A Different World was the last black sitcom to be a hit—but why?

[TMC]

http://www.avclub.com/articles/a-dif...m-to-be,90788/

In his essential memoir depicting his life in the TV-writing trenches, Billion-Dollar Kiss, Jeffrey Stepakoff gives the most succinct answer to a perpetual question in television circles: Whatever happened to the black sitcom? In the ’70s, series like The Jeffersons, Sanford & Son, and Good Times were Nielsen mainstays, all with either black leads or predominantly black casts. Even more sitcoms featured prominent black characters, often navigating or dealing with a white world. This was all prelude, of course, to the popularity of The Cosby Show, one of the most-watched programs in television history and one that spawned both popular imitators—Family Matters—and a popular sitcom in A Different World. Yet A Different World is the last program with a predominantly black cast to land in the top 10 of the Nielsens, and it seems entirely possible it will hold that title for as long as television continues to exist. Through the ’90s, black sitcoms migrated first to Fox, then to The WB and UPN, and finally to cable outlets like TBS, instead of their once prominent homes on the original “big three” networks. Why?

Stepakoff’s explanation is at once complex and simple. It stems from a series he worked on named Hyperion Bay, a little-known WB teen drama that’s mostly notable for its original premise, which would have revolved around an interracial relationship. The network’s suits eventually nixed that idea, and Stepakoff’s explanation boils down, essentially, to money. Since the early ’80s, networks have increasingly chased younger viewers, usually in the 18-to-49-year-old demographic, because said viewers are supposed to spend their money more freely and be more likely to try out new brands. Thus, they’re more attractive to the advertisers who underwrite the broadcast-network business model.

That’s all well and good, in terms of profit, but the pursuit of almighty demographics has also had the effect of making television whiter and whiter, precisely at the same time that the United States has had a non-white population growing more quickly than the white one. This has all changed a bit in the past few years, largely due to the success of ABC’s mid-’00s ensemble dramas Lost and Grey’s Anatomy, but the majority of series still have mostly white casts, and the number of series on broadcast networks with minority leads can be counted on one hand.

What happened is easy enough to understand, and it’s one of the same reasons for TV’s increasing lack of blue-collar sitcoms: The more networks could provide advertisers with demographic information, the more those advertisers chased the demographics with the most money. According to Stepakoff, in the ’90s, this meant chasing white parents and their teenagers, which ended up being The WB’s demographic. These viewers might have been reliable Cosby viewers 10 years earlier—after all, the Huxtables were affluent, just like the theoretical WB viewers—but increasingly, networks, driven by advertisers, believed that rich white people who would spend the most money on products wanted to see more white people, ideally affluent as well.

But hadn’t that always been the case? Naturally, it had. Stepakoff, then, points to another change in TV that led to this new reality: the repeal of the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules by Congress and the Clinton administration in 1993. Briefly, the so-called fin-syn rules prevented too much media consolidation, meaning that TV networks were supposed to be under different ownership than the companies that brought them their programming. Thus, the networks made much of their money on advertising, while the production companies made much of their money once the shows went into syndication and a smaller amount off network licensing fees. Once the fin-syn rules were overturned (largely due to the rise of Fox and cable networks, which didn’t have to play under the same rules), that meant networks could buy programs produced by production companies and studios under the same corporate umbrella as they were. This maximized the amount of profit any one corporation could make off of any one show, and the majority of programs networks air today are produced by companies owned by the same corporation. If not, they’re produced by companies owned by other giant media conglomerates, like Warner Bros. Television. While this was a financial boon to TV networks and led to more ambitious (and probably better) television, it also choked out an important part of the TV landscape: the independent production company.

When A Different World debuted in 1987, by far the most powerful production company in TV was Carsey-Werner Productions, even though the company had only one show on the air, The Cosby Show. The Huxtables so dominated the television landscape at the time that Carsey-Werner could afford to be picky about follow-up projects, and A Different World was the first Carsey-Werner series to make the air after Cosby. (The next, Roseanne, also went on to be a Nielsen top-10 mainstay and was the series that finally toppled Cosby’s reign.) Run by Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, who had both been comedy development executives at ABC in the ’70s, the company was fond of recruiting outsider voices, particularly stand-up comedians, then building television series around them. The company produced a handful of series before Cosby, but Cosby made Carsey-Werner’s name and bought it the financial room it needed to be choosy with future projects. The Cosby Show was built around Bill Cosby’s voice, and he wanted to do a show to counteract many of the images of black families elsewhere in the media. He wanted two successful parents with five children also primed for success. He wanted stories that were very small, occasionally almost conflict-free, the better for Cosby to start riffing. And as the show ran, he wanted to reflect on the black experience in the United States, on the greats who had made the kind of life the Huxtables enjoyed possible.

