Salon.com: Despite the recent negative press regarding CBS’ track record with diversity, the latest in a string of coverage about this very topic extending back to 2016 and well before that, today I come to praise CBS. And, well, to sort of bury it.
The previous sentence was written mostly in jest; CBS is a giant among broadcasters, the most watched network in the U.S. in addition to the home of the world’s most popular series, “NCIS.” There’s no entombing a behemoth.
2 comments:
I am a long time fan of CBS’s show, NCIS, and have watched around three hundred of its episodes multiple times. I have often noticed that the show does not often have non-white lead actors, and have seen some efforts to improve that in recent years. In the newest season of NCIS, two new leads were added to the show, both of which were men of color. Despite this, the article is absolutely correct that CBS lacks in sufficient representation of all demographics. Their statements regarding an effort to change this have not been explicitly followed up by actions, and though I do understand that switching up casts takes time, I wish they had made an effort earlier. The shows on CBS are not keeping up with the way the United States actually looks, and if they want to increase and keep their audience, it would be a smart move to introduce more diverse casts.
Truthfully, I had never really noticed the lack in diversity from CBS's shows until I read this article. I have always been conflicted when it comes to diversity in the television industry mostly because it is such a cut throat industry that looks for people of a certain look with certain amounts of talent. That being said, I do believe that if a network is overwhelmingly undiverse, there should be some action taken to fix that issue. I think CBS tries to fake diversity by choosing one leading actor of color, or ethnicity and then surrounding them by white actors as support. In ways, I believe that makes it even worse because it is isolating the one ethnicity by only casting one, or very few. Television networks are always trying to make the most money by producing the best shows and it seems like CBS has found their "winning" formula for this and may or may not be willing to amend this formula to include the changing diversity that America sees everyday.
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