representation of women on television. According to the
2014 Hollywood Diversity Report, which examines the 2011-2012 television year,
minorities were underrepresented 7 to 1 or had 5.1% of lead roles in broadcast comedies
and dramas. Minorities fared better in cable comedies and dramas with 14.7% of the lead
roles. Women had reached proportionate representation among leads in network
comedies and dramas at 51.5% however they only represented 37.2% of the lead roles in
cable comedies and dramas.
In the 2012-2013 television year, minority underrepresentation when down to 6 to
1 and the percentage of lead roles went up to 6.5%. Women’s share in broadcast lead
roles declined slightly to 48.6% (Ralph J. Bunche Center, 2015). The percentages for
minorities in cable were better than the previous year coming in at 19.3%, but women’s
representation remained basically static going down to 37.1%. In this same year, the
report also includes the digital space and syndication, which contains both scripted and
unscripted shows. The report details that minorities and women are most likely to lead
digital and syndicated shows with examples such as East Los High (Hulu), The Wendy
Williams Show (Syndicated), The Steve Harvey Show (Syndicated), Orange is the New
Black (Netflix) and Hemlock Grove (Netflix). The percentage of lead roles for minorities
continued to increase in the 2013-2014 television year coming to 8.1% of lead roles,
which included leading ladies like Kerry Washington in Scandal (ABC), Halle Berry in
Extant (CBS), and Mindy Kaling in The Mindy Project (FOX) (Ralph J. Bunche Center,
31
2016). However, there was a drop in cable representation from the previous year to
16.6%. Women were down in broadcast comedy and drama lead roles at 35.8% as well as
in cable falling to 33.2% of lead roles from the previous television year’s 37.1%. Unlike a
historical analysis, these statistics are unable to reveal the effects of disruptions or the
reasons behind them, but they do provide a way to track the rise and fall of minority roles
and women’s roles in broadcast, cable, and the digital space.
‘Interpretive Community’
An audience study is one way to examine reception within the framework of
negotiation as well as address research questions specific to the black female audience
(i.e., how they take advantage of the opportunities disruptions provide and the manners in
which they negotiate with representations of black women on television). I decided to
address these questions, which focus on the black female audience, representation, and
negotiation, by viewing black women as an ‘interpretive community’ as proposed by
Jacqueline Bobo (1995). Stanley Fish (1980) created the literary concept of the
‘interpretive community’ and defines it as being, “made up of those who share
interpretive strategies not for reading (in the conventional sense) but for writing texts, for
constituting their properties and assigning their intentions,” (Fish, 1998, p.989). Scholars
such as Erie Martha Roberts (2006) deemed the definition very vague and imprecise
because it neglects addressing how these communities come about, the ways that they
change and develop, who belongs to them, and the structure of power within them.
Audience researcher Janice Radway (1984a) discusses the evolution of the concept and
describes how the idea can be expanded past the professional literary academy, which
Bobo builds upon by moving from Radway’s (1984b) romance novel audience to the
32
black female film audience. Bobo better situates her definition, which reflects Roberts’
description of the ‘situational interpretive community,’ by including black female cultural
producers, critics, scholars, and cultural consumers who are “strategically placed in
relation to cultural works that either are created by black women or feature them in
significant ways,” (p.22).
3
According to Bobo, the black female audience is a group that
shares an “instant intimacy,” which both she and Toni Morrison (1989) define as a bond
of shared knowledge. For Morrison this intimacy would take place between her readers
and her novels. Morrison’s novels speak with the voice of someone who is on the inside,
with privileged information, that the reader is now able to partake in. For Bobo, this
“instant intimacy” is between black women as, “they intersect within an interpretive
framework as cultural producers, critics and audience members,” (p.59). This intimacy
was revealed to Bobo through her interviewees’ tangible reception of, and collective
concerns with, Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple and Julie Dash’s Daughter’s of the
Dust. By viewing black women through the framework of an ‘interpretive community’ I
am able to examine the, “process a particular social group undergoes in its negotiation of
a cultural product,” and that product, in this study, is their representation on television
during an era of disruption (Bobo, p.30).
I decided to use the method of small group interviews for three reasons. The
method allowed me to choose a group of people who would be comfortable discussing
television with one another, which encourages conversation to flow freely and naturally.
There is scholarship supporting the importance of peer groups in discussions about

3
The situational interpretive community as Roberts (2006) describes it is, “made up of
individuals who, for one reason or another, are a part of a specific situation that will
influence how they think,” (p.36).
33
television and often times these peers will have already viewed and discussed the
programs in question (Katz & Liebes, 1985). Therefore, I selected participants who were
not only black women, but were also friends and family, into four small group interviews.
The small group interview method also usually makes it possible to base the interview in
a domestic setting adding to the comfort level of the participants (Lewis, 1991). Finally,
another reason for using this method is that it also avoids essentialism. Despite being a
part of a generalized “black female audience” these four small groups illuminated the
differences in opinions and interpretations that exists across even the smallest subset of
the black female audience. Following the interviews, an interpretative and theoretically
based analysis was conducted.
‘Above the Line’ Community
In order to gather insight into the negotiations taking place on the planes of
industry and text, I surmised that television executives on the creative side had to operate
within both planes. Therefore, black female executives across broadcast, cable, premium
cable, and Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) television became the most logical
participants to complete this study. Though these women are themselves audience
members and a part of the ‘interpretive community’, they are also a part of the above the
line community within the television ecology. Being an executive comes with
capital/power not available to the audience as well as with the ability to promote cultural
transformation (i.e. diverse and broadened representations) since they are ‘cultural
intermediaries’ (DuGay et al, 1997). Though often a term used for the occupations of
advertising, design, and marketing, ‘cultural intermediaries’ play an important role in
attempting to imbue goods and services (i.e., television programming) with particular
34
cultural meanings, or representations, to address these values to prospective buyers (i.e.,
advertisers and the audience). In their positions, their practices are bound to questions of
identity.
To learn the specifics of their individual jobs and the negotiations with which they
engage, the method of one-on-one interviews was chosen, and the interviews were
analyzed in conjunction with the theory of dysconscious racism (King, 1991). Despite its
time-consuming nature, one-on-one interviews facilitate the collection of large amounts
of in-depth data and have a flexible structure, which also aids in the collection of that
data (Ryan, Coughlan, & Cronin, 2009; Tod, 2006). It is a key qualitative method for,
“gaining insight into people’s perceptions, understandings and experiences of a given
phenomenon,” (Ryan, Coughlan & Cronin, p. 309). It was also better suited for the
executives’ extremely busy schedules than a focus group and best protected their
confidentiality. Utilizing these methods, this three-tiered project gains understanding into
all three planes of negotiation within the television ecology specific to the experiences of
black women, which has yet to be undertaken.
Chapters
This chapter has laid out the signaling interest and importance of this dissertation
to the ongoing discussions within the disciplinary literatures on negotiation, disruption,
representation, television, race, and gender. It establishes that the aim of this project is to
examine the multiple negotiations that Black American women have with representations
of black women on television that vary in purpose from increasing the number of roles
for black women to personal empowerment facilitated by three forms of disruption.
35
This chapter has outlined what materials are necessary to investigate this specific aim,
provided a literature review of previous work on aspects of the project as well as outlined
and justified the theoretical framework and specific approach of the project. The chapter
also presented the research questions and reasoning for the utilization, and furthering, of
negotiation as an analytical tool and need to examine this specific time in the television
ecology.
Chapter Two is an extension of existing scholarship on the subject of disruption.
Since one of the aims of this project is to interrogate the relationship between disruption
and representation it is first necessary to specify and describe examples of significant
disruptions that affected the television ecology and the representation of Black
Americans on television. The chapter juxtaposes two periods of technological, economic,
and societal disruptions, one past and the other more present, in order to not only
interrogate the past, but also highlight the uniqueness of this present episode of disruption
and the negotiations taking place. The episodic moments or ‘critical cases’ selected are
1990-1995 and 2010-2015. In similar form to how John Fiske (1996) draws connections
between television character Murphy Brown, the Presidential election of Bill Clinton, and
the beating of Rodney King, I attempt to establish connections between particular
moments of disruptions and their affect on the television ecology providing better
opportunities for negotiations of representation.
The Internet and the technologies that allow it to be accessed through an array of
mediums have disrupted the television ecology in a manner that the advent of cable never
accomplished. They have changed not only when and how television is watched, but also
redefined what is considered television. In regards to societal disruption, there have been
36
both recorded and unrecorded killings of black men that came to the forefront of the
social media landscape beginning with the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and the
subsequent hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. This racial violence resonated within the media
landscape, much like it did in the early 1990s, and shows such as Being Mary Jane, Law
and Order: SVU, and Blackish all had episodes that touched upon the issue and its impact
on society. Economic change as a disruptor to the television ecology, and more
specifically increases in black buying power as an economic disruptor to the television
ecology, are not fully agreed upon, but the discourse regarding them is also interrogated.
This chapter does not seek to do anything other than explain what disruptions are and
their affect on the television ecology and representation.
Chapter Three argues that black female television executives negotiate for the
creation of dynamic representations of black women and other characters of color as well
as an increased presence of creatives of color within a landscape of dsyconscious racism.
The landscape is comprised of three tiers: peers and upstream, creatives (i.e., writers,
directors, producers) and downstream, and advertising sales. Through their handling of
these negotiations, black female executives are able to make the case for the importance
and profitability of black women and other people of color being present both on and
behind the screen. The black female executives who participated in the study span
broadcast, cable, production, and streaming television and both directly and indirectly
describe how they maneuver (i.e., negotiate) in their roles as executives and the tools they
use to do it. These black female executives maintain a presence within all of Gledhill’s
components of negotiation due to their unique positions within the television landscape.
37
Chapter Four argues that black female audiences negotiate the meanings and the
importance of representations of black women on television as not only a collective, but
also as individuals drawing pleasure and the expression of who they are and what they
want as unique subjects. The chapter posits that black women form emotional
attachments to these characters despite knowing that they are fictional because these
representations affect them in the real world via how they see themselves and how they
perceive others’ perception of them. The analysis of the small group interviews focuses
on if, and how, black female audience members are using the opportunities provided by
disruptions, and how they are negotiating with the representations they encounter on
television today in comparison with how they negotiated with them in the past.
Additionally, the chapter analyzes the similarities and differences between how black
female audience members and the black female executives engage with representations of
black female television characters. Though both groups of women are a part of the same
‘interpretive community’ one group has access behind the screen that the other does not,
which provides them with a different perspective.
Finally, Chapter Five summarizes the central focus of the dissertation and
rearticulates the key findings of this project chapter by chapter. It explains how and why
this study makes a significant contribution to theory and method in the fields of
communication and cultural studies along with an explication of the study’s limitations.
Suggestions are also made for future research on negotiation and representation.

38
CHAPTER TWO: CRITICAL CASES OF DISRUPTION- 1990 to 1995 and 2010 to
2015

Thirty years ago, television was only capable of delivering content from one of
three broadcast networks: American Broadcasting Company (ABC), National
Broadcasting Company (NBC), and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). The nature of
the medium allowed these broadcasters to tap into almost every living room in the nation.
Even as late as 1993, the series finale of Cheers drew an estimated 93 million viewers
and the 15
th
episode of the 1993-1994 season of Seinfeld brought in 35 million viewers
(Los Angeles Times, 1993; DeRosa, 1994). The network-era of broadcast television has
come and gone, but the attention the American people give to television remains strong.
This is illustrated by the 2015 season finales of HBO’s Game of Thrones, AMC’s The
Walking Dead, and Fox’s Empire, which brought in 8.1 million viewers, 15.8 million
viewers and 21.1 million viewers, respectively, in an era of audience fragmentation
(Nededog, 2015; Kissell, 2015; Petski, 2015).
4
Television is also still a primary source of
news for most Americans as well as a billion-dollar industry. However, television as we
once knew it no longer exists (Lotz, 2007).
What exactly has changed in the television ecology and what caused those
changes? At surface level, what has transformed is the expanse of television, who can
make it, and who is on screen. On a deeper level, I argue that the way in which the
negotiation of representations, and in particular the negotiation of black female

4
As of 2009, the average American spent 153 hours a month watching or interacting with
their television (Nielsen 2009; Johnson, 2010). Nielsen (2013) reported that the average
American spends 140.4 hours watching traditional television, 6 hours watching video
(unspecified content) on the Internet, 5.2 hours watching video (unspecified content) on a
mobile device and 5.2 hours watching DVD/Blu-Ray (unspecified content).
39
representations, takes place has changed due to the disruptive forces of technology (i.e.,
the Internet and its platforms), society (i.e., the issue of race in our society), and the
economy (i.e., the increase in black buying power). My reasoning for selecting these
three factors as opposed to others is because other disruptors, such as political disruption,
can be sorted within one of the three, their disruptive force has the potential to affect
television within each component of negotiation—institutional, textual, reception—and
they appear to be intersecting in a manner unique to this specific time (Kubey et al, 1995;
Zook, 2008).
5
In addition, each of these factors has at some point in time been the subject
of research or analysis alongside television allowing for past and present research to be
taken into consideration.
This chapter provides a historical foundation for the role of disruption in the
current negotiations of representation. In what follows, I examine and juxtapose past and
current disruptions stemming from (1) technology, (2) society, and (3) the economy. My
goal is to illuminate the uniqueness of this present moment in disruption by interrogating
the past. I selected two episodic moments or ‘critical cases’—1990 to1995 and 2010 to
2015—to illustrate the phenomena. This chapter builds off the work of John Fiske
(1996), who drew connections between television character Murphy Brown, the
Presidential election of Bill Clinton, and the beating of Rodney King to exemplify how
people who engage in struggles over race, gender, and class have been exploited by the
media and the ways in which those same people use the media to broadcast their point of
view. Similarly, I attempt to establish connections between particular moments of

5
Other factors such as YouTube channels specifically centered on diverse content or the
particular affects of African American-led or African American focused networks could
have been explored.
40
technological, societal, and economic disruption and their affect on the television
ecology. I contend that these particular disruptions have enabled some of the current
negotiations of representation.
Past Critical Cases of Disruption: 1990 to 1995
Technological
While cable television did not begin as, nor is it currently, a disruptor, it held the
title from the 1980s to the 2000s. The first cable services began in 1948 for the purpose
of delivering broadcast channels to communities in Oregon, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania
that were in mountainous and/or geographically remote areas (National Cable and
Telecommunications Association). It was not until 1970 that the first cable programming
networks emerged resulting in a decade of investment and the beginning of
programming. The 1980s saw the expansion of network options with a total of 79 cable
networks and by the early 1990s 57% of television households had subscribed to cable
video service (National Cable and Telecommunications Association). The early 1990s
was also a time of continued growth of satellite networks, which were largely based on
the notion of targeting programming at a specific ‘niche’ audience, and further upended
the singular mode of viewing that defined the Network Era (California Cable and
Telecommunications Association; Lotz, 2007). By the end of 1995, there were 139 cable-
programming services available nationwide in addition to the many regional
programming networks, and the United States was firmly in the middle of the Multi-
channel Era. This era, as defined by Amanda Lotz (2007), began in the mid-1980s and
would continue until the mid-2000s changing America’s experience of television by first
allowing for, and then purposefully fostering, the fragmentation of the audience.
41
Cable television might have started as a way to get broadcast television networks
to communities in hard-to-reach areas, but it became a disruptor to broadcast as it offered
other viewing options, engaged in niche market targeting, and relied less than broadcast
on advertising dollars. The broadcast television market’s advertising dollar bottom line
was being disrupted. In addition, subscription cable services like Home Box Office
(HBO), which had been in operation since 1972, continued to be adopted in the early
1990s and operated completely outside of the advertising model allowing them to create
new and innovative shows that did not need mass appeal in order to sustain themselves
and make a profit. Currently, broadcast and cable co-exist with broadcast seemingly
viewing cable as merely another competitor and not as a disruptor. The early 1990s also
saw the launch of the cable modem, which would deliver Internet access to residential
users through the same cable that supplied their cable television service. This would end
up being a step on the way toward the Internet’s future disruptive force to the television
ecology that no one saw coming.
Societal
On March 3, 1991, four police officers were filmed beating Rodney King, a 25
year-old taxi driver and parolee, after a pursuit through the streets of Los Angeles. It was
one of the first police brutality videos of its kind and it completely and forever changed
the conversation about police and race in America. King, who was intoxicated, had been
caught speeding and initially attempted to evade the police. By the time he eventually
pulled over and exited his car, there were multiple Los Angeles Police Department
(LAPD) officers as well as a helicopter pursuing him. What happened next was
documented by George Holliday, a bystander from across the street: the four police
42
officers tased, kicked, and hit King with their batons upwards of 53 times. According to
King and several witnesses, he never resisted the police. His injuries included bruises, a
broken leg, and a scar from the stun gun that had jolted him with 50,000 bolt shocks
(Adams, 2016).
In April of 1992, the four officers—Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore
Briseno, and Stacey Koon—were put on trial and acquitted by a majority white jury. This
acquittal sparked the L.A. Riots, which were three days of looting, arson, and extreme
violence that resulted in the death of 55 people and the injury of more than 2,000 people.
Whatever illusions existed in regard to race and racism being conversations of the past in
the United States were completely shattered as a result of King’s beating, the acquittal,
and the subsequent L.A. Riots. The ‘media event’ that was the videotape of King’s
beating was the beginning of the societal disruption during this era or ‘critical case.’ In
Media Matters, Fiske (1994) mentions that months after King’s beating, Malice Green, a
black motorist in Detroit, was similarly beaten by the cops until he died. His beating was
not videotaped and therefore ‘counted’ for less than King’s. Mediation mattered and
further indicated that,
…in a postmodern world we can no longer rely on a stable relationship or clear
distinction between a ‘real’ event and its mediated representation. Consequently,
we can no longer work with the idea that the “real” is more important, significant,
or even ‘true’ than the representation (p.2).
These media events—King’s beating, the acquittal verdict, and the L.A. Riots—were all a
part of the societal disruption that affected the television ecology during this period and
43
resulted in the subject of race being brought to the forefront of television episodes on
multiple shows. The U.S news media did quite the opposite by putting forth a news frame
that did not engage in a conversation on race, class, inequality, and police brutality. On
average, the dominant news frames articulated that, “the beating was neither an
aberration nor a reflection of deep-seated societal codes of racism, but instead a problem
of a troubling pattern within the Los Angeles Police Department,” (Solomon, p.23).
Despite this framing by newspapers and broadcast and cable news networks, and their
portrayal of King as a symbol of a savage wildness, the initial mediated event of King’s
beating and following media coverage brought the issues of race, class, police brutality,
inequality, and civil unrest to the forefront of the national conversation (Fiske, 1994).
Regardless of being in the middle of the Multi-channel Era and its allowance of a
fragmented audience, all eyes were on these issues and scripted television could not
ignore the subject of race.
In the 1992-1993 season premiere of A Different World, Dwayne and Whitley’s
L.A. honeymoon coincides with the L.A. riots. Rapper and activist Sister Souljah has a
guest appearance in which she and Whitley are in an electronics store when the officers
who beat Rodney King are acquitted. Whitley cannot believe that the men were acquitted
after being caught on tape. Sister Souljah responds with, “girl, please. They can beat us,
kill us, do whatever they want to do and get off just like they always have.” Whitley tells
her that we [African Americans] still have the Constitution to protect us, to which Sister
Souljah replies, “when that piece of paper was written, African people in this country
were slaves. All of us. We sisters were considered nothing but bed warmers!” The
conversation continues, but soon ends leaving Whitley unsettled about her place and
44
rights within her own country as well as about the future. Both Whitley and Sista Souljah
expressed the same feelings that many Black Americans presumably experienced after
the announcement of the acquittal. Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold also guest starred in
the episode playing two white people taking advantage of the riots most likely to shed
light on the fact that the looting during the riots not only being done by Black Americans.
Race coming to the forefront of the national conversation resonated within the television
ecology and affected some of the episodes made. The plots and character reactions within
these episodes mirrored and sometimes gave voice to the emotions of people who
experienced the riots whether in-person or on television. Experiences that had disrupted
their lives had also disrupted the television ecology.
Economic
As previously mentioned, broadcast television’s revenue model is built on
advertising. Advertisers pay for commercial spots during television shows they are
assured will reach a certain amount of viewers. With the rise of cable, predominantly
middle-class white audiences of the 1980s and later were replacing their standard
network viewing with cable subscriptions and videocassette recorders leaving working-
class Black Americans and Latinos with solely the “free” networks: ABC, NBC and CBS
(Zook, 1999, p.3). The “urban” audience suddenly became a key demographic in overall
network viewership and networks targeted them by airing “black shows” (i.e., shows with
predominantly black casts). In addition, during this time period, black audiences watched
44% more television than non-blacks (Zook, 1999). NBC found success with crossover
shows such as The Cosby Show, A Different World, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air so
when Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX) launched in 1986 it emulated NBC and would
45
take its network one step further by becoming, what was labeled at the time, an “urban”
network. By 1995, 25% of FOX’s market was Black Americans (Zook, 1999). These
networks were profiting off of Black American viewers.
In order to sustain black viewership, networks had to keep them entertained and
engaged. For Zook (1999), these shows embodied contested narratives that challenged
the notion of ‘blackness’ itself and, “they wrestled with the unspoken pleasures (and
horror) of assimilation, the shock of integration, and the pain of cultural homelessness,”
(p.2). However, Herman Gray (1995) does not agree with Zook’s description of these
shows and writes,
These shows seldom presented black subjectivities and cultural traditions as
alternative perspectives on everyday life. That is to say, as a cultural and
experiential referent, blackness was seldom privileged or framed from a vantage
point for critical insights, guides to action, or explanations for what happens to
African American people in modern American society (p.83).
Though Gray also mentions that television provides, “materials (and cultural spaces) that
people can appropriate, circulate, and recombine for their own meanings and uses beyond
just those intended by the industrial commercial system,” he leaves little room for the
consideration of the influence of the time and space in which the audience’s reception
and negotiation took place (p.5). He also does not fully interrogate the possible
reverberations of what was taking place in society on the television ecology. For example,
Gray described FOX’s choice of shows, such as In Living Color, as merely risky as
46
opposed to a direct targeting of Black Americans and their disposable income as
described by Zook.
Even though Gray and I concur with Fiske (1987) on television constituting and
expressing contradictions of and contestations to the hegemonic racial order, Gray’s main
focus remains on how that order is continually contested, renewed, and realigned in
commercial popular culture (Gray, 1989; Gray, 1995). Disruption and negotiation are not
interrogated because he does not view transformations and subsequent shifts in media
representation of blackness as amounting to any societal or industrial change. Gray
(2013) makes this clear by calling for the abandonment of television and other media,
such as film and radio, as spaces for the investment of a cultural politics of representation.
He views television as a tool of production that may occasionally be an arena for
contestation, but will always produce the outcomes desired by the dominant racial
hegemony. The desired outcomes include the, “[expansion of the] capitalist economy and
preservation of a racial order on which the white republic was founded,” (Gray, 2013,
p.777). Gray falls along the more economic deterministic side of the Marxist spectrum
with his conclusions. Regardless, shows like, In Living Color, Martin, and Living Single
drew in the Black American audience and with it advertisers who wanted to target them.
Following the Rodney King beating and the LA Riots, NBC’s A Different World
and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air both aired episodes dealing with the riots. Even ABC’s
non-crossover show Doogie Howser, MD devoted its fourth season opener to the riots.
6