This is, perhaps, why it took so long for A Different World to find its voice. Where most Carsey-Werner shows were built around a strong, central voice, A Different World was built around a nebulous concept and the need to get Lisa Bonet off The Cosby Show, where she was increasingly chafing under the family-friendly restrictions of the program. Sending her character, Denise, off to college effectively solved that problem while removing her from the parent program in a way that would bruise fewer egos. It also allowed Cosby to make a series about a subject near and dear to his heart: historically black colleges and the role they’d played in the black experience.

In the early going, both of these things were compromised. Bonet was a fine supporting player for a TV series, but she wasn’t yet ready to carry a show, with her slightly sleepy demeanor and subdued line readings. Thus, the show gravitated more and more to the colorful supporting players in her life. And because executives were worried a show about an black college would be too specific for a TV audience that had rejected many, many attempts to make shows about college in general in the past, Hillman College also had a handful of white students, including a young Marisa Tomei. In its first season, A Different World didn’t know what it wanted to be. It was supposed to be a slightly more mature extension of The Cosby Show, but it was also completely reliant on its parent show to stay alive, leaving it in a tough 8:30 timeslot that didn’t allow for the kinds of college storytelling that might have accurately reflected the higher-education experiences of its viewers. In addition, because the show was no longer about the historically black college presented in the Cosby Show episode that served as a backdoor pilot for the series, it had no real reason to exist. It was a soft, barely formed series about a fictional college, with someone equally soft at its center. The show was a big hit, but that was almost entirely thanks to being sandwiched between Cosby and Cheers. Critics weren’t kind, and the show deserved it.

This has, by and large, become A Different World’s reputation ever since: a good idea for a series that was torn down ultimately by an inability to really grapple with its premise, destroyed by network notes and the wrong lead. Many viewers were aware the show continued to exist for five more seasons, but the show’s reputation seemed to form almost entirely around that first season. The series was heavily retooled between the first and second seasons, however, and the show that existed in its last five years was a better, more daring, and more thoughtful series than its reputation would suggest. What’s more, it may have been one of the most forthright series about the black experience in the United States, digging deep into all sorts of questions about being part of a microcosm in a larger society that didn’t always reflect that microcosm’s needs and wants. And it managed to accomplish all of this while staying a top-10 Nielsen hit. Put a random season-four episode of A Different World on between The Middle and Modern Family, and it would seem downright radical. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, though, it just seemed to fit.

[MacLeaper]

Interesting article. I like "A Different World"- it's a great, funny show- and a neat spinoff from "The Cosby Show", even though the main connection (i.e. Denise Huxtable) was dropped past the first season.
And this may be semantics, but I don't really like the term "black sitcom". I suppose this article is taking the term to mean sitcoms that primarily feature black characters as the lead and main characters.
And there are a number of shows that fall into that category that I enjoy. The same goes for other shows with casts of various races.
I understand the need at the time they were instituted for historically "black colleges" (which, of course, is a very sad reason because people couldn't get along and learn to love everyone because we are all made in God's image). However, I don't understand terms like the "black experience". Perhaps the "black experience" in this context refers specifically to the plight of dark-skinned Africans brought over as slaves to America and their struggle for freedom from this cruelty, brought about through President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. And of course, it took a long period of Reconstruction for the country to treat dark-skinned Americans fairly, a struggle that people like Rosa Parks and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. helped win.
I like to think of "A Different World" as a show that is reflective of those facts but also brings things into the then-current time and shows people that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with the basic freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I think this is something that was dear to Bill Cosby's heart in doing both "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World". It was a great reminder to know that a black American man could be a gynecologist and a black American woman could be a lawyer and both could enjoy a great marriage to each other and raise a great family of kids. It doesn't mean they didn't have struggles and trials like everyone else, but they worked together to solve them and always showed love for each other. I also really enjoy shows like "Good Times" and while it is an accurate reflection of the lives of some black families (and I daresay some white families and some Hispanic families any most any other family regardless of race- as poverty affects all people)- it was also great to see the love the Evans displayed for each other and Mr. Evans' high work ethics. And of course, like any family, the parents aspired for the best for their children.
I think this is true for "The Cosby Show" as well- and both are great shows that give us different views of family life, regardless of race. With hard work and faith in God, He can lift us to higher positions- but no matter what status in social standings, we know we are important, valued and loved because we are all precious in His sight.

