How Hollywood left Black TV behind

This month, a two-part documentary on the historical past of Black tv, Seen & Heard was launched on HBO Max.

It comes at a tense second for the style.

In April, CBS sparked backlash after canceling three Black-led exhibits in at some point: spinoffs of The Equalizer starring Queen Latifah and The Neighborhood that includes Cedric the Entertainer, together with Damon Wayans Sr. and Jr.’s comedy Poppa’s House.

Sharon Waxman, who’s the founder and editor of the leisure information web site The Wrap, summarized the second we’re in for the New York Times final month. Its title: “Hollywood is ‘Hot, Horny and White’ Again.”

Her take: “The entertainment industry is nothing if not finely attuned to the social and cultural signals that affect the box office. … The pendulum that swung all the way left after the killing of George Floyd in 2020, with among other things the installation of DEI leaders at the studios, started to go the other way in 2023.”

Giselle Bailey, a documentary filmmaker and director, had a entrance row seat to that swing whereas making Seen & Heard. Even as she was placing the documentary collectively, exhibits like Rap Sh!t, a comedy collection following two ladies MCs, and Random Acts of Flyness, a surrealist sketch comedy present led by Terence Nance, acquired the ax.

How did we get right here?

“I  think we’re in another moment …” Bailey stated, pausing whereas she looked for a tactful approach to put it. “I’m going to say ‘of rebirth.’”

“I think it is very hard right now. Opportunities are rather limited,” she stated. “And also, I see from studying this history that this is another time of ingenuity. And I feel that with my peers — other Black filmmakers — are really thinking about, ‘How do I wanna tell this story? Where can I distribute it? How do I do it myself? How do we partner? How do we collaborate?’”

Giselle Bailey and Issa Rae converse onstage following the “Seen & Heard” premiere throughout the 2025 SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas this March.

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Seen & Heard, produced by Issa Rae, asks these questions in interviews with icons who’ve formed the tv panorama, together with Oprah, Tyler Perry, Shonda Rimes, Debbie Allen, Rae herself and and plenty of extra.

The backstory

The first episode of Seen & Heard highlights the historical past of Black leisure as early because the Chitlin circuit of the Thirties, an off-the-cuff community of venues the place Black musicians, comedians and different entertainers carried out for Black audiences throughout Jim Crow period segregation.

These venues have been principally within the japanese, southern and higher Midwest U.S., however the story of Black tv takes place right here in L.A., on the earth of board rooms and sound phases from the ’50s to right now.

“LA is the central hub, the womb, the battleground of the story that we’re telling,” Bailey stated.

Bailey observed there was a cycle to Black TV There could be pockets of time when Black exhibits have been fashionable, like within the ’70s, when the prolific producer and author Norman Lear created and championed sitcoms like Sanford and Son, Good Times and The Jeffersons — after which these pockets would shut.

How the Black TV Renaissance of the ’90s and 2000s waned

UPN’s “Girlfriends” featured, from left, Jill Jones, Persia White, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Golden Brooks.

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Al Seib

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To perceive this cycle,  Seen & Heard explores what occurred within the ’90s and early 2000s, when there was an enormous renaissance of Black exhibits on TV.

“In the 90s, ‘UPN (United Paramount Network) and WB (Warner Brothers) had many of the Black shows that come to define the era,” Bailey stated.

Shows like Girlfriends, Moesha and Sister Sister, which amassed massive audiences and helped their respective networks set up their voice and constant viewership. But then…

“At a certain point in early 2000s, UPN and the WB merged and created the CW. During that acquisition, they started moving to what often is called a ‘mainstream appeal,’” Bailey stated. “And so that leaves a lot of things behind, including things that are considered a creative risk — that tends to be voices of people of color.”

Throughout the aughts, CW grew to become identified for exhibits like Gossip Girl moderately than Moesha. In Seen & Heard, Ralph Farquhar, co-creator of Moesha stated, “Our shows have systematically been used to pump networks since we’ve been on TV. To pump up the ratings, to pump up the network. And then when they get what they need, they let it go.”

Farquhar also called out Fox — another network — that started running In Living Color, a comedy sketch show starring Keenan Ivory Wayans, in 1990, “until, one day when they bought NFL football and they decided to get rid of everybody. Football meant white males to them. They cancelled everything Black ’cause they considered the Black audience a downscale demographic.”

“It is a little bit of whiplash,” Bailey stated. “Because the most popular shows went from being very Black to being very not in a span of just a couple of years.”

What to do with a fickle Hollywood system?

Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry attend the “Sidney” Premiere throughout the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival in 2022. Both are extremely influential within the leisure business.

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Bailey observed a theme emerge in her interviews for the documentary: Black creatives feeling it was essential to navigate or bypass the studio system.

“There’s controlling how something’s getting made, which community is making it, how is that reflected on the screen? […] All of those things are really rooted in having real control of the thing. And the best way to do that is to own the content,” Bailey stated.

Tyler Perry’s studio — which he takes viewers on a tour of in Seen and Heard has a number of sound phases named after legendary Black performers like Denzel Washington, Whoopi Goldberg and Sidney Poitier. Oprah additionally talks within the documentary in regards to the significance of proudly owning her personal community: OWN, the Oprah Winfrey community.

A push to create or contribute to a system that isn’t bankrolled by white executives, extends past billionaire business tycoons. After Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness was canceled, Nance got here along with different Black creatives in Baltimore to open Lalibela, an area with sound phases and gear the place Black creators could make their very own productions with out ready for a studio inexperienced gentle.

“Terence’s Lalibela is really exciting to me,” Bailey stated. “Those are the kinds of projects that I believe [are] going to create another kind of renaissance.”