In an interview with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air producer Winifred Hervey by the

6
A crossover show is a show with a predominantly black cast that also appeals to a white
audience
47
Archive of American Television (2013), she discusses producing the L.A. Riots’ episode
“Will gets Committed” in which the family goes back to their old neighborhood where
the riots took place to help clean up. It centers on the questions of “what does one owe
the place where they came from,” and “what does it mean to leave?” Hervey notes that
the episode was impactful and important, and it was even lauded by the television archive
at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for documenting an important time
in L.A.’s history. This episode was influenced by what was happening in society at the
time as well as by the audience it was targeting. The technological disruptions (i.e., cable
and VCRs) that affected the television ecology during this time period aided in an
economic disruption that forced broadcast networks to target the black audience
specifically for their disposable income.
Present Critical Cases of Disruption: 2010 to 2015
Technological
The Internet is currently a source of disruption to the television ecology for three
major reasons: 1) some of its platforms, such as YouTube, and Vimeo, are something that
the television industry has been unable to absorb and control; 2) increasing technologies
on which these Internet platforms can be accessed (e.g., tablets and mobile devices) are
also not under the control of the television industry; and 3) new Internet platforms aiding
in the creation, exhibition, and distribution of content are constantly being constructed
and expanded (e.g., OpenTV).
Television broadcasting in the United States is defined as, “television
broadcasters [that] operate studios and facilities that program and deliver audiovisual
content to the public via over-the-air transmission” (IBISWorld, 2015a, p.2). Television
48
broadcast’s content is made by the broadcasters or affiliates that exist outside of the
industry and excludes satellite TV and operators that provide online only content
(IBISWorld, 2015a). This branch of television had an annual growth rate of 1% from
2010 to 2015, but now has a projected contraction to a .5% growth rate from 2015 to
2020 (IBISWorld, 2015a). In the past, cable networks were television broadcasting’s
direct competition, but that is no longer the case as online subscription companies have
positioned themselves as the next major competitor for television broadcasting
(IBISWorld, 2015a; Lafayette, 2015). Though the major broadcast networks—ABC,
NBC, CBS, FOX, CBS and Warner Brothers Network (CW)—have expanded to online
content distribution in order to generate new sources of advertising venue, the dramatic
increase in media creation and access the Internet provides consumers with has greatly
disrupted the industry. As Raymond Williams (1977) theorized, the dominant is
struggling to control and/or overtake the emergent, and they are not gaining ground on
the Internet and its platforms. The accelerated media competition—from social networks,
to streaming platforms, to RSS feeds and podcasts—bear much of the responsibility for
the contraction of television broadcasting revenue to $41.2 billion in 2015.
In addition, despite the increase in disposable income in 2015 and rising
advertisement spending, the rate at which consumers abandon traditional television is
consistent with the growth of the new media branch of television (IBISWorld, 2015a).
New media have drawn and will continue to draw away advertising dollars as they allow
advertisers to target specific audiences for a fraction of the price. The Internet has
disrupted the core of the television broadcasting industry: advertising. “Adding up all of
the national TV advertising results from 3Q 2014, it is clear that trends continue to
49
deteriorate as we move from flat in 2Q to negative territory with a decline of 0.5%, again
the worst quarter in advertising growth […] since the recession,” said Michael Nathanson
of Moffet Nathanson Research (Lafayette, p.14). Advertising dollars are leaving
television broadcasting because viewers are leaving television broadcast networks. An
estimated 20.8% of television broadcasting’s viewers are between the ages of 18 and 34
and they represent a deteriorating portion of the viewership because of the increasing
presence of online subscription services (IBISWorld, 2015a). Another coveted
demographic, viewers between the ages of 35 and 49, represent 15.6% of the market and
just because they are not leaving broadcast in favor of the Internet in as great a number as
their younger counterparts does not mean that a similar departure is not taking place.
Cable networks, which are defined as the industry that operates studios and
facilities and distributes TV programs on either a subscription or fee-based structure
through cable providers and other platforms, are the direct competitors of broadcast
networks (IBISWorld, 2015b). They are also not fairing well due to the Internet and its
platforms. Their projected annual growth between 2015 and 2020 is 0% and they have
seen advertisers increasingly diverting their attention and resources to streaming content
platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix (IBISWorld, 2015b). As with broadcast
networks, cable networks are also attempting to draw consumers, and therefore
advertisers, back with new offerings in response to the disruption the Internet and its
platforms have caused. Cable networks expanded their home phone and Internet offerings
and online viewing in hopes of retaining and attracting customers (IBISWorld, 2015b).
Unfortunately, “rapid technological development has altered the media consumption
50
habits of viewers, and more and more consumers will opt for services that allow them to
watch programs at their leisure,” (IBISWorld, 2015a, p. 13).
Essentially, due the Internet and over-the-top (OTT) services, which is the term
for video content distributed over the Internet such at Netflix and Amazon Prime, our
society is seeing the emergence of cord-cutters and cord-nevers, or as Ad Age labels
them, “television’s scariest generation” (Gershon, 2011). In 2009, former CEO of Time
Warner Glenn Britt said, “we’re starting to see the beginnings of cord cutting where
people, particularly young people, are saying, ‘all I need is broadband,’” (Lawton, 2009).
Cord-cutters are trading their cable subscriptions and television broadcasting stations for
OTTs resulting in the loss of viewers and, subsequently, advertising dollars for all
branches of the television industry. The Internet and its platforms form a major and
unique disruptor to the television ecology.
Just as viewers between the ages of 18-34 are deteriorating for television
broadcasting, viewership for cable networks is also deteriorating. They experienced five
quarters of declining subscribers between 2010 and 2012 and for the first time in the
history of television the country saw a growth in the housing market, but a decline in
subscription television (Strangelove, p.98).
7
Originally, industry executives and analysts
were unwilling to see cord-cutting as more than an economic issue affecting young
people and low-income families, but this just is not the case (Strangelove, p. 99). In 2012,
Evan Shapiro, an executive producer and professor of television management at New
York University, described the force behind cord-cutting in this manner:

7
Between 2010 and 2013, there were 3.2 million new households in the United States,
but only 250,000 new cable subscriptions (King, 2013).
51
“As two of the largest generations in history continue to graduate from college
and go into the workplace, they will demand a low-cost, efficient alternative for
pay-TV service. If need be, they will make due [sic] with the various legal and
illegal “over the top” avenues for getting the TV they want. What they will likely
not do is pay for 500 channels when they only use 10. And, if the industry does
nothing to change, a significant number of young viewers—the future lifeblood of
the business—will abandon the platform completely. For those that don’t believe
this, please—please—see the music business.”
The people who are cutting the cord or never subscribing to cable, also known as
cord nevers, are not doing it solely due to lack of money. The majority of cord-cutters are
under 40, educated, and employed (Strangelove, p. 99). They are making a rational
choice for economic self-interest in a newly competitive television market made so by the
Internet and its multiple OTT platforms. Cord-cutters and cord nevers have cited too
many advertisements, a desire to debundle, and alternative content as reasons that they
have cut the cord (Strangelove, p. 111, 108 & 116). In regards to alternative content,
cord-cutting brings TV viewers closer to content that does not derive from the traditional
television industry. Platforms like YouTube allow for content to be distributed without
the middle-men of television networks, agents, managers and deals. Shows on digital
platforms do not have to comply with the seven-act structure that network television and
many cable television shows have to adhere to because of advertising, and viewers are
embracing these alternative formats.
The Internet and its platforms have disrupted the way that we traditionally
watched television and the ways shows themselves are made. However, it is unlikely that
52
they will destroy broadcast and cable television completely. In 1974, Williams wrote,
“from a technological perspective television was a combination of different inventions,
and that what television was changed dramatically over the years,” (p.7). Television
shifted and changed due to technological advances and as Paul Duguid (1996) warns,
“supersession… the idea that each new technological type vanishes or subsumes its
predecessors,” is not what has happened throughout history. Supersession was prevalent
in debates about the printing press, the telephone, and even writing, but those modes of
communication are all still in existence and of use (Geiger & Lampinen, p. 335). This
also ties into what Williams (1977) writes about the dominant, the residual, and the
emergent. The advent of the Internet and the various platforms have resulted in more
shows as well as different kinds of shows in the landscape of what is considered
television by those who use it. Therefore, the Internet and its platforms are disruptors to
the television ecology, but they are not destroying it; they are forcing change within the
television ecology and providing tools for negotiation.
In culture, Williams describes how the dominant will attempt to absorb or
overthrow the emergent every time it is engendered. His description is in sync with the
hypotheses of Tim Wu (2011) in regards to the cycle of disruptive technological
innovation/advancement. Each world-altering technology went through what Wu calls
“the cycle” and what he sees as the inevitable fate for the Internet. The cycle begins with
the genesis of a cultural and communication empire, which in this case is the Internet. In
the second phase, the information empire is consolidated often with the help of the
government. In phase three, the empire breaks the hold of the monopoly, and in the final
phase the former monopoly holders figure out new ways to reclaim their former status
53
and control. This cycle happens continuously with new advances constantly and
consistently coming up and being overtaken by the dominant. The Internet is currently
hovering before Wu’s fourth step of the cycle and steadily resisting.
The most recent fight over Net Neutrality illustrates this struggle. Net Neutrality
is the principle that Internet providers must allow access to all content and applications
on the Internet no matter their source and without favoring or blocking particular
websites, products or platforms. On January 14, 2014, the Federal Court of Appeals
struck down the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Open Internet Order with
its decision in the Verizon Communications Inc. v FCC case. On May 15, 2014, FCC
Chairman Tom Wheeler released a proposal that was met with protests from Free Press, a
progressive lobbying group that advocates for increased government oversight of Internet
Service Providers (ISPs), the public, public leaders and even President Barack Obama as
the proposal would have given ISPs the ability to charge content companies for priority
treatment (Puzzanghera & James, 2014). Protestors called for the reclassification of
broadband access under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This reclassification
would allow the FCC could protect the Internet since it would then be able to regulate
ISPs as common carriers allowing them to regulate against paid prioritization (Title II,
Section 202). On February 4, 2015, Wheeler confirmed that he would use Title II and the
full FCC Commission approved that proposal on February 26, 2015. Telecommunication
giants such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast lost that day. However, ISPs have and will
continue to try and enter the last phase, relegating them to the position of Internet
gatekeepers and subsequently ending the disruptive force of the Internet and its platforms.
Currently, the newest FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wants to repeal the rules made in 2015 and
54
has been accused of being in the pocket of big cable companies and ISPs such as AT&T
and Comcast (Solon, 2017). Technology giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have
joined start-ups in protesting Pai’s directive beginning with a day-of-action on July 12,
2017.
On the one hand, the Internet could experience the same fate as all previous
technological advances and end up controlled by the dominant. On the other hand, the
Internet could remain emergent, escaping the clutches of hegemony. Susan Crawford
(2014), views the landscape of the Internet’s future quite differently than Wu. She details
how the monopolization takeover, phase four, is already happening since the public has
to go through companies like Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner to even access the
Internet. The difference between the two scholars is that she believes the takeover can be
stopped. There is no need for the completion of phase four to take place. Her solution is
to use a utility model, which would make the Internet something that the government
must provide to its citizens resulting in the stunting of the cycle’s completion in the case
of the Internet. It would remain an open platform allowing for the convergence of
distribution and exhibition that media industry scholars and the industry itself are seeing
through Internet-based platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Netflix. This option
seems highly unlikely, though feasible.
Wu and Crawford, although on different sides of the cycle argument, reveal the
dual issues regarding the Internet. There is the issue of open access, and unmitigated
connection speed, to the content on the Internet and then the ability to pay in order to gain
ingress to that open access. The former, which is the one this project is concerned with,
has escaped the hand of the dominant thus far, but the latter has not as Crawford
55
highlights. Since the television industry (i.e., the dominant) has been unable to overtake
the Internet’s disruptive force, it is attempting to convert parts of the Internet for its
benefit though the results have not been as strong as hoped. The dominant is still
attempting to absorb or control the Internet and some of the American public is doing its
best to stop the takeover. Non-profit organizations, such as Common Cause and The
Norman Lear Center, alongside media outlets, like Free Press, want to keep the Internet
and its platforms as disruptors to the television ecology and other business institutions
instead of a tool used solely as a mode of production.
Societal
On February 26, 2012, 17 year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by
neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman as he walked home with nothing, but
a pack of Skittles and an ice tea. This tragedy sparked massive media attention and many
people across the nation closely followed the case. When Zimmerman was acquitted, the
hashtag #BlackLivesMatter sprung from the minds of Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullers.
The hashtag later became a full-blown movement officially titled Black Lives Matter, or
the Black Lives Matter Movement, with the aforementioned women and their friend Opal
Tometi as the official founders of what has been deemed, by some, a new civil rights
movement (Day, 2015). Black Lives Matter organized protests after the killings of Eric
Garner and Mike Brown at the hands of the police in New York and Ferguson,
respectively. The movement has been a major part of shining a light on the nationwide
issues of racial social justice, police violence, and racism and bringing them to the
forefront of the national conversation. Additionally, Black Lives Matter also became a
societal disruptor to the television ecology.
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The movement was referred to in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims
Unit titled “Community Policing” in which an unarmed black male college student was
shot by police after he happened to match the description of a rape suspect (Lowery,
2015). The episode aired on October 14, 2015 and when Warren Leight, the episode’s
producer, was asked why they wrote an episode based around a police shooting and why
on SVU, he said,
Something seems to be going on in the nation right now, and it seems that we’re
looking at, at least anecdotally, an epidemic of cops shooting unarmed people,
often unarmed black men, but not exclusively black men… Our mantra is that we
shed light on the darker corners of society. Police shootings of unarmed people is
something that needs to be discussed (Lowery, 2015).
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit was not alone in this address. In the season two
premiere of Empire, an issue at the forefront of Black Lives Matter was taken on with the
song “Born to Lose” performed by rapper Sean Cross, Swizz Beatz, and the Lyon
brothers, Jamal, played by Jussie Smollett, and Hakeem, played by Yazz (Bell, 2015).
Between Cookie’s opening monologue, which asks the question of how much longer
black people will be treated like animals with the correctional system built upon their
backs, and “Born to Lose,” Black Lives Matter’s critique of the prison industrial complex
shined through. Other shows, such as Scandal, have tackled some of the societal issues
and circumstances that brought about Black Lives Matter and brought these issues into
viewers homes whether they watch the news or not.
57
BET’s Being Mary Jane, ended its last season with Mary Jane’s niece, Niecy,
being tased by the police as her children sat in the car. In the vein of Sandra Bland’s
unnecessary arrest, Niecy is pulled over for having her music playing too loud in her car.
Her protests to being bothered, much like Sandra Bland’s protests to being stopped and
asked to put out her cigarette, are the reason why she is pulled from her car and then
tased. It is very likely that this storyline will be much further developed in the upcoming
fourth season of the show especially since Mary Jane and her team are working on
creating a news show that tackles real issues and makes a difference. This is not the first
time that Being Mary Jane has included real world issues and happenings. Creator Mara
Brock Akil had Mary Jane tackle the real life uproar caused by Satoshi Kanazawa’s piece
A Look at the Hard Truths about Human Nature, which was posted on, and quickly
removed from, Psychology Today’s website (Moss, 2011). The article argues that black
women are less physically attractive that other women based on BMI, intelligence and
testosterone levels (i.e., science) and not racism. Though Mary Jane never references the
piece specifically, she spends an episode of her show “Real Talk” on the piece that came
out in her fictional world in season 2..
ABC’s Blackish, a family-friendly show in its Wednesday night primetime line-
up, also decided to tackle what is happening with race relations in America with its
February 24, 2016 airing. The episode titled “Hope” was shot primarily in the living
room and kitchen of the Johnson’s suburban home. All of their children are present as are
Andre/Dre’s parents, Pops and Ruby. The family is waiting to see whether or not there
will be a grand jury indictment of police officers after they tased a man 37 times for
selling bootleg DVDs. Dre (Anthony Anderson) and Rainbow/Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross)
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argue about how much they should be exposing their youngest children, twins Jack and
Diane who are 6 years old, to in regard to police brutality, unarmed shootings, and what it
means to be Black in America. The entire family is battling with the desire to have hope
after repeatedly encountering situations that seem completely hopeless. When their oldest
daughter Zoey comes home, the family begins a conversation that is funny, depressing,
and rather poignant in reference to unarmed police shootings and assaults across
America.
ZOEY
What’s going on?

JUNIOR
Oh, they're about to say whether there's gonna be an indictment in the McQuillan case.

ZOEY
Oh, I think I heard about that.

DRE
What do you mean, you think you heard about that? It's been all over the news.

ZOEY
It's the one where they shot the kid in the middle of the street, right?

RUBY
Mnh-mnh, mnh-mnh. That was Chicago.

ZOEY
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Oh, is this the guy that got shot in front of the college at the traffic stop?

POPS
No, that was Charleston.

ZOEY
Charleston?

JUNIOR
No, Charleston was the unarmed guy who got shot in the back. Cincy was the traffic stop.

POPS
Oh, yeah.

ZOEY
Well, wait, then what was New York?

DRE
Oh, New York was the unarmed guy who was selling cigarettes that got choked.

RUBY
Cigarettes!

DRE
Yeah, this is the unarmed guy who was selling DVDs that got tased 37 times.

ZOEY
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Wow. Is he okay?

DRE
He got tased 37 times, so, you know, he's not great.