[TVFactFan]

The article was also inaccurate,


A Different World was not the last black sitcom to be in the top 10. It was ADW and the Cosby Show that were in the top ten together. After the 1991-92 season, ADW was not in the top ten again.

[Ant-Lox]

Originally Posted by MacLeaper

Interesting article. I like "A Different World"- it's a great, funny show- and a neat spinoff from "The Cosby Show", even though the main connection (i.e. Denise Huxtable) was dropped past the first season.
And this may be semantics, but I don't really like the term "black sitcom". I suppose this article is taking the term to mean sitcoms that primarily feature black characters as the lead and main characters.
And there are a number of shows that fall into that category that I enjoy. The same goes for other shows with casts of various races.
I understand the need at the time they were instituted for historically "black colleges" (which, of course, is a very sad reason because people couldn't get along and learn to love everyone because we are all made in God's image). However, I don't understand terms like the "black experience". Perhaps the "black experience" in this context refers specifically to the plight of dark-skinned Africans brought over as slaves to America and their struggle for freedom from this cruelty, brought about through President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. And of course, it took a long period of Reconstruction for the country to treat dark-skinned Americans fairly, a struggle that people like Rosa Parks and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. helped win.
I like to think of "A Different World" as a show that is reflective of those facts but also brings things into the then-current time and shows people that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with the basic freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I think this is something that was dear to Bill Cosby's heart in doing both "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World". It was a great reminder to know that a black American man could be a gynecologist and a black American woman could be a lawyer and both could enjoy a great marriage to each other and raise a great family of kids. It doesn't mean they didn't have struggles and trials like everyone else, but they worked together to solve them and always showed love for each other. I also really enjoy shows like "Good Times" and while it is an accurate reflection of the lives of some black families (and I daresay some white families and some Hispanic families any most any other family regardless of race- as poverty affects all people)- it was also great to see the love the Evans displayed for each other and Mr. Evans' high work ethics. And of course, like any family, the parents aspired for the best for their children.
I think this is true for "The Cosby Show" as well- and both are great shows that give us different views of family life, regardless of race. With hard work and faith in God, He can lift us to higher positions- but no matter what status in social standings, we know we are important, valued and loved because we are all precious in His sight.

Very true, but as the article highlights, people want to see people who look like them.

[TVFactFan]

It was the last black sitcom that was a hit with all nationalities.

There were other black shows that were great shows after ADW ended like

Living Single
Martin

[*ROGER*]

Originally Posted by TVFactFan

It was the last black sitcom that was a hit with all nationalities.

There were other black shows that were great shows after ADW ended like

Living Single
Martin

Those were great, and The Steve Harvey Show was also great.

[TVFactFan]

Originally Posted by *ROGER*

Those were great, and The Steve Harvey Show was also great.

Yeah I forgot about Steve Harvey

[Neutronman67]

Steve Harvey and the jamie foxx show are not well known and talked about shows its kinda underrated compared to The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,Family Matters, i think most people would agree that kenan and kel was the last good african american sitcom in the late 90's.

[waichingliu81]

Originally Posted by TVFactFan

It was the last black sitcom that was a hit with all nationalities.

There were other black shows that were great shows after ADW ended like

Living Single
Martin

as good as ADW was and the impact it had on audiences, it annoys me that whenever people mention black sitcoms, they have to mention only ADW and not living single, martin, fresh prince of bel air.

[TVFactFan]

Originally Posted by waichingliu81

as good as ADW was and the impact it had on audiences, it annoys me that whenever people mention black sitcoms, they have to mention only ADW and not living single, martin, fresh prince of bel air.

Because Martin, Living Single, was not on the Big Three Networks.

[waichingliu81]

Originally Posted by TVFactFan

Because Martin, Living Single, was not on the Big Three Networks.

that is true. good point.