Black TV Viewing Up; So Is Prime-Time Diversity
Blacks continue to watch more TV than any other demographic group, an average of 76.8 hours a week — the most viewing in eight years — compared with 53.1 hours a week for whites, USA Today reports. “Black homes watch far more daytime, late-night, Saturday morning and cable programming. MTV, Lifetime, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network are significantly more popular among black viewers than non-blacks,” says the newspaper, reporting on a survey by the New York ad-buying firm Initiative Media.
“As networks add diversity to their prime-time casts, blacks and whites share more favorite series than ever,” the story said.
“Nine of the top 20 series among black households also are favorites among whites, the most overlap in at least 10 years . . . Most are dramas such as ER, Law & Order, CSI and Judging Amy, but Monday Night Football and 60 Minutes also made both lists.
” ”In the past there has always been a polarization; the top 20 lists were very different,’ Initiative’s Stacey Lynn Koerner says. ‘Now what we’re seeing is there are more shows these ethnic groups have in common.’ Why? ‘One of the reasons is the shows themselves are depicting multiethnic casts and multiethnic situations.’ ”
Tribune’s “World” Lacks Africa, S. America, China
“How the war in Iraq looks to the world,” is the headline the Chicago Tribune used on a story with this lead:
“The U.S. has declared that major combat is over in Iraq, four weeks after hostilities started. Tribune correspondents provided this look at how newspapers around the world have been following the war and its aftermath:”
The reports come from Australia, Cuba, France, Russia and Turkey.
It’s not the first time that South America and Africa (and this time China, India and Japan) have been missing from newspaper roundups of world opinion.
A look at allafrica.com finds these stories on Iraq:
— ” What constitutes a democratic state? As the United States now attempts to build a democratic system in Iraq; as legislative elections in Nigeria – the ‘largest democracy in Africa’ – are marred by religious and ethnic violence,” the Addis Tribune in Ethiopia asks how much democracy that nation has.
— The South African Parliament is sticking to its guns not to heed the United States’ call for South Africa to dismiss the Iraqi ambassador to South Africa, reports the BuaNews in Pretoria.
— The Zimbabwe Independent reports that “the war in Iraq has produced some contrasting reactions among Zimbabweans. Opponents of the Zanu PF regime have enjoyed watching on satellite stations the toppling of the tyrant in Baghdad. However, the sight of celebrating crowds jumping up and down on statues of the fallen dictator has not gone down well with our own Saddamites.
“State television has suppressed coverage of the Iraq war, and most Zimbabweans — except for those with satellite television — were denied the extraordinary footage of thousands of Iraqis joyously toppling statues and taking off their shoes to beat portraits of their erstwhile leader.”
BET Claims Thorough War Coverage
“No network — broadcast or cable — has covered the war with Iraq from an African-American perspective like BET, using a group of Black journalists here and on the front lines every night.
“BET has followed the families of African-American soldiers and how the war has impacted their lives; used retired African-American military experts to analyze the battles; and even profiled some of the most visible African Americans influencing the coalition’s military strategy. BET even got an exclusive interview with the Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations the very day bombs began to fall on Baghdad when no other network could,” a Black Entertainment Television spokesman tells Journal-isms.
TV Columnist Rates War Reporting Highs, Lows
At MSNBC, the high point for war coverage was anchor Lester Holt, says Newsday TV columnist Verne Gay. “This guy is good, and so, for the most part, is MSNBC’s day-in, day-out coverage of this war. Holt will get a prime-time hour when the war ends, and he deserves it.” Gay rates the highs and lows at the news networks in his “reporters’ report card.”
FCC’s Powell Reiterates June 2 Vote
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell in correspondence released Wednesday, told Congress he would not delay his planned June 2 vote on major media ownership rules, saying it is “time to make judgments,” Media Week reports.