With shooting after shooting and assault after assault taking place, the names and
situations of police brutality get jumbled up in the memories of even the people who are
most deeply affected by the violence. The episode highlights that being Black in America,
child or not, does not afford all of the same comforts or protective ignorance as some
people of other races. Bow asks her husband, “Dre what are we going to tell them?” He
responds, “the truth!” “They’re children,” Bow replies and Dre says, “they’re not just
children, Bow! They’re black children and they need to know the world that they’re
living in!” The family watches as protests and looting begins and Bow voices that she
does not want her children believing that the world is so flawed that they cannot have any
hope. Zoey expresses her hopelessness and feeling as if there are no answers. She wants
to just give up. Diane then makes one of the most moving questions of the episode by
saying, “if you give up, who’s going to fix it for us?” This is most certainly not a usual
topic for a sitcom on a broadcast network. However, producer and actor Anthony
Anderson stressed the importance of the episode in an Instagram post,
Re #Blackish, I just had to take a moment and share this. The Hope episode was
important and we know this. When we put this episode together, we didn’t know
the response but we knew it would strike a chord. All these stories come from
experience and the emotions you saw from Dre and Bow, the entire family came
from a place that many African Americans and anyone who is conscious would
61
completely understand. As a father, raising young men and women to believe that
they can achieve anything and also be wary of the struggles they will encounter is
something all parents struggle with. I’m glad this started or reignited the
conversations. I’m so proud of our fantastic cast, writers @blackishabc producers.
In particular my brother, my partner, my friend @kenyab_in_imax3d [Kenya
Barris] for not only writing a poignant episode but for creating a wonderful show
in which we get to our stories and [get to] be unapologetic in that storytelling.
Thank you to @abcnetwork for giving us the platform to share our stories with all
of you (@anthonyanderson, Instagram)
The television ecology was disrupted by race coming to the forefront of the national
conversation through the use of social media, protests, petitions, articles, and more. This
disruption has been sustained due to the continued deaths of black men and black women
at the hands of the police. Some of these killings have been caught on tape, much like
Rodney King’s beating was captured, and spread through the use of social media
platforms. Though there are many instances of police brutality that remain unpublicized,
the incidents that do end up on the public stage remind the nation that race is still a major
issue in the United States and they affect those in the television ecology with empathetic
ears.
Economic
In addition to the Internet and its technologies as well as race coming to the
forefront of the national conversation, I hypothesize that the United States economy, and
more specifically the increased economic buying power of African Americans overall
and African American women in particular, has disrupted the television ecology.
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However, unlike the Internet and its platforms, the strength of the disruption caused by
these economic shifts has not yet been agreed upon. When discussing the United States
economy’s most recent recession and its affect on the television, Amanda Lotz (2010)
writes that the recession exacerbated a crises that was being delivered by two
considerable shifts, which predated, and were unrelated, to the recession: a revision in the
valuation of television advertising and uncertainty about future patterns of media use by
television viewers (p. 186). She notes that simple data about how the television market
shifts up or down is difficult to interpret and,
[Such data is] [s]omewhat meaningless for trying to assess something like the
impact of the recession because television ad spending involves various
subcomponents (e.g., national and local broadcast, syndication, cable) that have
independent pressures (e.g., local broadcast ad revenue would likely be down in
2009 regardless of the recession because it was not an election year) (p.186).
Lotz identifies the most recent recession as merely the catalyst for seemingly inevitable
changes. She readily identifies the Internet and other delivery technologies as major
disruptors of the television industry, but views the recession as doing nothing to change
how the television industry looked at viewers. Yet, there are others who view the
economy as a much stronger force.
For example, the affect of trends in household disposable income, which are
affected by the labor market, unemployment, and tax rate changes, on the demand for TV
broadcasting services (IBISWorld, 2015a). Disposable income is used to determine retail
sales and expenditures on other goods and services, which in turn can directly influence
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advertisers’ expenditures on television. Here, the state of the economy has a direct affect
on advertising sales. Additionally, as cable and satellite subscriptions rose in price,
Nielsen saw more and more homes with broadband and no cable as well as more homes
that transitioned to OTT broadcasting only (Lafayette, 2015). Therefore even though
Strangelove (2015) is quite correct about industry executives and analysts needing to see
cord-cutting as more than just an economic issue, it is still a piece of the puzzle that needs
to be taken into consideration (p. 99).
Returning to the topic of disposable income and advertising, the two are clearly
linked. Advertisers are paying attention to the labor market, unemployment, and tax rates
because they all affect the disposable income of the consumers they wish to have buying
their products. The more disposable income the coveted demographic (i.e., 18-49 year
olds) has, the more willing advertisers are to pay higher prices for advertising spots on
broadcast and cable shows that are aimed at, and have success with, the coveted
demographic. Additionally, advertisers are more than willing to advertise on various
screens and outlets, much to the chagrin of broadcast and cable television networks, in
hopes of reaching their target audiences. Advertisements on YouTube and Facebook are
commonplace and mobile Internet platforms are now making their own strides to gain
advertisers. Snapchat now offers advertisers different advertising forms (e.g., article or
long-form video), multiple ad-targeting categories (e.g., demographics or location), and
ways for advertisers to apply their own data to ad-targeting (e.g., Snap Audience Match)
(Peterson, 2017). Time Warner recently penned a 100 million dollar content deal with
Snapchat likely in an attempt garner the attention of its users and the advertisers who
would like to reach them (Reuters, 2017). Broadcast and cable companies, whether due to
64
the recession or other causes, are trying to regain and grow their viewership. Therefore, a
consumer bloc, or audience group, whose buying power is on a steady rise from $1.1
trillion in 2015 to $1.3 trillion by 2017, would surely be of interest advertisers (Nielsen,
2014). That consumer bloc is African Americans (Nielsen, 2014).
African Americans comprise 14.2% of the US population and have seen their
income increase to the point at which 44% of all African American households are
earning more that $50,000 or more and 23% are earning above $75,000 (Nielsen, 2014).
As Maddy Dychtwald, co-author of Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power
Will Transform Our World for the Better and the longstanding marketing adage attests,
women control 80% or more of spending in the U.S (Dychtwald, 2011; Bailik, 2011).
Though the origin of this figure seems to be lost somewhere in marketing folklore, it
remains the figure to which marketers, public relations agencies and, most importantly in
this case, studios adhere (Dychtwald, 2011). With increased African American
purchasing power and statistics supporting that African American women between the
ages of 18-49, as well as those of all ages, are heavier television viewers than African
American men, they (i.e., Black women) are a group advertisers would, or at least should,
want to target (Nielsen, 2013).
8

It is statistically supported that African American viewers tend to watch programs
that provide a diverse array of characters that are reflective of the black lifestyle and
culture (Nielsen, 2013). In 2013, eight of the top ten shows that delivered black viewers

8
African Americans watch 37% more television that any other group, averaging 7 hours
and 17 minutes per day viewing television in comparison to 5 hours and 18 minutes per
day viewing television by the total television market. Black women, ages 18-49 average
7 hours and 3 minutes of television viewing, while their male counterparts watch 6 hours
and 20 minutes.
65
ages 18-49 originated on cable,where diversity tends to be prevalent on a consistent
basis.
9
The exceptions were ABC’s Scandal starring Kerry Washington and FOX’s
American Idol, which features a diverse cast of contestants. Nielsen’s The African-
American Consumer 2013 Report said,
During the awards show season, the 2013 BET Awards delivered a Black audience
74% higher than the Grammy Awards and nearly three times greater than the
Oscars. Marketers choosing to ignore programs with exclusive Black casts risk
missing the chance of reaching millions of viewers with their messages (p.16).
However, it seems as if marketers may be doing just that. Of the $75 billion advertisers
spent on television, magazine, Internet, and radio advertising, only $2.24 billion, or about
3%, was spent with media focused on black audiences (Nielsen, 2013). Despite being
identified by other groups, such as Caucasians and Hispanics, as the driving force for
popular culture and influences in mainstream American culture, advertisers are neither
focusing on African Americans in general nor African American women in particular
(Burrell Communications, 2011).
Black women control 43% of the annual spending power for the Black American
population (Nielsen, 2013). Their education plays a large role in that power. As a whole,
the number of African Americans who completed college increased by nine percent
between 1990, when it was 11%, and 2010 (Nielsen, 2013).

Black women have had
greater higher education success as 21% have attained a Bachelor’s degree or higher,

9
This is referring to the existence of channels on cable that are specifically for minority
markets such as BET and VH1’s primetime programming, and not to the cable-wide
existence of a diverse array of characters. Broadcast television currently has the highest
percentage of black female leads.
66
compared to 16% of Black men.

This increase in educational attainment has resulted in
23% of Black women who work full-time earning incomes of $50,000 or higher, and has
also resulted in younger, educated Black women delaying or foregoing starting families
and having children allowing for even more disposable income (Nielsen, 2013).

Despite African Americans increasing buying power, mainstream influence, and
above average spending habits, this research uncovers that advertisers, outside of those
that already target Black Americans (e.g., McDonalds, Mountain Dew, Toyota) are not
yet interested in taking advantage and therefore many televisions networks are not
interested either. Without additional advertisers who want to target the Black or black
female audience, television networks overall are not particularly motivated to change the
characters they put on screen. Despite being a hub of creativity, television is a business
run by corporations. In the next chapter, the role of advertising sales in television ecology
will be discussed further revealing more about how advertising sales runs and “thinks.”

Similarities and Differences Between Critical Cases
The technological disruptors within both critical cases shook the foundation of the
television ecology. In the first case, cable providers were a source of not only content
competition, but also functioned on a different revenue stream than broadcast networks.
This situation forced broadcast networks to deal with more competition and to create
content that could directly compete with shows coming out on cable networks. In the
more current critical case, which has continued to the present, the Internet and its
platforms have been a source of content, distribution, and revenue competition. However,
67
unlike cable, the disruption caused by the Internet and its platforms has yet to be
absorbed or completely understood by television ecology.
Similarly to TiVo, another major disruptor of television beginning in 1999, which
took the time-shifting and fast-forwarding capabilities of the VCR steps forward with its
DVR technology, the Internet and its platforms have disrupted the traditional television
broadcast model that rested upon a “logic of linear flow.” This flow included strategic
programming schedules designed by broadcast and cable networks with the purposes of
garnering, and hopefully maintaining, viewer’s attention and generating advertising
revenue during prime-time (Ansari, Garud & Kumaraswamy, 2016). However, unlike
TiVo, which was adopted and/or absorbed by different cable providers, the Internet
presents a disruption that is multi-faceted and long lasting because it is ever evolving.
The only foreseeable absorption or end to this disruption is the ending of Net Neutrality.
The Internet and its platforms are a disruptor that has provided tools for the negotiation of
representation that did not exist before and are being taken advantage of in ways that will
be discussed in the following chapter.
Race coming to the forefront of the national conversation took place in both
critical cases as well. The beating of Rodney King and the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric
Garner, and others sparked outrage, concern, protests, and riots. In both cases, these
incidents of police brutality resulted in television episodes that tackled similar situations.
These shows exemplify the influence that society and societal happenings can have on
television. However, there are many more shows that are not tackling the issue of race
relations in America despite the fact that it made it into the candidate speeches of
Democrats and Republicans alike, 24 states have passed at least 40 new measures after
68
Ferguson, and 6 out of 10 Americans say that they think race relations in the country are
bad (Luibrand, 2015). Similarly, only a handful of shows dealt with the Rodney King
trial and the L.A. Riots. In his interview with The Washington Post, Warren Leight, Law
and Order: SVU producer, also said,
We’ve just seen a spate of incidents in which that has been the case, and we have
a police show. One of the things that is frustrating to me is that too few shows are
tackling the tough issues. There are way more shows about zombies than about
what’s going on in our judicial system. Very few shows are allowed to get away
with this right now (Lowery, 2015).
Even though Leight’s statement overlooks how zombie shows are one of the ways
racialized violence is portrayed on American television, he points out that though there
are some television shows that are responding to the tenor of what is happening in the US
in regards to a new civil rights movement, there are many who remain seemingly
unaffected.
10,11
This may have to do with the fictional world in which the show operates
or with the possibility that some television creators, writers, executives, etc. simply do
not care. The black female executives interviewed for this project provide more insight
into this disruptor.

10
Canavan, G. (2010). “We are the walking dead”: Race, time, and survival in zombie
narrative. Extrapolation, 51(3), 431-453. The audience for zombie narratives never
imagine itself as zombies because zombies are always other people, “which is to say they
are Other people,” and therefore not quite people at all, playing along the line of the racia
binary between slave and master/Whites and Blacks (p.432). Zombies are the science
fiction/horror manifestation of the colonialized subject who is viewed as lacking a mind
and is incapable of being identified with by the colonizer justifying their killing if
necessary.
11
The new civil rights movement calls into question issues of race, social justice and
police brutality along with an explosion of protests across college campuses nationwide
in regards to diversity, equity and inclusion.
69
Within the critical cases, the economic buying power of Black Americans is of
some importance to the television ecology. In the 1990-1995 case, it is the buying power
of African Americans that allows FOX and UPN to gain advertisers who desired to target
them. They produced shows that targeted the black audience in order to get to the point
where they could create “standard” content (i.e., shows with majority white casts). In the
most recent critical case, the increasing buying power of Black Americans made them of
interest to networks when struggling for viewership, but overall did not seem to truly
disrupt the television ecology. The buying power of Black Americans is only of minimal
interest to networks despite its continued rise. Successful crossover shows are lauded and
the success of Empire provide proof that “black” content can be lucrative. However, this
disruptor also seems to be a small ripple in the ocean of the television ecology.
Conclusion
The results of the historical analysis revealed that societal and economic
disruptions of the presented critical cases have many similarities. In both critical cases of
societal disruption, it was an episode of violence against black men—Rodney King and
Trayvon Martin—and the spreading of that information nationwide that brought race to
the helm of the national conversation and eventually affected the television ecology. With
regards to the economic disruptions that were explored, both uncover the appeal and
occasional use of Black American buying power, but only when money is needed to build
a network or to revive it. There is no evidence of a network’s strategy that includes
targeting the black audience as an end in and of itself.
12
Therefore, though these societal

12
Except for networks such as Black Entertainment Television (BET), which solely
target the Black American audience.
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and economic disruptions each had some impact on the television ecology, they are mere
ripples in comparison to the impact of the Internet and its platforms.
The power the emergent can have to influence and affect the dominant is most
greatly displayed through the disruption caused by Internet and its platforms to the more
traditional television ecology. The fragmentation of the audience that began with cable
has only increased with the advent of Internet platforms like YouTube and Vimeo and
streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. Increases in the number of technologies on
which these Internet platforms can be accessed, such as tablets and mobile devices also
draw eyes away from the television screen at set airing dates and times. Also, Internet
platforms aid in the creation, exhibition, and distribution of content giving creatives with
little to no access the ability to upload content and acquire a fan base outside of the
traditional television ecology. Media companies are attempting to bring the Internet and
its platforms under their control with the fight to erase Net Neutrality, but for now the
Internet remains a major disruptor.
This historical analysis explicates these critical cases of disruption, but does not
examine how these disruptions can be utilized. In the following chapters, I will examine
if and how these disruptors are used by black female executives in their negotiations with
representations of black female characters as well as how the black female audience
negotiates with those representations. Disruption affects the entire communication loop
and the following chapters examine the remaining phases of that loop.

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CHAPTER THREE: BEHIND THE SCREENS
“Successful representations of Blackness are intimately connected to the ability to tap
into a Black structure of feeling. Any cultural production must originate from the
willingness and courage to engage with the complexity of Black life and subjectivity.” –
Robin R. Means Coleman and Andre M. Cavalcante

The first producer for A Different World was Anne Beatts, a white woman who
was well known to NBC executives and had good track record that included Saturday
Night Live and Square Pegs, the show that launched Sarah Jessica Parker’s career. Under
her watch, critics called the show “boring,” “juvenile,” and “unrealistic,” (Thompson,
1993; Gerard, 1990). The subject matter was about issues with term papers and borrowed
money at a time in the nation’s history when black students were subject to harassment
at, “‘liberal’ schools like the universities of Massachusetts and Michigan,” (Ehrenstein,
p.10). The reality of life for a black college student at a Historically Black College and
University (HCBU) was never delivered. Beatts’ contract was not renewed and Debbie
Allen, a black actress, dancer, and choreographer, was brought in to replace her.
Under Allen, Hillman College, the fictional HBCU the show was centered around,
was given a history and was filled with students who had a diverse range of black
perspectives. The show resisted becoming a “blackness tour guide” and instead invited
audience members to understand and experience blackness as presented by someone who
was not attempting to provide an overarching definition of blackness or make it easily
palatable to everyone watching (Coleman & Cavalcante, p.40). The show began to
flourish, changing from a, “bland Cosby spin-off to a lively, socially responsible,
ensemble situation comedy,” and hit show (Beller, 1989). A part of what enabled Allen to
revamp the show was her own experience not only as a black woman at an HBCU, but
72
also as a black woman in the world. She had an understanding of the realities of people
like the show’s characters that Beatts could never attain.
This chapter examines and analyzes interviews with women much like Allen—
black women in executive roles—who work in television across broadcast, cable,
streaming, and at agencies. Both black female executives and the black female audience
are often overlooked agents who engage in negotiation—black women with regards to
their negotiations with representations and the use of their economic and social influence
and black female executives with regards to their position as decision-makers within the
industry of television itself. As examined in the previous chapter, there have been
multiple eras of disruption to the television ecology. The most recent era of disruption is
unique and still in effect, and it has provided greater opportunities for negotiation both
directly and indirectly for black female executives and the black female audience.
This chapter focuses on black female executives and the negotiations they partake
in due to their position within the component of industry and limited control and
influence on the component of the textual. The executives work and negotiate within
institutions balancing forces between what they would like to see on screen as far as
representations and what their jobs require them to do in order to be deemed successful
and maintain those jobs. They also negotiate with texts and the creators who authored
them. They navigate suggestions for better and more robust stories alongside suggestions
for representations that reflect the country and world in which they live. Though these
women are also a part of the black female audience, they are in the rare position of being
Black and female inside of the television industry, which gives them insights that are
73
unavailable to the average audience member. This chapter and the following one
interrogate these different experiences and negotiations.
Methodology
Participants, Materials and Procedures
Utilizing the method of the one-on-one interview, I conducted interviews with
seven black female executives with careers at major agencies and broadcast and cable
television networks as well as some with careers in television writing and experience
with streaming companies. All of the executives have worked in entertainment (i.e., in
film and/or television) for at least fifteen years. All of the executives work in Los
Angeles, California and we spoke in-person or on the phone for their interview. Despite
the method’s time-consuming nature, one-on-one interviews facilitate the collection of
large amounts of in-depth data and have a flexible structure, which also aids in the
collection of data (Ryan, Coughlan, & Cronin (2009); Tod, 2006). The one-on-one
interview is a key qualitative method for, “gaining insight into people’s perceptions,
understandings and experiences of a given phenomenon (Ryan, Coughlan & Cronin, p.
309). The standardized interview type I utilized along with the creation and use of an
interview guide as opposed to an interview schedule, an important distinction addressed
by Hugh McKenna et al (2006), employed structured and explicit questions, but also
allowed the me to explore a number of different issues around specific subjects that I
believed could be further discussed by the participants.
Furthermore, despite these being one-on-one interviews as opposed to group
interviews, the expectation was that the ‘interpretive community’, which both the
participants and I belong as described by Jacqueline Bobo (1995), would help to quickly
74
build a similar rapport and a level of trust between the participants and myself that
existed within the small group interviews. Though the one-on-one interview may seem
like a simple conversation between two people, Steinar Kvale (2006) reminds researchers
that it is a more complex interaction because the people involved are not equal because
the researcher is there with a specific goal and the conversation has a purpose. However,
these women and I not only shared the intersection of race and gender, but they were also
doing me the favor of sacrificing time out of their very busy schedules potentially
flipping any potential power dynamic. In these interview scenarios, the executives were
imparting their knowledge of the television industry on me, and then the developed
rapport and existing ‘interpretative community’ made them comfortable to share with me
when more sensitive and probing questions were asked.
In regards to the interview guide, as Polit and Hungler (1995) suggest, it was
constructed by first outlining the categories that were relevant to the research and then the
interview questions stemmed from the categories. This was the same series of steps I
employed when creating the interview guide for the small group interviews. Finally, each
participant was given an informed consent form and agreed to being recorded. The
interviews were comprised of 25 questions and took approximately one-hour each; they
were recorded with the consent of the participants. Five of the interviews were conducted
in-person and two were conducted over the phone. Every interview, except one, which
lasted almost two hours, lasted an hour or less. For the sake of anonymity and
confidentiality, each participant was given a different name in this chapter.

