
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 25, 1994                   TAG: 9407220016
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: 12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID HINCKLEY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHERE ARE ROLES FOR MINORITIES?

As a rule, it takes longer to climb a mountain, even a little way, than it takes to tumble to the bottom. Case in point: faces of color on prime-time television shows.

Ten years ago, "The Cosby Show" was frequently cited as an example of America's painstaking progress toward racial harmony. Look, we said: Here's a professional family working its way through the obstacles of life, and they happen to be black, but really, they could be any color, which proves that in America, anyone can grow up to be the Cleavers, maybe even quirkier and funnier.

So "Cosby" lived a long, healthy TV sitcom life, much of it spent as the most popular show in the country. It propelled Cosby to riches and NBC to vaster riches.

Then the show ended, and in its place came ... well, not much. A few black performers surfaced, some as prominent as Will Smith in "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," but it also became clear that even as America congratulated itself for evolving toward color blindess, the pool into which ABC, NBC and CBS dipped for TV performers seemed to contain almost entirely white faces.

Fortunately, around this time, Rupert Murdoch had begun fighting to carve out a fourth network, Fox. Since Fox couldn't afford big-name, big-budget shows at first, it fooled with ideas the Big Three didn't much bother with.

Following standard procedure in the TV biz, Fox quickly discarded most of its experiments. But it hit a few jackpots - "The Simpsons," "Beverly Hills, 90210," "In Living Color" - and used those to build a reputation for taking chances, gazing into worlds often more interesting than those favored by the conservative Big Three.

So Fox clawed its way toward parity, a battle dramatically punctuated within the last year when Fox swiped pro football rights and a dozen CBS, ABC and NBC affiliate stations.

But this triumph brings another axiom into play: The more you've got, the more you've got to lose. The higher the stakes for Fox - the more money it has to pay for football rights, announcers and TV stations - the more apt it will become to take the safe path in programming. Like ABC, NBC and CBS.

It's hard not to think this axiom was at work when Fox announced its fall schedule and four of the six de facto cancellations were "black" shows: "Roc," "Sinbad," "In Living Color" and "South Central."

Fox's contention is that there's nothing personal here. Just ratings. The same reason "704 Hauser" won't be back on CBS. The same reason NBC finally let go of "I'll Fly Away," which revolved around one of the finest black female characters in TV history.

Look at "Martin," Fox might say. That's a black show, and we kept it because it got the numbers. We dumped "South Central" and "Roc" because they didn't.

Sure, "South Central" was built around a traditional-values family in a tough urban area, a premise that attacked more destructive stereotypes than any other show on TV, and that was probably good.

But it didn't score the numbers. Same way Arsenio Hall didn't score the numbers. Nothing personal. Just the way the world works.

Except now you look at late-night TV and you don't get a lot of the voices and artists Arsenio would invite. You look at prime-time and you don't see the faces you see in real-life America.

Slow climb. Fast drop.

by CNB