Meanwhile, the May issue of Black Enterprise magazine features this cover story by Walter Dawkins and Matthew S. Scott:
“Large radio chains are forcing small, independent, black-owned radio stations into extinction. How will they survive? BE examines the strategies employed by these small outlets to fight the big boys.”
And in San Francisco, a group called the Media Alliance has scheduled a public hearing on the FCC proposals with FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein on April 26, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Legislative Chamber of City Hall.
Details at http://media-alliance.org/tellthefcc.htm.
Incoming J-Dean Wants Training for Whole Career
Nicholas Lemann, chosen this week as the new dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, tells Newsweek’s Seth Mnookin he thinks j-school should provide training for situations a student will encounter over an entire career:
“I?d like to explore at least whether there are exercises you can develop to train students . . . for when they?ll be managers, and senior correspondents and big-foot types.
“We want to do training for the whole career and not just the early years, and train for problems and situations you encounter. One day you?ll be staying in the Wayfarer Inn in New Hampshire [covering a presidential primary], but where you?ll never be again is at one of these world-class universities. So we want to figure out: what are all the things one needs to know over a long career as a journalist? And of those things, what can one acquire much more easily in a year or two of intensive research in a great university?”
Gay Columnist Says Write What You Know
Byron Beck, a columnist at Willamette Week in Portland, Ore., wrote this week about attending a writers’ conference in his city sponsored by the Poynter Institute and the Portland Oregonian. He concluded from the diversity sessions there that, “At newspapers, at least, diversity is still measured by your skin tone, and not much else.” “I felt like I was stuck in a closet full of 500 straight people,” he wrote in his column, headlined, “The Invisible (Gay) Man.”
He writes that The Oregonian’s only African American columnist, S. Renee Mitchell, “took issue with the notion that she was hired because she might be a voice for an underserved community. When asked how she responds to readers who tell her she’s ‘too black or not black enough,’ all Mitchell could say was that she doesn’t write about African-American issues as much as people might think.
“I respect that Mitchell may not want to be tagged as a ‘black columnist.’ But one of the first lessons a writer, especially a columnist, must learn is to ‘write what you know.’ The reality is, everything that I write is filtered through the fact that I am gay, whether I realize it or not. What’s so wrong with that?” Beck asks.
AAJA Announces Two Internship Winners
The Asian American Journalists Association announces that Mary Joseph, a technical consultant at IBM who now wants to pursue a career in journalism, has been chosen for a $2,500 grant from the Asian American Journalists Association, and participation in KYW-TV’s internship program named for the late KYW anchor Siani Lee.
The internship places a college student in a summer internship at the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia. In November 2001, AAJA named the internship in honor of Lee, Philadelphia’s first Asian Pacific American news anchor. Lee died in a car accident that October.
Lily Fu, a graduate student studying new media at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, will be an online intern this summer at the Indianapolis Star. She was awarded the New Media Internship and will receive $2,500 to help fund her online internship.
Fred Facey, “Voice of NBC News,” Dies at 72
Fred Facey, “who for so many of us was the voice of NBC News,” in the words of NBC anchor Brian Williams, died Sunday at age 72. While not a journalist, he held the same job since 1967 and was the announcer for “Today,” “Meet The Press,” “The News with Brian Williams,” and WNBC-TV news, and he did “billboards” for “Saturday Night Live.”
Said Williams on his CNBC show, “The News With Brian Williams”:
“Fred Facey was so kind and courtly and polite and gracious it was as if he lived in another time entirely. His deep baritone was a familiar sound in the corridors of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York as was the instantly familiar scent of his beloved Old Spice and it nicely lingered after any encounter with Fred. Just as our memories of our brave, kind friend will linger on for years. Thousands of Rockefeller Center tourists over the years never knew that the tall, handsome and gentle guy in the elevator was a giant in the television business. Though when Fred said hello, as he often did to complete strangers, they’d often say it was as if they had heard that voice somewhere before. And what a shame not to be able to pick up the phone and hear it anymore. Our friend, Fred Facey, was 72 years old.”
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