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Analysis
The measure used was created utilizing the inductive method in which the coding
system is driven by the raw data (Boyatzis, 1998). In order to do this, two of the
interviews, labeled Interview A and Interview D, were used to identify themes that arose
throughout the interviews. The overarching theme that arose from the interviews was
“Negotiation within a Landscape of Dysconscious Racism.” Within this theme, there
were three prominent levels requiring negotiations on the part of the executives: Peers
and Upstream, Creators and Downstream and Advertising Sales (Ad Sales). On each of
these levels, the executives have to negotiate against the dysconscious racism of people
operating on those levels, which include both the creative and business aspects of the
television ecology.
Negotiation within a Landscape of Dysconscious Racism
In order to interrogate each of the levels within the major theme from the
executives’ interviews, we must first delve into the meaning of ‘dysconscious racism.’
Joyce E. King (1991) coined the term ‘dysconscious racism’ and defines it as, “an
uncritical habit of mind (including perceptions, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs) that
justifies inequity and exploitation by accepting the existing order of things given,” (p.
135). She discusses it within the realm of education, but the concept can be applied to all
institutions operating under dominant ideologies built upon racial inequity, inequality,
and discrimination. This form of racism is the product of limited and distorted
understandings about inequity and cultural diversity, and tacitly accepts dominant white
norms and privileges. Additionally, ‘dysconscious racism’ is not the absence of
consciousness (i.e., ‘unconscious racism’), but an, “impaired consciousness or distorted
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way of thinking about race as compared to, for example, critical consciousness,” (p.135).
Uncritical ways of thinking about racial inequity allow for certain dominant assumptions,
beliefs, and myths to justify the social and economic advantages that white people have
as a result of subordinating marginalized others (Wellman, 1997). This is not to say that
the people that the executives are negotiating with do not deplore racial prejudice and
discrimination. The likelihood is that in an industry deemed extremely liberal by those
within it and outside of it, most of those within it do abhor racial inequality and
discrimination. However, Wellman notes that this kind of thinking is the hallmark of
racism and is particularly poignant in this post-civil rights era of intellectual conservatism
(King, 1991).
The bottom-line issue facing white people is how to come to terms with the
problems facing Blacks and Whites while simultaneously avoiding the possibility of
institutional change and reorganization that would affect them (Wellman, 1977). White
people within the television ecology are not different. The imagining of a reorganized
society would require a fundamental shift in the way that white people think about their
status, their self-identities, and how they conceptualize black people (King, 1991).
However, ‘dysconscious racism’ does not solely affect white people. People of color also
feed into ‘dysconscious racism’ by internalizing negative messages about their group and
acquiescing to dominant group norms (Jackson, 1999). There would need to be an
uprooting of the internalized ideologies that justify racial inequality and devalue cultural
diversity in order to usurp ‘dysconscious racism’ and that effort is not being considered
or implemented. Therefore, executives are operating within an institution that justifies
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racist behaviors that are most likely dysconscious, under the guise of tradition, customs,
and culture.
Peers and Upstream
One of the levels on which black female executives operate is with their peers
(i.e., those of equal power) and those who are higher-ranked than them. They discuss and
negotiate with these people about the scripts they believe should have their pilots made,
the pilots they think should be picked up for full seasons, the writers, casts, and crews for
shows and more. Though this is a normal practice in the entertainment industry, for black
female executives there is the added component of negotiating within a landscape of
‘dysconscious racism.’ Farrah provided an example of what she has experienced in
discussions about casting:
People said crazy stuff to us—and [there have been times that] my boss was [a
person of color] or head a casting at the time was [a person of color]. It’s a bunch
of women of color and they would just be like, “eh, we just don’t think she’s
[Gabrielle Union] pretty enough.” They just say crazy shit.
She notes that this is not a singular experience. Both her peers and those ranked above
her, even when they are persons of color themselves, reify racism and in this particular
case westernized standards of beauty when diverse options in front of and behind the
camera are brought forth. Farrah and some of the other executives detail how they
suggest actors from marginalized groups and are often told that those actors cannot work
because they would not be able to sell the show or viewers would not like it. However,
the Internet and some of its platforms have disrupted the television ecology in a way that
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allows black female executives to better argue they cases for more diversity both in front
of and behind the camera. It also puts pressure on an ecology that wants to stick to its
traditions, culture, and customs. Annabelle explains,
The Internet [is] forcing people to make [a] better product. Because of FCC
regulations, you know, you can't show nudity, sex, swear, whatever. But, you
know, HBO and Showtime, and Starz, and Cinemax weren’t hemmed up by that.
As a pay cable subscription service, they could do whatever. [When] HBO was
ruling the Emmys and the Cable ACE Award and all of those, you know, gold
statue shows, they can push networks to do better. And in order for networks to
compete with a Netflix or an HBO, they have to get better stories, better
storytelling. Tell their--you know, diverse storytelling, new voices, that’s the only
way to compete.
The Internet and its platforms are technological disruptors that have caused greater
fragmentation of the audience and only continue to do so as new platforms emerge and
existing ones evolve. Annabelle’s statement also touches upon the work of David Craig
and Stuart Cunningham (2016) who analyze new and traditional media using an
ecological approach meaning that they seek to explain the interdependent dynamics of the
economic and social worlds we live. They explain that rather than seeing the IT
industry/Silicon Valley/Northern California as competing with mass media
entertainment/Southern California in a battle that only one can win, the more
ecological approach is to observe their evolving interdependency and the way each is
forcing the another to change or as Annabelle said, “make a better product.”
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Craig and Cunningham view this interdependency, which the television
ecology still views as competition, as beneficial for consumers and the black female
executives’ responses align with that conclusion. Additionally, Internet platforms such
as YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and Instagram provide black female executives with the
proof that diverse content has an audience and can be sold.
Farrah: …[Opportunity is] not only white dudes from Harvard, which in the
comedy space there's a lot of that, but it also means I have an opportunity to go,
“Issa Rae has a web series that has this many followers that [paid] to do a second
season.” And, I can use that as ammunition to validate why we should have a
script from her in a way that 10 years ago you had no sort of focus group… and
the Internet has provided that, which I think has given access to people that would
not have access before and also giving tools for executives like me and our job the
ability to sell up in the absence of just going, “because I like her.”
Aymar Jean Christian (2018) explicates how the Internet brought innovation to television
by giving series development access to new producers, fans, and sponsors who had
previously been excluded. However, the Internet also gave new producers and other
creatives an additional avenue through which to enter the traditional television market.
The Internet and some of its platforms provide executives with content and analytics they
can use as resources for their negotiations with peers and other upstream executives who
are still relying on the traditions of television and what dominant ideologies have put
forth as beautiful, feminine, masculine, good, bad, and more. Another example of this
alternative route is Andrew Bachelor, more famously known as King Bach, a former
Vine and current Instagram star, who has been signed to United Talent Agency (UTA)
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and cast in The Mindy Project, House of Lies, and Black Jesus as well as upcoming films
because he has 13.9 million followers. These platforms not only make negotiations easier
for black female executives, but also give actors like King Bach the ability to display
their work and potentially circumvent traditional routes. Every YouTube creator,
Instagram star, and Snapchat influencer, whether they are earning money or not, began as
an amateur or hobbyist who created content and represents an alternative and
participatory value to their audiences (Craig & Cunningham, 2016). Those who are able
to, “incubate and monetize their unique form of content as well as engage with aggregate,
and harness global fan communities,” have turned themselves into tools for negotiation in
the eyes of black female executives (Craig & Cunningham, 2016).
The disruption the Internet has made to the television ecology has not only
directly provided black female executives with useful negotiating tools, but has also
indirectly made their peers and others more open to their calls for increased diversity
because they have yet to figure out how to compete with the added content it gives to
viewers and slow the fragmentation of the American television audience. The executives
are aware of this struggle, particularly on the broadcast side.
Carla: I think, look I think--I think that as our business, at least on the broadcast
side, as we're seeing the business struggle, people are become much more open to
new things because you sort of realize, “well the old things we've done are not
really working so we just try something new… So people suddenly become more
open to shows with diverse faces as the leads and what have you to see… You
know, so, I do think, you know people are sort at that crossroads of struggle
they’re open. So I think all of the--all of the changes but, especially technology
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and things that are just, you know, all the pressures on the business have made
people I think are more open to, you know, "let's try this." You know, we could
fail but we've been failing anyway.
Due to the effects of disruption caused by the Internet and its platforms, black
female executives are better equipped in their negotiations with the ‘dysconscious
racism’ of their peers and those upstream. There is no way to definitively claim whether
or not the negotiations of black female executives are responsible for the continued rise
of minorities in lead roles on broadcast, but we know that these negotiations are taking
place and that those taking advantage of platforms like YouTube and Instagram are
providing executives with a tool to make their case for increased diversity in traditional
television (i.e., broadcast and cable) and digital.
Creators and Downstream
Television executives also interact and negotiate with creatives, such as creators,
showrunners, creative producers, and writers. They play a strong role in the hiring of
writers for the writers’ room, give notes on outlines and scripts, and as previously
mentioned have their hands in the casting process. For executives, dealing with creators
can require just as much negotiation as dealing with peers and those upstream.
Farrah: I think there’re some places where you might have a creator that wants to do
it and a network that’s going to go, “we can't sell it.” And, other places where
networks like, “we want it,” and you don’t have the creators that are going to sustain
it, like, it’s bananas […] That was my long winded of, like, there is for sure more of
an openness, but if your creators don’t get it, it doesn’t happen.
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The ‘dysconscious racism’ of creatives, whether they are the creators or downstream,
often impedes them from being open to the diverse characters and/or diverse casting
choices the executives suggest. As Darnell Hunt (2005) wrote, media markets are the
direct product of “raced” processes, “that is to say, network television continues to be
defined by a highly insular industry in which white decision makers typically reproduce
themselves by hiring other whites who share similar experiences and tastes,” (p.17).
These “raced” processes take place on all of the levels black female executives operate on
because of ‘dysconscious racism.’
Due to creators and other creatives being unable to even imagine scenarios and
worlds where diversity exists, it is even more difficult for black female executives to
negotiate for the inclusion of diverse characters and the dynamism of those characters.
Farrah also comments on this difficulty:
If they [creators, writers] don’t see a show where a black woman’s a love interest,
they're not going to write it. They're not going to approve it. They're not going to
bring it on the door. I've numerous times been on shows where we said we’re
open. Bring it in… That’s not their world.
This statement illuminates another side of negotiation: the negotiation of constraints.
Black female executives negotiate these constraints within themselves as well as amongst
themselves since many of them know one another due to the small number of highly
ranked black female television executives (i.e., Vice President and above). These women
socialize, form friendships, and discuss their grievances with one another, which is also a
form of negotiation. They negotiate how far their scope of influence can go and the
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strength of the negotiating tools they believe are at their disposal. This is not to say that
the impaired consciousness on the part of creators and showrunners specifically does not
also make it more arduous to get people of color staffed in the writers’ room or in
positions such as director or assistant director. A show’s creator and showrunner, which
are at times the same person, holds a lot of power; they create the vision for the show.
Black female executives have to negotiate with them to change who makes up the world
they have imagined and the scenarios within it along with whom they choose to help in
executing that vision. However, the executives have also made negotiations as to how
much power and how many negotiating tools they have in their arsenal; they have
negotiated their constraints.
During the 2011-2012 television season, the writing rooms for broadcast
comedies and dramas were far from diverse (Hunt, 2014). As UCLA’s 2014 Hollywood
Report revealed, during the 2011-2012 season, 62.5%of writing staffs were 10 percent
minority or less despite the fact that the minority share of the U.S. population is 36.3%.
The minority share of writers across all broadcast comedies and dramas examined by the
report was 10%. Cable faired worse with its minority share of writers across all comedies
and dramas coming in at 7.4%. For the 2013-2014 television season, the overall minority
share of writers credited for broadcast scripted shows was just 9.7% (Ralph J. Bunche
Center, 2016). In scripted cable shows the overall minority share was 9.1%, down from
11.8% in the 2012-2013 season (Ralph J. Bunche Center, 2015). Unfortunately, the
reports do not reveal how many of the writers during these seasons were black women or
Black as it only distinguishes between Whites and minorities. However, it reveals that
this is a continuous and labored negotiation for black female executives. Seemingly, their
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way of effecting change on this level is negotiating for more creators of color, such as
Issa Rae, with their peers and upstream, as previously described, in addition to trying to
change the minds of current creators.
The successes of other creators of color, such as Shonda Rhimes who has diverse
writers’ rooms, casts, and crews, aids in their negotiations with other creators and
showrunners. Furthermore, whether positive or negative, when white creators and
showrunners support diversity within their rooms, casts, and crews and have successful
shows they better buttress the argument for diversity and inclusion. For example, House
of Lies creator, Michael Carnahan had Don Cheadle as the lead in his show.
Brooke: … [with] Don Cheadle on House of Lies? That was not meant to be a
black man. They get credit for that. It wasn’t written.
Me: Yeah.
Brooke: So that’s a brave move to me because it’s not like Don Cheadle was
household name, they get big points for that to me. But, that is a [male character
not a female character].
Cheadle was nominated three times for a Golden Globe and won once. He was nominated
for a Primetime Emmy three times and nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award in
2014. His talent was a part of what drew attention to the show alongside an interesting
story and great writing. Previously successful white creators are also able to propel the
argument for diversity as Farrah points out,
…if you don’t have a creator, you don’t have a J.J. Abrams who created Lost
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whose able to make an Asian man a sexy person, it doesn’t work. You need both
[network and creator]. Does that make sense?
Lost was on for 6 years and received 375 award nominations, 106 of which they won.
One of the wins was the Screen Actors Guild award for Outstanding Performance by an
Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2006. Co-creators Abrams, who created Alias and
Felicity, and Damon Lindelof, a writer-producer on Crossing Jordan, and casting director
April Webster broke new television ground by assembling an, “ethnically and
geographically diverse cast […] that favored humanity over tokenism -- a casting and
writing coup that has sparked water-cooler chatter beyond the island's frightening man-
eating monster, polar bears and other spooky human inhabitants,” (Fernandez, 2005).
Their previous successes allowed them to ‘take a chance’ on diversity and the show
thrived.
The majority of the black female executives I interviewed do their best to utilize
the fortune of creators who support diversity and inclusion in their negotiations with
those who do not in addition to their negotiations on the level of peers and upstream to
increase the number of diverse creators through the use of Internet platforms. For
example, Issa Rae has gone from YouTuber to black female lead and Golden Globe
nominee. However, the role agency representation plays as the gateway to a successful
career in television cannot be discounted (Bielby and Bielby, 1999). Without
representation writers and directors are unlikely to be hired because television executives
are less likely to ever hear of them. The Internet and some of its platforms allows some
people to get around the agency gatekeepers, but having representation is still the most
solid pipeline to the writers’ room and a job behind the camera.
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The way in which the executives engage with and view creators as well as the
gatekeeping capabilities of agents further illuminates the negotiation of constraints.
Overall, black female executives are not claiming to be as successful in their negotiations
on this level as they are on the previous one, but this has to do with both the power of
creators as well as their negotiations with what they view as a constraint on their power
of influence. Negotiation is give and take and this is a level on which they do not believe
they are able to take as much as they would like to take. The statistics show that
minorities were credited as creator in only 3.3% of the broadcast scripted shows
examined by the 2016 Hollywood Report for the 2013-2014 season, down from the 5.9%
share posted in 2012-2013 season. Cable scripted shows had even had a slightly steeper
decline as minorities were only credited as creator on 7.8% of shows that season, a
decline from the 10.7% figure during the 2012-2013 season.
When asked if the issue of race coming to the forefront of the U.S. national
conversation was a disruptor to the television ecology, there was no consensus amongst
the black female executives. They agreed that it depended on whether or not the creator
felt personally impacted and if they could create an entertaining story that touched on the
national conversation. Racial issues are not, in their opinion, affecting the television
ecology as a whole the way that the Internet does. Farrah’s answer encapsulates what
most of the executives believe.
Me: Do you see your relationship between real world political development such
as Black Lives Matter and what you see on television?
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Farrah: Yeah. Empire has done their stuff. Kenya [Barris] has done those things.
People, not most writers. The shows that I'm at now, I think are reflecting topical
issues, right? You see writers dealing with that. It comes down your creators at
the end. That’s all I [can say is that it really] comes down to your creators. I can
say for the places I've worked and again I can't speak for every network. People
often talk about Norman Lear and what his shows [did] at the time they did them.
That’s hard to do. It’s just hard to pull it off. Every year, we would develop a
script. Somebody would come in with a pitch like, “yeah, yeah, yeah,” and it just
would not walk that line of being social commentary, funny, sophisticated. It’s the
high bar to accomplish.
Once again, the creator and their decisions carry a lot of weight in the decision-making
process and most of the black female executives I interviewed are doing their best to
negotiate with them using the tools the Internet and its platforms have provided and the
successes of other creators who decided to have diverse rooms, casts, and crews. They do
not view issues of race coming to the forefront of society as a negotiating tool, but
instead see the issues as either affecting creators or not. The executives’ belief that this
societal disruptor is not a useful negotiating tool is itself a negotiation. More specifically,
this belief is a negotiation of a particular constraint on their scope of influence that
positions this societal disruptor as a negotiating tool of creators and not as one of their
own.
Advertising Sales
The executives responses to questions surrounding advertisements, CPMs (i.e.,
cost per thousand people reached by a commercials), and advertising sales (ad sales),
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made clear that the voice of ad sales is the loudest voice in the room because they know
what kinds of shows and audiences are desired by advertisers. Advertising sales and the
advertisers view television as a business and though the executives also see it as such in
part they are interested in the creative and the storytelling that is also a major part of
television. Certain shows bring in specific kinds of audiences and with that come certain
kinds of advertisers. However, ratings and the race of the audience do matter and have
effects unlike the shows genre, which according to the executives does not matter nearly
as much as the audience that a specific show brings in. This explains why Scandal and
Empire, which are both melodramas, can both be successful with Empire being more so
than Scandal at different times, and yet Scandal still garners top-tier or upscale
advertisers such as high-end car companies and designer perfumes. In September 2015,
Advertising Age published an article noting that Empire was getting half-a-million for
each 30-second advertising spot. Their ratings allowed them to charge more for their
advertising space, however the kinds of advertisers remained the same.
The negotiation of the scope of influence and constraints came to the forefront
once again as some of the executives argued that “money is money” and the tier of the
advertisers is not as important as the money coming in while others believe that having
upscale advertisers is better than downscale ones. Regardless of which argument the
executives support, they are posing that diverse shows, with leads of color, are able to
accomplish those advertising goals. However, the argument that each executive sides
with results in differing negotiations and uses of the tools of negotiations provided by
disruptions. Dara is one of the executives arguing, “money is money” and explains why:
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Here’s what people don’t realize whether it’s that [Love and Hip Hop] or Scandal,
advertisers are still not paying the same amount of money because they can’t
market this stuff internationally. So again, it’s business. Right? Advertisers don’t
pay the same price point for minority programming in general […] So, I think for
advertisers, it’s not about whether Love Hip Hop is less quality than How to Get
Away with Murder. They’re not looking at programming like that. They’re
looking at it as black and white. And, where can I spend the most dollars […]
they’re looking at Black, White, Asian, Mexican, whatever it is, and where can I
get the most money? They’re going to target Shaniqua because Shaniqua might
not be the smartest, but if she got spending power, McDonald’s is going to go in
there. Toyota’s going to go in there. Ford is going to go in that program. They’re
not looking. By the way, McDonald’s can go into How to Get Away with
Murder,” but also Mercedes [Benz] will go in there. They’re just looking at who’s
the audience, and who spends money on this product.
Advertisers only care about the spending power, and likelihood of buying their product,
of those that their commercials are reaching. Therefore, in Dara’s opinion, advertising
sales for a network is only concerned with being able to delivery just that whether it is for
McDonald’s or it is for Mercedes Benz. The black female executives of this same
mindset are negotiating for diverse shows that will draw in eyes and dollars with little
concern for the tier of advertisers the show draws. On the other side of the argument,
black female executives point out that if a show is able to bring in top tier advertisers and
has lower ratings than a show with lower tier advertisers it can still be more profitable
because of the audience it is able to draw in. To them, shows of such caliber are the goal
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and negotiating for shows such as Blackish and Scandal prove that “black” shows or
diverse shows are just as profitable. Farrah explains,
I think the value has shifted when you’ve had shows like what Shonda [Rhimes]
does and what Kenya [Barris] does. Again, this is me just being super honest
about it. What ad sales gets premium money for are high income viewers. So, for
the most part, a lot of diverse viewers whether that’s African American [or]
Hispanic, what have you are more downscale. You can have a big number of
downscale viewers. They're not going to make as much money on that. They
would rather have a mediocre rated show that’s upscale because they can charge
more for that. The gold is to have something like Scandal, which is a big number,
which is diverse, and also has upscale skew. I think it is what things like [The]
Cosby [Show] had. There's always been a knowledge that we [black people] can
build a number. If any network tries flailing they follow black people, everyone
including Oprah. She was like, “wait, never mind. Tyler Perry!” That’s the thing,
it’s not new. VH1 is like, “our numbers are dead, black people get them in here!”
That’s not new, but I think the appreciation or [it as a] brand [is and] we don’t
have to be embarrassed about this. We don’t have to be like, “here’s our ghetto
shows and we’re going to drop them and put pretty white people on,” which is
what the CW did or what WB did or UPN, FOX… I think what you’ve seen is an
upscale maybe that’s buying power, but [it’s also] the combination of a show like
Blackish or even Scandal. They index well with people that are diverse as well as
not diverse. I think there's that and I think they’ve seen brand value with it as
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opposed to in the past [when] it was more like you're doing it because you have
to, but they didn’t see the value.
Once again, though those in on the side of “money is money” are correct, what
“upscale is greater than downscale” has in its corner is that even when their viewership is
down or lower (i.e., The Office), the audience composition allows for maintenance of
upscale and higher cost advertisers. Essentially, these shows are the “safer” bet though
likely more difficult to accomplish than a reality show that merely draws a lot of eyes that
are perceived as downscale. Ad sales is, “a huge voice because if they can't sell it, we're
not putting it on,” Farrah said. In order to negotiate with them, the executives have to
show that there is an audience and preferably an upscale audience for the show.
Sometimes they are able to use the fame of a creator or cast member thanks to their
Internet platform, but at other times it is about good storytelling and the entertainment
value of the project itself.
This conversation and the negotiations involved touch upon the value of black
buying power. Overall, the executives did not view the increase in black buying power as
a disruptor to the television ecology and therefore had constrained themselves from
utilizing it as a negotiating tool. Black Americans have always over-indexed as far as
their television viewership. However, as Farrah believes, upscale black shows are able to
support the argument that black viewers and shows with mostly black casts or diverse
casts are not merely the stepping-stones to white viewers and white shows. Diverse
shows can bring in a diverse array of viewers and with it advertisers of all tiers. The black
female executives make the negotiations they believe that are able to make so black and
diverse shows can be given the chance to prove their advertising caliber and reach.
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Conclusion
Black female executives are operating within an industry filled with people whose
impaired consciousness primes them to dismiss their suggestions for diverse and
inclusive casts, writers, directors, and crews. ‘Dysconscious racism’ is pervasive and can
affect people of color just as much as it does white people resulting in more of the same
when it comes to shows, casts, and crews despite repeated reports of the lack of diversity
within the television industry. Black female executives negotiate within this landscape of
‘dysconscious racism’ on its multiple levels utilizing content from the Internet and its
platforms as proof of talent and/or following/fan-base as well as using the successes of
those who are already in the industry to push for increased diversity and inclusion within
shows. Racial issues in society and black buying power are not perceived as major
disruptors to television ecology by the executives and therefore they did not attempt to
use them as negotiating tools, which is itself a negotiation of constraints and perceived
scope of influence. Internet platforms, like YouTube and Instagram, are not only major
disruptors, but also the major negotiating tools of use outside of the accomplishments of
those already in the industry for black female executives. Their presence and use has
changed the way that black female executives negotiate and they have done so for the
better.

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CHAPTER FOUR: REPRESENTATION- A NEGOTIATION
Textuality is never enough. – David Morley

Disruptions to the television ecology provide black women with more
opportunities for negotiation within the components of the institutional, the textual, and
reception. As described in the previous chapters, there have been significant
technological, economic and societal disruptions to the television ecology in the current
critical case of disruption, and there is a relationship between disruption, negotiation, and
representation. In this chapter, I examine the dominant themes that emerge when the
black female audience talks about television. These themes expose the relationship
between representations of black women on television and the negotiations in which the
black female audience are engaged in within the component of reception. I discuss how
the black female audience currently negotiates with these representations not only as a
part of a monolithic group, but also as individual subjects with their own histories and
interpretations, which appear to be a shift from how they engaged with representations in
the past.
Audience Research Models
There have been over 50 years worth of focus group and small group studies of
British and American audiences’ reception of cultural products or what Stuart Hall (1973)
describes as the last stop in the circulation loop of sender, message, and finally receiver.
Television can be studied without studying the audience, but in an age of participatory
culture where spectators are active in their media spectatorship, and convergence culture
in which consumers are combining information from media and their own experiences
alongside social interactions, the study of media without consideration of the audience
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leaves out a critical source of information and in the case of Gledhill’s framework, an
integral component of negotiation (Jenkins, 2006; Jin, 2012).
An early and influential study is David Morley’s Nationwide Television Studies
initiated in 1975. The study’s structure and findings are significant to the audience study
aspect of this project. In his study, Morley argues against the idea of social agents—
viewers—as passive bearers of ideology, which aligns with Hall’s (1973) theory of a
negotiated code. I agree with Morley and Hall and the view the audience as active
receivers, but I utilize Gledhill’s framework of negotiation because it facilitates an
interrogation of how the negotiated code for the black female audience has evolved, why
that evolution has occurred, and how they are negotiating with current representations.
However, in the same way that Morley attempted to find decoding variations between the
sample groups he constructed along variations in areas such as socio-demographics and
involvement in forms of cultural frameworks and identifications based on research by
Parkin (1972) and Mann (1973), I attempt to find negotiation variations between sample
groups (i.e., black female executives and the black female audience) in the area of
knowledge of position (i.e., the information afforded someone from working within the
television industry, especially from a position of influence).
Though I did not use the same interview method as Morley, which was
formulated by Merton and Kendall (1955), I attempted to create a set of questions that
would prompt discussion and guide the participants from one topic to the next in an
unforceful manner. In Merton and Kendall’s method, the interviewer hardly interrupts
and is in a position of prompting, or open-ended prompting, as opposed to questioning,
which this particular audience study could not completely lend itself. Through Morley’s
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comparative analysis of the different groups’ interviews, his project not only confirmed
the findings that people’s uses of media (i.e., newspaper, radio, television) varied, but
also supported that social position—socioeconomic status and/or education—in no way
directly correlates to decodings (Morley, p. 260; Piepe et al). Groups’ decodings are
inflected in varying directions by the influences of the discourses and institutions in
which they are situated. These findings alongside Jacqueline Bobo’s (1995) concept of
the ‘interpretive community’ are my basis for observing variations between these sample
groups according to position of knowledge and age as opposed to socio-economic status
or education. These women share the societal categorization of ‘Black American
women.’
Morley’s study largely advanced our understanding of the social aspect of
television discourses. Both he and Hall believe the audience capable of acknowledging
the legitimacy of hegemonic definitions while also holding a mixture of adaptive and
oppositional views and that is the same belief that anchors this examination. As Hall
(1981) writes,
Audiences, like broadcasters, also stand in their own (very different) positions,
relations, and situations, have their own (again, different) relationship to power, to
information, to sources, and bring their own frameworks of interpretation to bear
in order to get a meaning, or decode the message (p.280).
At its foundation, the Nationwide Audience study was Morley trying to offer a
better way of understanding media power than what is offered by the Frankfurt School’s
simplistic approach the to the audience. He recognized the issues of power and position
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experienced by the audience influenced how their individual decodings take place, but he
based what they would experience on class. Black women in the United States, despite
varying socioeconomic statuses, share in particular experiences solely due to their
experience of a specific intersectionality: being members of the Black race and members
of the female gender. Scholars have yet to examine how Black American women’s
negotiations have changed due to disruptions to the television ecology. We have yet to
interrogate the current status of representations on television in the lives of the black
female audience leaving us with mere assumptions as to their importance and influence
on those most affected by them in the real world.
A central debate in media studies is around who or what has the greater power—
the industry, the text, the context, or the viewer. Morley’s focus in Nationwide centers on
developing a theory that gives due weight to both the text and the audience as “halves of
the equation,” (p.271). However, Gledhill’s framework proposes equal thirds: industry,
text, and reception. This framework allows for a more complete examination of the
television ecology because it permits scholars to acknowledge and analyze the power of
texts, the power of the industries producing them, and the power of the audience
members who actively make meanings with texts and contexts as well as the negotiations
taking place on each of those levels (Kuhn, 1987; D’Acci, 1994, p.271).
13
This
framework enables us to push past the debate of which has the most power to

13
Kuhn’s model does not include negotiation, but does acknowledge and analyze the
power of the text, industry, spectators and social audience. She makes a distinction
between the ‘spectator’ and the ‘social audience’ defining the former as, “a subject
constituted in signification, interpellated by the film or text,” though not necessarily
merely an effect of the text. My use of ‘audience members’ is not reflective of either of
Kuhn’s terms and instead refers to the television audience at-large who are discursive
subjects who have been influenced by different social discourses, histories, etc.
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interrogating how these powers function both individually and together while also
examining the role that negotiation plays on each of these levels. D’Acci proposes that it
is important to acknowledge varying levels of power amongst components while focusing
on female spectators, the social audience, and how they are ‘gendered’ by certain
programs because it reveals, “the dense complexity of the whole enterprise,” of television
and how it influences identity production.
I propose that it is important to acknowledge varying levels of power amongst
components while focusing on the black female audience not only because it reinforces
the complexity of the television ecology and its influence on identity production, but also
because it examines how black women specifically negotiate with representations of
themselves during a critical case of disruption. Scholars, such as Toby Miller (2006)
argue that diverse and responsible media representations are tools used towards securing
cultural citizenship, while others, like Herman Gray (2013), have deemed media
representations a poor investment in the struggle for recognition and visibility by the state
and society. However, analyzing what the black female audience thinks of these
representations, what do they do with them, and what they want from them provides a
look into what representations of black women mean to the very women being
represented, which may or may not coincide with what scholars have argued. The
previous chapter focused on black female executives and it is now time to examine
another part of the equation: the black female audience.

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Methodology
Participants, Materials and Procedures
Utilizing the method of small group interviews as outlined by Justin Lewis (1991)
undergirded by the theory of ‘interpretative community’ and the work of Merton and
Kendall (1955), I interviewed 18 black female television audience members who fell
within the coveted demographic (i.e., 18 to 49 year olds) for television networks and
advertisers. Participants were recruited in the state of Florida utilizing past high school
connections, family connections, and participants’ own connections. The reasoning for
conducting the interviews outside of Los Angeles was that these women were less likely
to have as much insider industry knowledge as black female audience members residing
in Los Angeles or other cities with major studio operations such as New York and
Atlanta. Additionally, these particular women were chosen because of their comfort
levels with one another. They are all friends, colleagues, and/or members of the same
church and are therefore connected in some way outside of their race and gender.
Four small groups were composed in total. Two of them contained black female
television audience members ages 18 to 34, with each group comprised of 3 members,
and the other two groups contained black female television audience members ages 35 to
49, with one group comprised of 4 members and the other comprised of 8 members.
Small Group 1 participants are in the 18 to 34 year old age range, and two of them are
friends from high school while the third is a more recent friend. Small Group 2
participants fall into the 18 to 34 year old age range with two being sisters and all of them
having attended high school together. Small Group 3 consists of 8 women who all attend
the same church. Some of the women are married and/or have children and two of the
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participants are cousins. Small Group 4 participants all work together at a correctional
facility and some of them are married and/or have children. For the sake of anonymity
and confidentiality, each participant was given a different name in this chapter.
Participants were given an informed consent form and a questionnaire containing
questions about age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, income, television viewing habits
and shows watched. The interviews were comprised of 30 questions, were held for the
duration of approximately one-hour, and were recorded with the consent of all of the
small group members.
Analysis
I approached the analysis of the interviews using the inductive method, in which
the coding system is driven by the raw data (Boyatzis, p.67). In order to create the coding
system, two of the interviews, one from an 18 to 34 year old small group interview and
one a 35 to 49 year old interview, were used to identify themes that arose throughout the
interviews. Themes that were shared or related to one another across the two interviews
were then labeled and defined for the purpose of 1) coding the remaining interviews and
2) allowing other scholars to see and understand the descriptions and boundaries of each
theme. I labeled the themes Individuality and Impact on Real Life. Additionally, I coded
when participants mentioned or discussed black female lead characters’ work
life/profession, romantic life, family life, and whether they believed they were
conforming to or rejecting black norms and/or conforming to or rejecting white norms.
Previous audience research was then utilized to further analyze the interpretations and
results from coding participants’ responses.

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Individuality
The theme of Individuality arose from the ways in which the participants
negotiated with the representations of black female characters on television as well as the
ways in which they composed characters when asked what kind of character they would
create. As mentioned in previous chapters, the disruption caused to the television
ecology, which include the Internet and its platforms increasing audience fragmentation,
further opened the door for new and innovate stories as well as negotiations by black
female executives that called for increased diversity generally and more black female
leads specifically. The black female audience participants’ answers and discussions
reveal that an increase in shows featuring black female characters allow black female
audience members to make more choices as far as the shows that they watch and the
characters they enjoy. The availability of these choices allows black women to become
more discerning consumers of black images. In the 1950s and the decades before, black
audiences either despised the actors’ roles and the actors along with them or they solely
drew pleasure from the actors and actresses themselves as opposed to the characters they
portrayed. Donald Bogle (2010) provided his own interactions with black audience
members as a child and later as a staff writer for Ebony in his work. For his classmates,
there was no concern for black male actors other than Sidney Poitier. When he brought
up Stepin’ Fetchit or Eddie “Rochester” Anderson’s movies to his peers, they labeled the
actors ‘villains’ and nothing more than Toms or handkerchief heads because of the roles
they played. Bogle, however, was entertained by all of the actors and was excited to see
people who looked like him on screen.
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As discussed in Chapter One, Mask’s (2009) interviews mirror this response
amongst black female audience members present for the first runs of Dandridge’s films.
Bogle himself was, “intoxicated by Dorothy Dandridge’s lush beauty and invigorated by
the dazzling enthusiasm the cast displayed for its work,” and these women expressed
similar feelings (p. xix). Unlike the scholarship and critiques of Dandridge, which discuss
her roles within a dichotomous structure of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ representations and
omit the audience, these women describe her beauty and how relatable she was to them
(Hadley-Freydberg, 1985). Additionally, just like Bogle’s childhood classmates these
women mentioned their distaste for certain actors because of their roles.
Black audiences shift in their engagement with black representations in film and
television by the 1980s and early 1990s. Audience studies at the time, which engaged
with the black audience, show that there is still the presence of a binary interpretation of
the characters the audience encounters, but also capture the black audience moving into
some identification with the characters as well as more strongly identifying with the
positions of characters within their family structures and society. For example, Jacqueline
Bobo (1995) conducted two group interviews consisting of nine black women in their 40s
and early 50s and six black women between the ages of 30 and 37 focusing on The Color
Purple directed by Steven Spielberg. She does this to interrogate why the responses of
the black female audience to the film defy the expectations of activists and critics who
were highly disappointed with the feature. She posits that though the film was the
antithesis of the book, the black female audience struggles to resist the pull of the film
and extracted progressive meanings. They discuss Celie, Shug, and Sofia as positive
characters who evolved throughout the film and the found strength to move forward in
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their lives. Margaret, one of Bobo’s interviewees said, “the lady [Celie] was a strong
lady, like I am. She hung in there and overcame,” (p. 105).
In Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis’ (1992) study focusing on The Cosby Show, they
conducted 52 small focus groups and 23 of them were comprised of black participants.
One of the differences the researchers found between the white and black focus groups
was that black participants were concerned with television racial stereotyping. They liked
The Cosby Show because it was a celebration of everydayness and the desire for family.
A female working class respondent in the study said,
It’s a real objective story line, you know, how a black family lives and how they
see things. I think that way they are trying to describe that black families are just
as normal as white families. They have a functioning house, normal, just like
white families (p. 50).
For the black participants, The Cosby Show provided a positive portrayal of black people
that they could love and embrace in a landscape of black television shows littered with
negative stereotypical characters from shows like 227, Amen, The Jeffersons, and Good
Times. They saw themselves and others in their families within these characters, but more
so in the characters’ positions within their family structure. One of the participants said,
“I like Clair. I do see a lot of me in her in terms of the position that she plays and some of
the situations that happen in terms of the children,” (p. 51). None of the participants
discussed the characters’ individual traits, but instead saw themselves or their parents in
Cliff and Clair Huxtable and were thankful for a show with positive portrayals.
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We are now in a new era of how the black female audience is engaging with black
female representations on television as they are now negotiating with the full spectrum of
characters’ traits in addition to identifying with them on an individual level. However,
this does not mean there has been complete abandonment of some previous engagement
practices. For example, black female audience members still have an interest in black
actresses outside of their character roles. Participants Lily and Ursula expressed their love
for Tracee Ellis Ross during the Small Group 2 interview.
Ursula: …I like Tracee. What's her [name]--Rainbow.
Lilly: …I love, I do like Blackish. I am almost obsessed with Tracee Ellis Ross. I
think it's her hair and she's goofy. I’ve loved her since Girlfriends…
Similarly to how black women responded to Dorothy Dandridge as an actress, these
women view Tracee Ellis Ross as someone to hold in a position of esteem. From this
point of commonality, the engagement of the coveted demographic of the black female
audience displays a new kind era of negotiation for black women. Due to the more
dynamic character roles given to black actresses, even when these characters contain
some of the stereotypical traits of the Mammy or the Jezebel, they are able to partake in
negotiations with these representations that elicit both pleasure and displeasure.
Furthermore, they are able to participate in these negotiations not only as the monolithic
group “black women,” but also as individual persons drawing different identifications
and having unique perceptions.
The participants deeply parsed the attitudes and actions of the black female
characters they mentioned. The coding of the participants’ discussions of black female
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characters revealed that each participant had particular aspects of the characters that they
found admirable, interesting, funny, upsetting, and so on. The characters Olivia Pope of
Scandal and Cookie Lyon of Empire were two of the characters that elicited the most
discussion amongst the groups. Regarding Olivia Pope, each participant who mentioned
her, except for one, brought up her work/professional life often using terms like “strong,”
“successful,” and “powerful” to describe her. They admired this about her. Carrie from
Small Group 3 said,
You know, the funniest thing [is that] I saw it from the standpoint that she [Olivia
Pope] had so much power. Disdain, when she was with the president. I wanted to
try to just slam the door on him so badly and she won't do it. So, she won't do it so
I leave her alone.
Olivia’s work/professional life is the only aspect of her character they discussed and
agreed on overwhelmingly. For example, though seven participants mentioned Olivia’s
romantic life, they had differing opinions about it highlighting their individual feelings
and perceptions. Some of the participants in Small Group 4 discuss Olivia’s love life in a
manner that strayed from most of the other participants who condemned her affair with
the President.
Tammy: Up until last season I was an Olivia fan.
Me: So why did you like her and why don’t you like her anymore?
Tammy: Because--I don’t know, I guess she's lost her way. Meaning her priorities
are all messed up now and she's…she’s more for herself.
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Marsha: Not for the group
Tammy: You know, she used to be all about the team… I don’t want to call her
name but…
Marsha: Is she a whore?
Violet: No.
Tammy: No, I wouldn’t to say that--but she's a man user. She's like a father
now… Now, she’s about power. [She] you know, had an affair…
Me: Uh-hmm.
Tammy: I kind of got past that part right there. It was not big negative for me
because I thought they were in love.
Marsha: They were in love.
Tammy: They were wrong, but …
What was bothersome for Tammy was not Olivia having an affair with the President, but
prioritizing herself above her team. Marsha and Violet coincided with Tammy voicing
love as the reason why they did hold Olivia’s affair against her.
Other participants had different opinions regarding Olivia’s love life and even
then there were differing reasons that touched on their own personal perspectives and
their position as black women in U.S. society. When describing things they did not like
about Olivia, Miranda from Small Group 3 said,
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“…what I didn’t like about that is when you think about it, they alluded to that in
the show many times that a lot of the presidents would take up woman, African-
American women, and sleep with them, but never court them in public. So she
was just kind of like a side thing, you know, and it was always that constant
theme of who’s she’s going to be with and it was always a white man. This was
like the knight in shining armor, so I just stop watching after that.
Miranda is upset by the continued legacy of black women in the subjugated position as a
white man’s mistress and the persistence of the white knight. This touches upon her
position as a black woman in America. For Lilly it has more to do with her personal life.
Lilly: It's funny. I watch Scandal and I like the characters but I'm just one of those
women who would be like, “I have no respect for you. I don't like you.”
Marie: Yeah, because you're the wife.
Lilly: Well, yeah. I mean, and there's a lot that goes into it but for me, I'm just--I
guess because I'm married, I don't know.
Each participant is getting something from Olivia as an individual as well as from being a
part of the same ‘interpretative community.’ They have shared views such as admiration
for the strength and power of Olivia, especially in regards to seeing a black woman in a
powerful and influential position, but how she speaks to their personal beliefs and
identities is not monolithic.
The same individualized as well as community-considering negotiations took
place for the character Cookie Lyons. Just as Olivia Pope had been described by the
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majority of participants as strong in regards to her work/professional life, Cookie was as
well. She was described as “powerful” and a “leader,” which are attributes of black
women that the participants were happy to see on television. However, their feelings
differed on the issue of Cookie’s conformation to black norms. For some, it reified
negative stereotypes of black women because she has an attitude, gets angry and loud,
and does not care for decorum, and for others these are admirable attributes that are a part
of making Cookie who she is as a character. Miranda from Small Group 3 expresses her
issues with Cookie and black norms:
[…] in Empire, Cookie, right, she comes out of jail and she has her mink coat and
she has to be loud and aggressive and there were parts of her that you can see that
she's a leader, but all the other things get overshadowed by stereotypical black
woman, you know, and got to be a certain kind of way to get certain kind of
things, you know?
Participants from other groups provide different negotiations that pull positivity from this
conformation to what are viewed as ‘negative’ stereotypes by others. Natalie said,
Like Cookie, she’s not maybe the most ideal role model for a young girl, you
know, or even a girl-- a woman her age, but she’s good at what she does. The
lifestyle that she leads, she’s smart, she’s you know, up on her games, she’s just
good at what she does. Even if it’s not the most ethical thing to doing, she’s just
she’s good.
Natalie does not see Cookie as an ideal role model, but views her as intelligent and
knowledgeable of the ins and out of the music world in which she and her family operate,
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which goes hand in hand with her attitude and behaving a “certain way.” Small Group 4
described Cookie in an even more purely positive light. Her attributes that were seen by
some of the other participants as negative and stereotypical were interpreted as doing
what needs to be done for family and success using the intelligence that you have been
given.
Violet: …Having to stand up for your children. You might have to do some
underhanded stuff to get to where you need to be with you and your family for the
betterment and it may not also be right because there's a lot of things that I've
done. I'm not ashamed of it but I'm not--I'm not proud of it either.
Tammy: I will say there are some differences between Cookie and the rest of
them because Cookie is not educated as far as college class.
Marsha: Right.
Tammy: But street wise she's the…
Violet: She has that Ph.D.!
Tammy: …the most smart.
The black female audience negotiates with black female representations in a manner that
touches upon both their place as members of the ‘interpretative community,’ but also as
individual people. They are interpreting, analyzing, grappling with, identifying with, and
not identifying with the images that they are receiving. The presence of more, and
increasingly dynamic, black female lead characters has allowed for these negotiations to
take place.
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The consequences of black female leads with layered traits also became apparent
when the participants were asked to create their own characters. The exercise revealed
their individual desires, the characteristics that they want to see, and the ones with which
they personally identify. I asked the participants of each group to describe what their
ideal black female television character would be like if they could create one. Participants
either pulled together attributes from existing characters or discussed the realism their
characters would contain that they believe is missing from current representations. When
I asked Small Group 1 for each of their character creations, Amber said,
I would take, like, her [Olivia Pope] just headstrong personality, mix it with like what
Danielle said with the sassiness and spunk of Cookie… Just the house alone and the
finances of Mary Jane Paul and if she get a Tesla again I’mma cry… ([laughter].
None of the characters they had discussed were perfect in and of themselves, but many
contained attributes they admired or identified with personally. For each participant that
built her character in this manner, the combination was unique to that individual. For the
few who created characters without the use of existing ones, such as Natalie and Danielle,
they wanted more realistic black female characters.
Natalie: So that’s the thing, the character would be emotionally, mentally, spiritually
stable. You know, maybe a girl who, you know, is part of the norm. She went to
school, got a job, busted her ass, she got married, had a family and you know, pretty
much her day to day, someone that, you know, is like we are, or is like our parents,
our mothers were, someone that we wouldn’t mind our seven year old nieces or
daughters watching and emulating, you know, sort of speaks, someone who has her
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clothes on, you know, someone who, you know, kind of embodies this black woman
that we were trying to become, like this you know, the shift were trying to make.

Danielle: Thinking about it and what everybody is saying, I think I would like to
create a character that looks very young, someone between maybe 24 and 29, female,
that has kids before marriage maybe and then she builds her career after having
children. The show could show her trying to find love while having kids because
that’s really more realistic. I mean clearly in South Florida, but across the board as
young black females are having children younger, we--on these shows, they focus on
the ones that have no kids or starting a family or that are what we deem the socially
appropriate age to have children. What about the ones that are, you know, 20, 25 with
a 6 year old and why can't she go back and start her career? We can talk about the
struggle like that…
This is not to claim that the participants who pieced together the attributes of
existing black female characters are not interested in portrayals they deem realistic.
Instead, they see realism or a reality they desire in the characteristics they selected. All of
the participants expressed their interest in black female characters they feel reflect the
lives of black women in the real world and reflect their own personal reality. In Ien Ang’s
study, Watching Dallas, she reveals the relationship between realism and the audience by
analyzing 45 letters from Dallas viewers to examine some of the structures of television
viewing and the genre of melodrama. For Ang, “the structure of feeling” comes to the
forefront as the most important of those structures because the “realism” that the Dallas
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audience feels takes place on an emotional level as opposed to a cognitive one. She
concludes that this specific structure of feeling is fundamental to the melodramatic
imagination and is therefore paramount to one’s enjoyment of Dallas. She writes,
The pleasure of Dallas consists in the recognition of ideas that fit in with the
viewers’ imaginative world. They can ‘lose’ themselves in Dallas because the
program symbolizes a structure of feeling, which connects up with one of the
ways in which they encounter life… Only through the imagination, which is
always subjective, is the ‘objective reality’ assimilated: a life without imagination
does not exist (p.83).
Though not every show the participants discussed is considered a melodrama comparable
to Dallas, the recognition of points of realism and identification on an emotional level is
experienced by the participants for all of the shows they mentioned. The discussions the
participants have with one another about these characters revolve around how the
characters remind them of themselves or those they know. They recognize that they
discuss these representations of black women on television as if they are real people.
Amber: Well, with me and Danielle, we talk about Being Mary Jane…
Danielle: Right.
Amber: …and how it kind of mirrors her life. [Laughter]

Natalie: I guess you take an interest to the show you come invested in the show so
it's almost like real life to you. It's like talking about one of your friends or what
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was going on about their life and seeing as though my life is a little boring these
days, that’s like the highlight. So it's like either with my mom or with my
boyfriend, and we just get so excited about what happened or if we get really,
really get disappointed at how it ended, we'll discuss that.
Even though all of the shows discussed are not melodramas, Ang suggests that
there is no unambiguous definition of what ‘realism’ contains. In arguing that Dallas is a
text of ‘emotional realism,’ which falls within the ‘structure of feeling,’ and how the
show is situated on an emotional level, she supports that the “reality” of a show is based
in the imagination. The black female audience has situated these shows and their black
female characters on an emotional level that they identify with both as members of the
‘interpretative community’ of black women in society and also as individuals. The
emotional engagement and negotiation the black female audience is partaking in with
representations is reflective of the ‘interpersonal themes’ Andrea L. Press (1991) found to
be dominant in the way middle class white women deal with representations of women
on television and their acknowledgement of both fantastical situations and ‘realistic’
characters. Press’ study brought together prime-time television and 40 working- and
middle-class female respondents, both young and old, for the purpose of determining
whether television texts reinforce traditional female roles or raise consciousness of a new
feminine identity. From her analysis, middle-class women often brought up ‘interpersonal
themes,’ which she describes as,
Subjects that serve to highlight women’s positions as women within relationships,
the family, and/or the working world. Women sometimes use their discussions to
clarify or air the problematic interrelationship of these spheres in their lives. […] I
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speak of middle-class women as invoking gender-specific themes, or themes
involving their gender roles in family, interpersonal relationships, and at work in
their discussions of television (p. 67).
At a time when black audiences were engaging with representations solely in a
positional manner, as exemplified by Jhally and Lewis (1992), members of the middle-
class white female audience expressed negotiating with representations of white women
in both a positional and personal manner. Press described how middle class women
admired the strength of Lucy from I Love Lucy:
Alisa: I was always aware that she was very, very, she was the dominant force in
the family. I was looking forward to seeing her show (p. 76).

Terry: She stimulated a kind of gaiety, a kind of freeness, like you could be really
crazy, even though society was teaching you some ways you had to be, even my
own mother taught me… Well, Lucy was outrageous and she made you think you
could do anything, you could act crazy, And she, I mean, she had to act crazy
‘cause society didn’t let her do things through normal channels. Her husband
wouldn’t let her, but she found a way (p.76).
This is the same gaiety and silliness Small Group 2 appreciated about Rainbow “Bo”
Johnson on Blackish.
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Ursula: [I like] Rainbow in Blackish because I feel like her character is a lot more
fun and light. And she's still a professional, but she's able to be a fun loving wife
and just light. And they balance the roles more in that show.
Lilly: I’d have to agree. I love—I do like Blackish. I am almost obsessed with
Tracee Ellis Ross. I think it's her hair and she's goofy… And she's my favorite
character because she's just herself and she doesn’t really care but she's
professional and, I don't know, I can relate to her because I can be very goofy
sometimes but…
Marie: I think what it is is she knows how to turn it off and on. She can be fun and
playful but then she knows when it's time to get business done. And I think I like
the way she switches roles.
Overall, it is the strength that the black female audience sees in current black female
characters that the participants are celebrating and have drawn from their negotiations
with the representations presented to them. These representations of strength, power, and
success are being presented to everyone who watches these shows. Press also details the
personal and individualized identifications her participants made with female characters
on the show Dynasty, which are comparable to those made by my participants. In an
episode of the show where characters Blake and Krystle both receive photos showing the
other in compromising positions with members of the opposite sex, Blake immediately
confronts Krystle, while Krystle never reveals that she has the same information on him.
Rachael: Krystle doesn’t really give him any… I mean, with those pictures. Why
didn’t she tell him that she had gotten similar pictures? But no, she had to wait. I
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would have yelled at him so many times! She’s just—I don’t like her at all. She’s
a wimp! (p. 68)
Rachael goes on to denigrate Blake and Krystle for their lack of open communication
leading her to admit that she sees the important function of communication in her own
marriage and that her husband would never discuss some issues if he was left to his own
devices. Her critique of Krystle is based on her own beliefs about her own role with
regards to communication within her own marriage just as Lilly’s critique of Olivia Pope
stemmed from her own position as a wife and her feelings towards adultery. The black
female audience is now engaged in negotiations with representations that mirrors the
engagement of middle-class white women in the 1990s likely because they now have
enough black female leads with dynamic, layered roles to conduct these kinds of
negotiations. Presented with Olivia, Cookie, Annalise, Mary Jane, Rainbow and more,
black women are able to push past binary analyses towards more in-depth engagement
with representations of themselves. They are able to not only negotiate as black women,
but also as individuals with unique identifications to characters they are watching.
Black women have always negotiated with media differently than other
audiences. Both Bobo and David Morley (1980) remind us that subjects have histories
that come into play at the moment of a textual encounter. It is never a matter of one text,
one subject, and one interpretation, but of multiple texts, multiple subject histories, and
multiple interpretations that influence the way a specific audience constructs meaning
from a specific text (Morley, 1980; Bobo, 1995). For the black female audience during
the 1950s and 1960s, it meant constructing meanings from the actresses themselves often
along a dichotomy and under the auspice of the monolith titled “black women.” During
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the 1970s and 1980s, the black female audience made dichotomous analyses as a
monolith as well as recognized some aspect of themselves as individuals with regards to
having similar positionality as some of the characters during The Cosby Show era. We
have now arrived at negotiations with representations both as members of the monolithic
group “black women” and also as individuals who contemplate and discuss
representations as layered constructs containing attributes they like, dislike, and identify
with personally.
It must be noted that the scholars mentioned lacked models themselves for
thinking about audiences as involved in active processes of negotiation and therefore
might not have recognized signs of these processes at work even if they did encounter
them with these earlier generations of black audience members. As a consequence of this,
I can only draw from their focuses and conclusions and cannot firmly state that there was
a complete absence of negotiation. Gledhill’s model suggests that audiences always
negotiate with representations, but they do so on different terms, which depend upon their
own person context (i.e., histories, interpretations, available representations, etc.).
However, the interview analysis and previous audience research does point to an
increasingly nuanced negotiation that black female audience members are engaging in
because of the presence of a greater number of black female lead characters who are
multi-layered.
Impact on Real Life
Television is a predominantly domestic medium and is watched primarily in the
privacy of our own homes (Press, 1991). Though there are arguments on both sides as to
the weight given to the private realm versus the public realm in terms of their salience for
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women’s roles in society, there is no denying American society’s almost universal
possession and viewing of television sets (Press 1991, Bellah et al., 1985). This
possession and viewership points to the possibility that what television portrays impacts
heavily not only on our views of the world, but also on our views of ourselves (Gerbner,
1972). The other dominant theme to emerge from the small group interviews was the
impact of stereotypes, both positive and negative, on the real world lives of the black
female audience. As I analyzed the participants’ discussions about positive stereotypes,
such as the strong black woman, and negative stereotypes, such as the Jezebel and the
Mammy, what was uncovered was a dismissal of any kind impact positive stereotypes
could have made on their lives, but an abhorrence and detailing of the consequences of
negative stereotypes have had on their lives in a very interesting way.
Television allows us to bridge the gap between the public and our personal private
realms in order to maintain a feeling of connection with the social world regardless of
whether this connection is emotive rather than substantive (Press, 1991; Gitlin, 1983).
None of us are able to stand outside of the media’s circle of influence unless we are able
to avoid all forms of media images, but that does not mean that we cannot think we can.
Though participants know that what they are watching is fictional, they articulated that
these images could affect them in real life because they believe that these images affect
the people they encounter in the real world. However, they do not think that all images
have the same impact on society. They give less weight to impact of positive
stereotypical images of black women than negative stereotypical ones. Also, black female
audience members deem themselves personally unaffected by both positive and negative
stereotypes of black women on television. Their responses supported Third-Person
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Effect—the hypothesis that a person exposed to persuasive communication in media sees
it as having a greater effect on other than on themselves—because they believe that
negative stereotypes affect how others view them in the real world and those mediated
perceptions are what impacts their lives (Davidson, 1983).
In the following excerpt from the interview with Small Group 2, the women
discuss the impact, if any, that the absence or presence of strong black female characters
had on them personally:
Me: [Do] you think that the absence… So when we talked about earlier, the
differences between the 1990s and 2000s and now, and you were saying, “oh, I
think there was an absence of the amount of strong women we see now.” Do you
think that that absence had any impact on you?
Marie I didn’t notice.
Lilly: …I don't base my life off of TV and what TV says. [I] gather[ed] certain
things from television… But I had my own goals. I was self-driven. I was still
going to go to school whether or not--you know what I'm saying? So, I don't
know. No, I don't think so.
This sentiment is echoed by most of the participants across groups. They noted the
presence of strong women in their lives—mothers, aunts, grandmothers, etc.—who were
living examples of strong black women and said that the presence or absence of strong
black female characters had no impact. However, as previously noted, the participants
laud and embrace the presence of strong black female images on the current television
landscape. They see them as important and reflective of the power they see within
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themselves as women and professionals. Small Group 2 participants said this earlier in
their interview:
Me: What are your thoughts in general about some of these women that you
mentioned, these characters, not the actual actresses but the characters
themselves?
Marie: Very strong. They're strong-minded, they're go-getters, they're not sitting
at home, content, waiting for somebody else to--they're very--oh, what is the
word?
Ursula: Strong.
Marie: Headstrong like their focused.
Lilly: I like--and I'm just going to say How To Get Away With Murder, Annalise
Keating, never know what to expect of her. It's always a surprise. I do like the fact
that she's very strong-minded and strong-willed.
Carrie from Small Group 3 voiced how she likes Olivia Pope’s strength and upon seeing
a couple of episodes of the show thought, “finally a black woman is in a strong role.”
Seeing strong and/or powerful black women on television means something to these
women, but they claim that the absence of such representations did not impact their lives
growing up. They show pride in the existence of these representations today and they are
able to reflect on the absence of such strong characters in previous years and decades.
Despite a lack of recognition of impact, these representations do affect these women on
some level.
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When the participants were asked if the existence or absence of stereotypical
black female characters impacted them in any way, the overwhelming response was that
they had not. However, they said that they impacted others’ view of them, which in turn
affected their behavior and view of themselves.
Marie: … I think it's impacted me so that when I go in public, I watch—I watch
my behavior because I feel like sometimes people have what they think I'm
supposed to do. And I try not to do it. If somebody cuts me off, I try--I think
[hand motions] like I think, up here at this Publix [supermarket], this is not black
neighborhood, and I think I purposely try to show everybody, “everybody is not
like [what’s] on TV.’ Everybody is not [inaudible] everybody is not tearing each
other down. I feel--when I watch the news sometimes, I'm just like, "Where [did]
you find her?
[Laughter]
Marie’s statement reveals the presence of W. E. B. DuBois’ (1903) ‘double
consciousness.’ She and many of the other participants are thinking about what others see
when they look at them. Marie does not want to buttress the stereotypes that audiences of
other races have seen in scripted and unscripted shows or on the news. DuBois writes
about the “peculiar sensation” of ‘double consciousness’ because one is always looking at
one’s self through the eyes of another. “One ever feels his twoness—an American, a
Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one
dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder,” (p. 2). These
women feel impacted by negative stereotypes of black women on television because of
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their impact on others in American society, not on themselves. I probed a bit further with
Small Group 2 on the subject to see what else they would reveal.
Me: Do you feel like… so you're saying you have it in the back of your head that
there is a certain way that people look at black women but you don't have that in
your head when you're going out?
Ursula: You don't want to be portrayed as the angry black woman. But, like you
have that in your head.
Marie: I want to change what people think about black woman.
Lilly: People are going to think regardless. You can--that's just…
Ursula: Yeah. But it is because maybe that's what they see a lot of.
Lilly: Well, that's--because that's the stereotype.
Ursula: I was thinking maybe it's impacted me by just being aware that this is
what--all of these reality shows, I don't even watch a lot of them anymore but
that's what people are seeing. So when someone interacts with me who maybe is
Black or isn't Black, that might be what they're expecting of me. And then when
they find out I'm educated, that I look like a weird person with all my crap on,
crystals and stuff sometimes, they're like, "wait, what?" Because they're expecting
[that]. So it's made me more aware that people might look at me different because
it's like, "why aren't you cursing me out? Why aren't you doing this because isn't
that what you—like that's what I see on TV so that's what you should do." I mean,
those are obviously close-minded people…
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Ursula’s statement reveals her own double consciousness within the black
community. She sees these images as impactful on some of the black community, but not
on herself specifically. All of the participants believed that they stood outside of the
radius of impact all the while noting the importance of positive images, the affects of
‘double consciousness,’ and the existence of those who fit the negative stereotypes and
further solidify such images (e.g., “I feel--when I watch the news sometimes, I'm just
like, "Where [did] you find her?"). The black female audience exists in a cycle of ‘double
consciousness’ and Evelyn Brooks Higgenbotham’s (1993) ‘politics of respectability.’
The term ‘politics of respectability’ was first articulated by Higginbotham, but in concept
can be traced back to writers like DuBois and Booker T. Washington. The ‘politics of
respectability,’ also known as ‘respectability politics,’ are the attempts of marginalized
groups to police themselves and their members in an attempt to show mainstream society
that their social values, education and way of dressing are compatible with the
mainstream. “…The women of the black Baptist church adhered to a politics of
respectability that equated public behavior with individual self-respect and the
advancement of African Americans as a group,” Higgenbotham writes (p. 14). That is
exactly what Maria, and other participants in other groups are pointing toward with their
belief that a certain level of respectability on their part can garner the respect of those in
the mainstream and can provide an alternative for the narrative of black women that they
already have in their minds. Charlotte from Small Group 3 provides another example:
Charlotte: Right, because, you know, the TV is a projection of an image to the
nation. That's what it is. And so people who have never met black people, learn
what they think black people are on the television, so when they interact in real
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life with you, then they treat you or their expectation is what they've seen on TV.
And you know, for me personally, I have always broken whatever expectation
people had of me, you know. I've worked in white schools now for a long [time]
and I've gone on, and on, and on, and people greet me. But, I want to say this has
nothing to do with blackness, this has to do with Jesus Christ in your heart, in my
heart, you know, that what comes out--we're like what? And now, the new thing
for me as I come with my kids wherever we're going the people always
compliment me on the--on the kids and their behavior when we're at the store, but
now I had a little one. So, I can almost see it turning in some people's brains, "Oh,
she must have how many baby daddies," you know, because I have the two big
ones and one little one. So, I find myself saying, "they have the same dad." You
know? But I--you kind of want to make that expectation, how do you know what
people are like unless you talk with them and interact? The television.
Overall, participants believe that the presence and effect of negative stereotypes
affect their behavior because of their perceived reception by others. Some cited
experiences of being told they were not like “the other black people,” due the way that
they behaved. Regarding the strong black female stereotype, which is most often
categorized as a positive characterization, they said it did not affect them though it most
certainly brings happiness and/or pride for many currently. However, as Jhally and Lewis
(1992) wrote, “television provides us with pictures of the world, of our world, and the
knowledge that most of these pictures are fictional does not immunize us from believing
in them,” and this holds true for the black female audience (p.17). A lack of recognition
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of the importance and impact of black female stereotypes in their lives does not mean that
they were not important and impactful.
Black Female Executives and Their Negotiations as Audience Members
Individuality: Black Female Executives
Unlike the black female audience members, the executives did not express any
attachment to any of the actresses they mentioned and focused solely on the characters
they play. However, similarly to the audience members, the coding of their responses
revealed that many of these women had different traits within characters that they found
uplifting, engaging, upsetting, and more. Olivia Pope, Cookie Lyon, and Mary Jane Paul
garnered the most attention from the executives. Just like the black female audience, the
majority of the women found these characters to be “powerful” and “successful” in
regards to their professional lives as well as their lives outside of romance. When asked
about the differences they perceive between black female characters in the 1990s and
early 2000s and the black female characters of the 2010s, the traits of strength, power,
and success were at the forefront. Dara, Carla and Anabelle’s responses are examples:
Dara: Obviously prior to this 2000 I can't speak because I was a baby. [Laughter] No.
The pro is that we are portrayed as more successful as go-getters and less about
being the nurturer. […] I do think that there has been empowerment in who we are as
women. But, I also think that we’ve done ourselves a disservice with fighting with
each other. Showing behind the veil a little bit more of what we could be. I think
there’s been strives and I think there’s been some setbacks.

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Carla: Well, obviously I think we see now these women now as lead characters,
embracing their power, which is something I don't know that we had necessarily
earlier on but--so yeah, I do think that they're different now and you know, it's
exciting. You're wondering, what's the evolution of that going to be, you know?

Anabelle: … we're not like background players anymore. We have real characters,
real arcs, real…beautiful. Beautiful and powerful and not in the sassy black woman
way and that exists, but beautiful, intelligent and powerful as opposed to sassy.
The executives, for the most part, saw more recent and current characters as having more
lead roles and as beautiful, intelligent and powerful.
The individualized negotiations for the executives were not heavily focused on
the romantic lives of the characters as they were with the audience participants, but were
instead more concentrated on the conformation and rejection of black norms. For
example, Dara’s statement touches upon “showing behind the veil,” a little too much for
her comfort when it comes to black female representation. Her opinion not only touches
upon the subject of ‘politics of respectability’ within her own personal negotiation, but
also the kind of balance that these executives are striving for in their negotiations within
the industry and with influencing the text when working with creators and writers. They
describe negotiations with black female representations that have ties to past stereotypes,
while also expanding to include vulnerability, strength, power, beauty, and sometimes
just not being nice. The executives differ in their views on whether or not the presence of
traits that stem from negative stereotypes alongside the traits that transcend them—Olivia
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Pope being the mistress of the President as well as a powerful and influential lawyer—are
a step forward or simply more of the same.
Three of the executives specifically commented on these characters not having to
be nurturers and Mammys and their rejection of black norms that have been placed on
black female representations of the past.
Evelyn: Yes, I mean there was so much I think that even when I was younger
when I saw a black woman on television she was always going to be full figured
and motherly, matronly... So yes, they’re definitely has been [evolution]. [Now]
you have someone, you know, like the woman [Michonne] on The Walking Dead,
right? I mean you have--so I definitely feel that it has evolved and it is no longer
just a matronly overweight woman, black woman.
The rejection of the Mammy stereotype and the addition of education, power, and, for
many, sexual freedom are seen as strides forward by these executives. Gwen, on the other
hand, negotiated with Olivia, Cookie, and Mary Jane differently and believes that the
maintenance of any aspects of stereotypes negates the entire point of their existence.
Gwen: The black female character: we can be educated and we can be in powerful
positions but when we devolve into just being a hoe it negates all of that. It turns
it into something that they thought we were anyway. Expedient, convenient…
Gwen interprets what some of the other executives view as sexual freedom for black
female characters as a continued connection to the Jezebel stereotype. Her statement also
deals with the ‘politics of representation’ more directly. For Gwen, those outside of the
black community believe that black women are sexually promiscuous and these images
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only reinforce those beliefs. This specific character “flaw” in addition to not being
perceived as “likeable” characters makes them irredeemable to her. For other executives,
however, it is those flaws that they enjoy negotiating with as viewers.
Black female characters as anti-heroes flies in the face of the Mammy stereotype
and takes them outside of the boxes they are usually housed within. Farah’s statement
embodies this sentiment:
I think characters today because their creators are willing to go there, are more
flawed than they were in the past. There's been a pressure that people of color feel
when you get that one shot right to get a show on the air that your characters have
to be perfect or good. You don’t want people to not like them or say anything bad
if they have to represent. There's a pressure to represent that I think black women
feel. There's a lot of boxes around. They can't be too mean. They can't be too
masculine and they can't be too that and when you carve that out, there's very
little room left for them to be flawed. I think what you see with the Mary Jane or
what you see with Shonda’s character or what you see with Tracee [Ellis Ross] on
[Blackish] is that they're shitty sometimes. Sometimes they make really bad
decisions and they do things that people would question. And that doesn’t mean
they can't be empathetic. I think in the past people really didn’t go there. Like,
when you think about any of them in the past, there wasn’t a third like a third leg
to the stool… I think you’ve seen a progression of women who are African-
American who can be flawed and still be leading women and empathetic and
people you root for instead of just being perfect China dolls. Does that make
sense?
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For the majority of the executives, their negotiations stem from their desire for robust
black female characters, which they also negotiate for in their job roles. Depending on
their own identity, they may or may not identify with some of the character traits of the
black female representations, but they are able to engage with them, appreciate them, and
critique them just like the black female audience does. Their insight into other
components of negotiation seems to draw their focus to other aspects of representations—
conformation to, or rejection of, black norms—but overall, both the executives and black
female audience members are pleased to see portrayals of black women on television
who are strong, powerful, and successful.
Impact on Real Life: Black Female Executives
The executives’ responses coincided with the audience participants when asked
about their perceived impact of strong and/or positive portrayals of black female
characters and the impact of negative and/or stereotypical portrayals on themselves. For
some, strong and/or positive portrayals were believed to have no effect on them due to
upbringings with strong black women or little to no validation seeking from television.
They said they did not need the depictions of strong black women because they either had
strong women in their lives or never based their own feelings of self on character roles.
However, the executives believed that the lack of portrayal, whether positive or negative,
could affect others.
Me: …has the existence or absence of stereotypical black female characters on
television impacted you? For example the Jezebel or the angry black woman?
Brooke: Impacted me? I don’t like to see it, but I don’t think it’s impacted me.
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Me: Do you think it impacts other people?
Brooke: Absolutely.
Me: In what ways do you think it impacted?
Brooke: I think they really believe in it. It’s that simple and all black woman are
sluts, all black woman are angry and it allows them to leave it on that surface or
level instead of going deeper. And whereas white people are allowed to have
shades for days, you know?
Carla expressed the impact the presence of strong black female characters on television
can have on viewers and the connection between seeing oneself in media and the
validation it can provide.
Carla: Well, I mean obviously the existence, you know, thrills me because I have
children… So, having these, you know, these black female characters, it just
constantly sort of validates them, like, “yeah, okay, I exist in the world…as a
normal part of the world.” […] There are lots of ethnic groups that feel very
underrepresented on TV and there's nothing worse than not seeing yourself
reflected; there's nothing worse than believing that someone doesn’t even think
you’re important, you know? And certainly, you know-- I think when a black
female is on television, I think there's no one, often times, more disrespected than
black women. Just in the world, you know, in terms of just how people think of
black women in any kind of way.
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The executives described how they are not impacted by representations of black women
just as the black female audience members did supporting the Third Party Effect
hypothesis. Representations of black women affect their children and the psyches of
others, but in their opinion have not affected them.
Dara voices the general frustration of all of the executives in regards to the
continued existence of negative stereotypical black female characters. They find them
frustrating and angering. Negative stereotypical characters do not reflect them and
influence how others see black women. These are the same emotions the black female
audience members expressed. Their stances on different sides of the screen at times did
not affect the impact of negative images and the ‘double consciousness’ they feel.
Me: On the flipside, how is the existence or absence of stereotypical black female
characters on television impact you for example the Jezebel or the Angry Black
Woman?
Dara: That frustrates me and that frustrates me because it doesn’t show the
complexity of exactly the reason why I gave you the answer I just gave you. It’s
more complex than that and we don’t get the ability to be complex in that way.
We can only tell a story about us if we fall into a specific stereotype. I watch
certain shows again Girls or Transparent and I say why can’t we tell their stories
like that because if there’re several complexity stories but people don’t want to
embrace that about us. They want to put us in the box. Either we have to be the
angry black person or we have to be the Jezebel or we have to be the strong
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motherly type. Those are the only stories that we can tell about black women now
that makes me mad because we’re more than that.
These black female executives are negotiating for more complex portrayals of black
women not only because they dislike negative stereotypical representations, but also
because black women are just as complex as any of the white men and white women
portrayed on screen. Complexity, to these executives, means that characters will be good
at times and bad at others; it means that they will be reflections of humanity and its many
aspects and flaws.
Within some of the executives’ answers, the same nostalgia that appeared in some
of the black female audience members also arose. Some black female characters provided
examples of what could be achieved or someone to admire for these women.
Brooke: …I mean Claire Huxtable was always a rock star so I guess if anyone
that she would be the one that--though at a time I was, wasn’t young, but I was
younger so I don’t know if I identified, but I would’ve--I admired. Today, if it
were on then I would be like, “oh yeah sure” but I wasn’t--I mean that was 10 to
15 years ago so I don’t think I thought myself as a mother of five. [Laughter]. But
she is probably the most, single most, admirable, well-rounded, I mean, yeah I
mean almost perfect.
However, there are also statements reflective of the research done by Jhally and Lewis
(1992): perfection can be negatively impactful as well.
Farrah: It [The Cosby Show] was something, but it was also super sanitized. It was
like all your white friends were like, “well, racism is over because, right? Because
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of the Cosby’s, right?” And, you’re like, “that’s not really real.” It was something
that was aspirational, but it kind of left this notion of perfection and, “everything
is okay,” that was super false that I think is why you see some of our generation
creating stories that are messier, right? To be like, “it’s okay to be messy. It’s
okay if your family has fights,” and not everything is lovey-dovey because that
[show] in its own way reflected back in a way that was not validating if that
makes sense. It’s validating in aspirational way, but it also is kind of like, “what if
your shit is not perfect? What are you going to do then?”
These black female executives do not desire perfection, but authentic reflections of Black
American women. The executives look for good stories that reflect real life or real
emotions because that is what they themselves appreciate and want to see as viewers as
well as buyers/executives. The black female audience members want the same, but solely
as audience members without a complete understanding of the negotiations that take
place within industry and within text. The positions of all of these black women do have
an effect on what they deem most important in regards to representations of black female
characters, but they also have views and beliefs in common reflecting their membership
in the same ‘interpretive community.’
Conclusion
The themes of Individuality and Impact on Real Life uncovered three major
findings: the current state of negotiation for the black female audience, how black women
acknowledge the influences of their televised representations and the variations in
negotiation between black female executives and the black female audience across both
themes. Though I anticipated differences across age groups, I did not observe any
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noticeable contrasts. There were more apparent differences between the older groups, but
I believe that is due to one group being comprised of members of an Evangelical
Christian church and not due to their age. This study also revealed that an increase in the
amount of black female leads with multidimensional character roles has enabled black
women to engage with and negotiate with representations in a way that white, middle-
class women have been for at least over a decade. When presented with both more and
dynamic images, black women as cultural consumers are better able to negotiate with
these images and express those negotiations as both members of a monolithic group and
individual persons. The increase of black female leads and the depth of their characters
are due to the negotiations made by black female executives, black female creatives from
an array of spaces (i.e., broadcast, cable, steaming, etc.), and others who view the
presence of such images as important and who took advantage of disruptions to the
television ecology as detailed in previous chapters.
The participants contemplated and expressed a desire for more realistic images
and liked the existence of strong black female lead characters, but paradoxically were
unable to acknowledge the potential benefits of positive images of black women to them
in society-at-large while recognizing that these images do affect society. They gave more
power to images of negative stereotypes as they expressed the presence of ‘double
consciousness’ and wrestled with the ‘politics of respectability.’ This is not necessarily
incorrect of them to do, but reflects a lack of confidence in positive or even more
balanced images of black women. For the black female audience, television is currently a
source of some strong, black female images and, at the same time, unable to eradicate the
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effects of decades of negative stereotypical images that colored black women the broad
brush strokes of “Mammy,” “Jezebel,” and the “Angry Black Woman.”
Black female executives expressed similar negotiations as the black female
audience members in terms of their appreciation of strong black female characters, but
they did not focus as much on the characters’ romantic lives. The executives also
reflected the same belief in Third Party Effects as the audience members deeming
themselves unaffected by negative stereotypical portrayals of black women as well as
portrayals of strong black women. While the black female audiences detailed how
negative stereotypical portrayals affect how they are perceived in the real world by
others, the black female executives detailed how these images negatively impact the
black people who see them and the importance of seeing images of one’s self that are
realistic. This in turn motivates their negotiations within industry and how they negotiate
with those creating texts. All of these women are a part of the same ‘interpretive
community’ and have similar outlooks and concerns, but their differing frames of
reference also make certain issues of representation more poignant to them than others.

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CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION

Every couple of years, there are news and blog articles lauding the existence of a
handful of black television executives, showrunners, directors and writers. However,
even as the number of black people, and more specifically black women, in television
rises, it is a reminder of how few there are overall. Since media markets are the direct
product of ‘raced’ processes, network television continues to be defined by a highly
exclusive industry in which white decision makers typically reproduce themselves by
hiring other white people who share their tastes, experiences, and frames of reference
(Hunt, 2005). Fortunately, some of those within and outside of the television industry
have recognized the lack of diversity and are making it a part of the conversation through
research and presentations, conducting diversity initiative programs, and making changes
in hiring practices and programming. In 2016, the United States got its first African
American television network president, Channing Dungey, and its first African American
president of a major television studio, Pearlena Igbokwe. The industry is not in the same
position that it was in 2005, but it is nowhere near reflecting the demographics of the
country neither in front of nor behind the screen.
Recent and emerging technological, societal, and economic disruptions such as
streaming services (e.g., Netflix and Amazon Video launching original programming in
2013), a spotlighting of the racial issues within the country (e.g., the killing of Trayvon
Martin in 2012), and the continuing growth of black buying power (i.e., Black American
buying power has grown from $320 billion in 1990 to an estimated $1.2 in 2015) have
affected the television ecology and created space for, and in some cases a call for, more
136
stories on screen. A disruption is something that expels the status quo and a technological
disruption more specifically, as defined Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma,
has the tendency to upend established products completely or to destabilize a previously
held market-share. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship
between disruptions to the television ecology and the negotiations allowed by them that
black women—both audience members and television executives—engage in when
dealing with representations of black women on television in order to not only reinforce
the need for investment in television as a site for struggles over representation, but also
argue for the capacity of representations to empower the marginalized due to their own
readings of the text.
Christine Gledhill’s framework of negotiation was used as the starting point for
examining this relationship as it best encapsulates the on-going process of give-and-take
that arises from a grappling between competing frames of reference, motivation, and
knowledge within the media space. Centering her focus solely on women, Julia D’Acci
engaged with this same framework to chronicle the process of the competing frames that
are involved within a negotiation, which take place within the components of
negotiation—institutional, textual, or reception—and the actors involved in the making of
Cagney & Lacey. This project utilizes this same framework to interrogate how
disruptions to the television ecology resulted in opportunities for black women to be
more visible (i.e., leading roles), and more diversified, roles on television.
In order to examine the relationship between these disruptions and the
negotiations enabled by them, multiple methods were necessary. Historical analysis was
utilized to explore the chronicled evolution of the television ecology and the multiplicity
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of forces—technological, economic, societal—driving changes within it. Two time
periods of television (1990 to 1995 and 2010 to 2015) where anti-Black violence became
more salient in American popular culture were juxtaposed to illustrate the influence of
societal, economic, and technological factors on television ecology. Small group
interviews of audience members and one-on-one interviews of television executives were
also executed. The members of the small group interviews were comprised of black
women in South Florida who knew one another through school, work or church. They
were also selected due to their distance from Los Angeles and any ties to television
industry. The women were asked a series of questions which included the television
shows they watched, the black female characters they liked, disliked, and identified with,
and other questions exploring their knowledge of the television industry and those who
work within it.
This method was chosen for the black female audience members because it
allowed for the selection of groups of people who would be comfortable discussing
television with one another allowing for conversation to flow freely and naturally.
Additionally, there is scholarship supporting the importance of peer groups in discussions
about television. Usually, these peers will have already viewed and discussed the
programs in question adding to comfort and established discussion. Finally, this method
usually makes it possible to base the interview in a domestic setting adding even more to
the comfort level of the participants. Although I acknowledge and agree with Jacqueline
Bobo’s (1995) concept of an ‘interpretative community,’ which she developed from the
work of Stanley Fish (1980) and Janice Radway (1984a; 1984b), she applies the concept
to focus groups centered on black women’s receptions of selected films and the medium
138
of television, in my opinion, calls for a slightly different interview method, which small
group interviews provide.
The participants of the one-on-one interviews were composed of black female
television executives at broadcast, cable, and streaming networks as well as agencies and
production companies. They were selected due to their positions and knowledge of the
television industry in as well as being a part of the black female television audience. They
were asked a series of questions that probed their insight into the process of getting a
television show on air, the black female characters they liked, disliked, and identified
with, the impact of disruptors to the televisions ecology, and their own perceived roles as
influencers on television. Despite the method’s time-consuming nature, the one-on-one
interview was selected because it facilitates the collection of large amounts of in-depth
data and has a flexible structure, which also aids in the collection of data. It is a key
qualitative method for gathering insight into people’s perceptions and experiences of a
specific phenomenon. A standardized interview type alongside the creation, and use, of
an interview guide allowed not only for structured and explicit questions, but also
provided the flexibility for the exploration of a number of different issues around
particular subjects that I believed could be interrogated by the participants. Even though
these were one-on-one interviews as opposed to group interviews, the expectation was
that the ‘interpretative community’ of which both the participants and I belong would
help to quickly build a similar rapport and a level of trust between the participants and
myself that existed within the small groups. An interpretative analysis of all of the small
group and one-on-one interview data was then conducted to examine the differences and
similarities in negotiation between these groups, and the evolution of their negotiation
139
strategies.
Listed Research Questions
1A: How have disruptions to the television ecology resulted in opportunities for Black
American women to negotiate to make black women more visible (i.e., leading roles) on
television?
1B: How and why do these disruptions take place?
2A: How do black female audience members currently negotiate with the representations
of black female leads on television?
2B: What ability do black female audience members believe they have to communicate
with content creators and producers?
3A: How have black women, both in the audience and in the television industry, taken
advantage of these disruptions (i.e., utilized negotiation) in order to not only increase, but
also diversify, the roles for black women on television?
3B: What is the goal of the increased diversity of roles for black women (e.g., is it to
produce a broad range of representations or to have the representations better conform to
the realities of black female audience members)?
3C: Are there other ways, or possibly better ways, to achieve this goal?
3D: How do the black women who have taken advantage of these disruptions intend to
ensure that their changes remain?

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Chapter Summations and Interpretation of Findings
The chapters of this dissertation are meant to first set the foundation for disruption—
its appearance and its affect on television—and then delve into the negotiations enabled
by these disruptions with which black female audience members and black female
executives engage. In Chapter Two, two periods of technological, economic, and societal
disruption are juxtaposed, one past and the other more present, in order to not only
interrogate the past, but to also highlight the uniqueness of this present critical case of
disruption and the negotiations taking place. The critical cases selected are 1990 to1995
and 2010 to 2015. In similar form to how John Fiske (1996) draws connections between
television character Murphy Brown, the Presidential election of Bill Clinton, and the
beating of Rodney King, I attempt to establish connections between particular moments
of disruptions—technological, economic, societal—and their affect on television and the
negotiation of representation.
The Internet, its platforms, and the technologies that allow it to be accessed in an
array of ways have disrupted the television ecology in a manner that the advent of cable
never did. They have changed not only when and how television is watched, but also
redefined what is considered television. Now, a half-hour streaming show on an Internet
platform, that had its entire season available at one time, can be a contender for a Golden
Globe or an Emmy. Furthermore, and possibly most importantly, the Internet and its
platforms have exacerbated the fragmentation of the audience shaking the economic and
creative foundations of the television ecology. In regards to societal disruption, there
have been both recorded and unrecorded killings of black men that went viral with the
use of the social media beginning with the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and the
141
subsequent hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which have come to the forefront of the national
conversation. This racial has violence resonated within the media landscape, much like it
did in the early 1990s and show such as Being Mary Jane, Law and Order: SVU, and
Blackish had episodes touching on the issue and its impact on society.
Economic change as a disruptor to the television ecology, and more specifically
increases in black buying power as an economic disruptor to the television ecology, are
not agreed upon. Amanda Lotz (2010) identifies the most recent recession as merely the
catalyst for seemingly inevitable changes to the television ecology caused by a revision in
the valuation of television advertising and uncertainty about future patterns of media use
by television viewers. In addition, though there has been an increase in black buying
power, there has not been a distinct targeting by advertisers, who were not already
targeting communities of color, to tap into their disposable income. In both critical cases,
the black audience, which is spends the most time watching television of any race, is
utilized as the building block to developing and/or strengthening a network’s revenue
stream as described by Kristal Brent Zook (1999). Societal and economic disruptors from
both eras did not affect the television ecology, as far as scripted television, to the degree
that the Internet and its platforms have caused disruption. They have resulted in shows
addressing issues of race in society and Black Americans have been strategically targeted
at times for the purpose of building or reviving a network, but neither have been
sustained and deeply impactful disruptors.
The historical analysis revealed the unique disruptive impact of the Internet and its
platforms on the television ecology. Though race coming to the forefront of the national
conversation is occasionally disruptive, and the economic buying power of Black
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Americans has the potential to be a disruptive force, the Internet and its platforms are the
greatest disruption to the television ecology at this time in television history. In this
project, the framework for understanding the media is negotiation, which includes its
components and some of the black women that operate within those components. The
Internet and its platforms being the major disruptive force to the current television
ecology also means that they affect negotiation throughout its vectors. Therefore, the
representation of black women on television, which plays a major role in their perception
by the public, is also affected by the disruption caused by Internet and its platforms. This
reifies television as a platform on which the representation of black women, and more
generally Blackness, can be shaped, defined, debated, and more deeply understood by
those outside of the Black American community because it continues to evolve due to the
emergent; due to disruption.
Chapter Three aimed to explore the negotiations engaged in by black female
executives across broadcast, cable, and streaming television networks as well as
production companies and agencies. In order to gain insight into these negotiations, I
selected the method of the one-on-one interview, and conducted interviews with 7 black
female executives selected for their positions and knowledge of the television industry in
addition to being a part of the black female television audience. The overarching theme
that arose from the interview analysis was “Negotiation within a Landscape of
Dysconscious Racism.” Alongside an interpretative analysis of the interviews and this
theme, audience research scholarship was utilized to interrogate the three prominent
levels requiring negotiations on the part of the executives: Peers and Upstream, Creators
and Downstream and Advertising Sales (Ad Sales). Black female executives have to
143
negotiate against ‘dysconscious racism’ operating on each of these levels, which involve
both the creative and business aspects of the television ecology.
The Internet and its platforms were identified by the black female executives as
not only a major disruption to the television ecology, but also a tool in some of the
negotiations in which most of them believe it is their duty to engage. On the level of
Peers and Upstream, Internet platforms, such as YouTube and Vimeo, have occasionally
provided black female executives with the content to negotiate for actors, creators, and
writers of color. On the other two levels, the Internet and its platforms are sometimes a
useful negotiation tool, but often the success of a creator who embraces diversity is best
for persuading Creators and Downstream as well as Advertising Sales to also take a
chance on a diverse writers’ room, cast, and/or crew. With regard to the other
hypothesized disruptors—race coming to the forefront of the national conversation and
black economic buying power—the black female executives did not view them as
disruptions to the television ecology though they specified that creators are sometimes
personally influenced by the national conversation and create episodes influenced by it.
This view held by the black female executives revealed another aspect of
negotiation: the negotiation of constraints. Though there are very real power dynamics at
play within the industrial component of negotiation within the television ecology, black
female executives make negotiations within themselves and with other black female
executives as to the scope of their power and influence and the tools of negotiation they
believe to be at their disposal. They participate in an active give-and-take with the tools
of negotiation they believe that they have within the constraints they have observed and
negotiated.
144
Another point uncovered in this chapter is that the Internet and its platforms are
not the only negotiating tool black female executives have, though it is a powerful one,
and it cannot be applied to every negotiation. The Internet and its platforms provide
actors, writers, creators and other creatives with the outlets to create, exhibit and
distribute content that contains representations of black women and other people of color
that they deem authentic, which is in and of itself impactful. They also provide
occasionally provide the avenue through which someone can circumvent the traditional
ways of entering the television ecology. They are not the sole solution to the
representation of black women on television becoming the reflections of black women
that the black female audience wants to see, but they are disrupting the television ecology
in a tangible way. Broadcast and cable networks cannot ignore the impact of the Internet
and its platforms on their viewership nor can completely ignore it as a resource used by
black women in negotiations for more diversity on screen.
Additionally, the majority of these black female executives felt that it is their duty
to push for increased diversity in television in front of and behind the screen and not just
a choice that they made. Due to the positions that they are in and their existence as black
women in an industry that often misrepresents them they view negotiations for diversity
as a duty. Black female executives will not do this to the detriment of accomplishing their
jobs well and creating the best products possible for television, but they will negotiate for
the presence of people of color as best they can while navigating the landscape of
‘dysconscious racism.’
Chapter Four examined how black female audience members negotiate with current
and past representations of black women on television. Technological, societal, and
145
economic disruptions open the door for negotiations that can be used to promote the
representation of black people, and specifically black women, on television and the black
female audience receives those images. Both the black female audience and black female
executives are often overlooked participants in negotiation—the black female audience in
regards to their influence and economic power and black female executives in regards to
their position as decision-makers within the industry of television itself. This chapter
explored if, and how, black female audience members use these opportunities and how
they are negotiating with the representations they encounter on television today as
compared with how they negotiated with them in the past.
The participants in this study are 18 black female television audience members who
fell within the coveted demographic (i.e., 18 to 49 year olds) for television networks and
advertisers and were split into four groups: two in the 18 to 34 year-old age range and
two in the 35 to 49 age range. One of the major findings in this chapter was the nuance
with which these women employ the negotiation of representation. They are engaging
with the representation of black female television characters, their own self-identity, and
their perceived reception by society at-large along with contemplating some of the
mechanisms behind the images they are seeing. Though there have been previous
audience studies, and some that have focused specifically on black women, none of them
were conducted using the framework of negotiation so I am unable to directly compare
the results of the study. However, from these interviews, the nuance and depth with
which black female audience members are able to negotiate with black female
representations seems to increase with not only the amount of black female characters,
but also with the complexity given to those characters. The black female audience
146
members are very aware of the impact of black female images on those outside of the
black community and despite how adamant they were about remaining unaffected, they
are affected by their perception of how they are perceived. Television remains an integral
teacher in society and the negotiations that the black female audience is able to make
with black female representations impact their ‘double consciousness’ and their behavior
in the world.
Though the black female executives did not describe how they believed themselves to
be perceived in the world, they expressed responses similar to the audience members in
terms of the Third Party Effect hypothesis: believing that negative and positive
representations of black women affect their children and the psyches of others, but have
no affect them. The majority of them also praised the emergence of strong, black female
characters just as the audience members did. The other finding, which furthers a
conclusion made by Bobo (1995), is that the black female audience finds, at the very
least, parts of these images empowering despite whether or not they positively impact
their perception in the world. Black women know that their representation on television is
lacking and has historically been comprised of negative stereotypes. They know that
television is a structure of dominance even if they will never describe it in those words.
However, they receive pleasure from images of black women on screen just as they have
done since before Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne graced it. Bobo (1995) illustrated
how the black female audience still pulled an empowering reading of the film The Color
Purple despite the ideological encodings made to the film. The negotiations of the
audience have been able to grow more nuanced with the advent of more, and increasingly
dynamic black female characters, and that is important in and of itself.
147
All of these findings point to the need for continued examination of the television
ecology as an integral platform for the creation, maintenance, and evolution of
representations of black women. Williams’ dominant, emergent, and residual cycle will
continue whether or not the Internet remains open or becomes another victim of the
dominant because something else will always eventually emerge. The phenomenon of
mediated representation via television is not dying, but is changing; it is evolving. How
we interrogate it must evolve with it and the framework of negotiation provides a way to
analyze those shifts. These finding contribute to the discipline by widening the
boundaries of audience reception. Both the medium and the message play important roles
in representation, but the negotiations done by the audience also further enforce the
impact of representations.
Many scholars have written about the effects of television representations from
the Magic Bullet Theory to Gerbner and Gross’ (1976) Cultivation Theory. Scholars have
also explored the roles of people above the line and below the line and their part in the
production of television. However, negotiation is a framework for understanding
television across its various components. Negotiation allows for the examination of
representation within each of these components, which include the construction of
representations, the negotiations made about them, and their reception. It allows for the
observance and analysis of nuances of mediated representation that were previously
unconsidered and possibly unknown. A possible reason for why my findings are different
from previous ones is that negotiation allowed me to observe and analyze the processes
of a portion of the general audience in a way that had not been purpose of studies such at
148
Jhally and Lewis’ work. Those studies were not overlooking negotiation so much as
negotiation was not the goal of those studies.
Limitations
There are several limitations to this study with regards to sample size and the
limitations of the chosen methods. The sample size for the black female audience
consisted of only four groups from one state in the country. Though Florida was
purposefully chosen for its distance from Los Angeles, conducting small group
interviews in other metropolitan cities such as New York City, Washington D.C.,
Chicago, and New Orleans could have provided a more representative sample even if
some of those cities have television studios. The sample size for the black female
executives was also small, however, these women verbalized the relationships and
conversations that they have had with other black female executives in the industry
providing examples of a generalized experience. The greatest limitation with the sample
of black female executives was not being able to secure an interview with at least one
black woman who was able to transition from a platform such as YouTube or Vimeo to a
broadcast, cable or streaming network. This resulted in a lack of insight into firsthand
experience into the negotiation process of such a transition.
Another limitation of the project are the methods of small group interviews, one-
on-one interviews, and interpretative analysis. Though I decided whom to interview, why
I was interviewing them, and had specific questions for participants, the interviews were
semi-structured with probing questions and I allowed the participants’ responses and
interactions to drive the interview. Due to the exploratory and inductive nature of these
methods, the results may not be representative. Though generalizations can be made from
149
the interviews that apply to the black female audience at large, the thoughts and opinions
of these women also reflect the individualism of black women within a larger group.
In regards to the main research question (i.e., how have disruptions to the
television ecology resulted in opportunities for Black American women to negotiate to
make black women more visible (i.e., leading roles) on television?), it could have been
addressed using quantitative methods. These methods could tell us how many black
women are among the ranks of executives, producers, writers, directors, and
showrunners. These same methods could tally the amount of black female lead characters
on broadcast, cable, and streaming currently for comparison with previous years or
decades as well as the estimated amounts of black women utilizing social media to
discuss these characters. However, they would not provide the observation of the nuances
the methods I chose provided. There are also other ways of demonstrating that these
disruptors—technological, societal, and economical—are effective, such as measuring the
amount of episodes grappling with race or racially charged situations in different years,
but these quantitative methods do not allow for the examination of negotiation.
Suggestions for Future Research
Applying the framework of negotiation to representations of other marginalized
groups, such as Asian women or black men, could be done in future research. Shows such
Fresh off the Boat and Power have an Asian female lead and black male lead,
respectively, but overall the television landscape lacks images of these groups in lead
roles. Examining the negotiations engaged in by executives and audience members from
these groups could reveal more information about how their representation is crafted and
received providing more insight into phenomenon of representation in an Internet-
150
influenced age. Questions such as who are the creatives taking advantage of the Internet
and its platforms in order to exhibit more diverse images of their racial or ethnic group
and what the perception of the television landscape is for executives could both aid in
that insight.
Another suggestion for future research is focusing on a different medium such as
film. The process of getting a feature from pitch to the screen is not exactly the same as
the process for television and executives could be negotiating on levels television
executives do not have to engage with. Furthermore, examination of disruptors to the
traditional film ecology through the framework of negotiation has yet to be done. For
example, the release of the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny
caused an outcry throughout the exhibition arm of the film industry (i.e., theatres)
because the film was simultaneously released to theatres and Netflix (Villarreal, 2016).
The ways in which the Internet and its platforms may be disrupting the film industry as
well as other possible disruptors and the negotiations these disruptions allow could
provide a perspective on film and representation that has yet to be explored.
Also, a research project focusing on the negotiation of representations of black
female characters created by all-white or predominantly white writers’ rooms reflecting
the low diversity averages found in the most recent UCLA Hollywood Report could
possibly provide findings to be compared with the audience study portion of this project.
The shows discussed by the black female audience members who participated in this
project often had very diverse writers’ rooms and/or a creator or showrunner of color.
Examining whether black female audience members negotiate with those characters in
the same manner as they ones engendered by more diverse rooms could provide a better
151
understanding into the construction of Blackness on television and its reception by the
black female audience. Additionally, it could provide insight into the creation and
perception of an “authentic” black character and black experience. Finally, a study of
black female showrunners, black female writers, and their negotiations in order to more
fully engage with the component of textual negotiation would provide an even more
robust examination of the television ecology and the negotiations that take place within it.

152
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165
APPENDIX A: BLACK FEMALE EXECUTIVE ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEW
GUIDE

Concrete and Confidence Building Questions
1. What is your job title?
2. What does your job entail?
3. How long have you been working in the television industry?
4. Have you held any other positions within the television industry?

Substantive Television Organization Questions
5. Could you explain the process of a how a television show gets on the air from its
inception to its premiere that you are most familiar with?
6. Has the process of getting a show on air changed over the past 5 to 10 years?
7. How has the television market as a whole changed over the past 5 to 10 years?
a. What factors do you think are responsible for these changes?
i. (If they don’t mention the Internet) Do you think the Internet has
caused change in the television market?
1. If yes, how so?
ii. (If they don’t mentioned socioeconomics) Do you think the
growing buying power of Black Americans has been a factor for
changes in the television market?
1. If yes, how so?
8. Do you think the kinds of shows on television have changed over the past 5 to 10
years?
a. What factors do you think are responsible for these changes?
i. (If they don’t mention the Internet) Do you think the Internet has
caused change in the television market?
1. If yes, how so?
ii. (If they don’t mentioned socioeconomics) Do you think the
growing buying power of Black Americans has been a factor for
changes in the kinds of shows we’re seeing on television today?
1. If yes, how so?
iii. (If they don’t mention racial issues in America) Do you think that
racial issues coming to the forefront as one of the nation’s most
pressing issues has been a factor in the kinds of shows we’re
seeing on television today?
9. Do you see a relationship between real world political developments, such as
BlackLivesMatter and what you see on television?
10. There have been discussions about what is and isn’t “quality” television. What
would you say is considered quality television? Please give examples.
a. What would you say isn’t considered quality television? Please give
examples.
11. Why do you thing melodramas are described by some as not being quality television
programs?
166
a. Does the audience that melodramas bring in have anything to do with their
consideration as quality?
b. Do melodramas have lower CPMs than other kinds of television shows?
i. If yes, why do you think that is the case?
c. Do shows with an audience that is primarily composed of people of color
have lower CPMs than shows that have a primarily white audience?
i. If yes, why do you think that is the case?

Substantive Character Questions
12. Do you think that these various factors that disrupted the television market and
changed the kinds of shows that are now on television also allowed for the increase
in black women on television that we’ve seen over the past 5 years?
a. If yes, please elaborate
b. If not, what do you believe is responsible?
13. Do you see any differences between the characteristics of black female characters in
the 1990s and early 2000s and the ones of the current decade (2010s)?
a. If yes, what do you think those differences are?
14. Do you identify with any of the black female characters that are currently on
television?
a. If yes, which ones?
b. If no, why not?
15. How has the existence or absence of strong black female characters on television
impacted you?
a. How has the existence or absence of stereotypical black female characters
on television impacted you? For example, the Jezebel or the Angry Black
Woman.

Sensitive Questions
16. Do you believe you have been a part of the reason for the increase of black women
on television?
a. If yes, how so?
17. Do you think that there has also been an increased diversification in the kinds of
roles black women on television are given?
a. If yes, what do you think is the reason for that diversification?
b. Do you believe that you have played a role in that increased
diversification?
i. If yes, how so?
18. Do you think the previously mentioned disruptors could also be reasons for the
diversification of roles as well?
a. If yes, how so?
19. What do you think is the goal of the increased diversity of roles for black women
(i.e., to produce a broad range of representations or to have the representations better
conform to the realities of black female audience members)?
167
20. Are there other ways, or possibly better ways, to achieve this goal?
21. What are your reasons and/or incentives for working to increase the presence of
black women in television and to diversify their roles?
22. What do you think may be possible reasons and/or incentives for other black women
in the television industry whether they be content creators, producers, executives,
etc.?
23. What do you see for the future of black women on television?
a. Does the future include a sustaining of the current state of disruption or
does it include making what is being called a “trend” into a something
permanent?
24. Is there anything I didn’t ask that you thought I would ask?
25. Is there anything that you thought I would bring up that I didn’t?

168
APPENDIX B: BLACK FEMALE AUDIENCE SMALL GROUP INTERVIEW
GUIDE

Concrete and Confidence Building Questions
1. Which television shows are you watching from broadcast television (ABC, NBC,
etc.), on cable (TNT, BET, etc.), subscription cable (HBO, Showtime, etc.) or
online, which can include shows online original shows or user generated content?
2. How do you like to watch television? (on television, on the computer, etc.)
3. Which television shows with black female characters are you watching on
broadcast, cable or online that you may not have mentioned?
4. Which shows with black female characters do you like best? Rank your top three
shows.

Substantive Character Questions
5. What are your thoughts about the black female characters on the shows you’ve
mentioned?
6. Do you like these characters?
a. Why or why not?
7. Do you see any similarities across these black female characters?
8. Do you see any differences across these black female characters?
9. If you could create a black female character, what would she be like?
10. Do you see any differences between the characteristics of black female characters
in the 1990s and early 2000s and the ones of the current decade (2010s)?
a. If yes, what do you think those differences are?
11. Do you think there’s been an increase in the number of black female characters on
television over the past five years?
12. Do you think there’s been an increase in the number of black female content
creators over the past five years?
13. Do you think there’s been an increase in the number of black female television
executives over the past five years?
14. Do you think the number of black female characters will continue to rise?
a. If yes, why?
15. What factors do you see influencing the kinds of portrayals there are of black
women on television?

Sensitive Questions
16. Do you identify with any of the black female characters that were previously
mentioned?
a. If yes, which ones?
b. If no, why not?
17. How has the existence or absence of strong black female characters impacted
you?
169
a. How has the existence or absence of stereotypical black female characters
impacted you? For example, the Jezebel or the Angry Black Woman.
18. Do you see a relationship between real world political developments, such as
BlackLivesMatter and what you see on television?
19. Do you read articles, commentaries or books about the shows and/or characters
you like to watch?
a. If yes, why do you think you do that?
20. Do you watch commentaries or reports on the shows and/or characters you like to
watch?
a. If yes, why do you think you do that?
21. Do you communicate with others about the shows that you are watching?
a. If yes, why do you think you like to communicate with others about these
shows?
b. What do you usually discuss?
22. How do you engage in that communication? (in-person, online [Twitter,
Facebook, Tumblr, etc.], telephone, etc.)
23. Do you personally know all of the people that you are communicating with about
the show?
24. Do you ever communicate with the people who make the shows you watch? For
example, tweeting at Shonda Rhimes or @ABCScandal about Scandal.
a. If yes, what are some of the things that you have said/written/tweeted/etc.?
25. How do you imagine the producers, content creators, showrunners, etc. of these
shows to be in reality?
26. Do you think that you have the ability to influence the television shows you
comment on?
a. If yes, how so?
27. Do you think black women have the ability to influence television?
a. Why or why not?
b. How would they go about influencing television?
28. Do you think that what happens in society at-large influences television?
a. If yes, provide an example.
29. Is there anything I didn’t ask that you thought I would ask?
30. Is there anything that you thought I would bring up that I didn’t?

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The aim of this dissertation is to examine the relationship between disruptions—technological, economic, and societal—to the television ecology and the negotiations—industrial, textual, and reception—that black women engage in when dealing with representations of black women on television. One-on-one interviews and small group interviews with black female executives and black female audience members, respectively, were conducted in order to explore their negotiations within their respective components of Christine Gledhill’s framework of negotiation. The analyses of these interviews revealed nuanced negotiations conducted by black women on multiple levels within different components that had yet to be directly interrogated. The analyses also reinforced arguments for the need to invest in television as a continuing site for struggles over representation and visibility and the capacity of representations to empower the marginalized generally, and black women more specifically, due to their own readings of the text.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Hamilton, Nikita T. (author)

Core Title Disturbing the peace: television, disruption, and the roles of Black women

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 10/02/2019

Defense Date 08/23/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag disruption,gender,negotiation,OAI-PMH Harvest,race,television

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Jenkins, Henry (committee chair), Lake, Randall (committee member), Smith, Christopher (committee member)

Creator Email nikita.hamilton@gmail.com,nikitaha@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-442110

Unique identifier UC11264377

Identifier etd-HamiltonNi-5810.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-442110 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-HamiltonNi-5810.pdf

Dmrecord 442110

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Hamilton, Nikita T.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA