| Summary: | Television scholarship has substantially ignored programming aimed at Black audiences despite a few sweeping histories and critiques. In this volume, contributors examine the televisual diversity, complexity, and cultural imperatives manifest in programming directed at a Black and marginalized audience. This book considers its subject from an entirely new angle in an attempt to understand the lives, motivations, distinctions, kindred lines, and individuality of various Black groups and suggests what television might be like if such diversity permeated beyond specialized enclaves. It looks at the macro structures of ownership, producing, casting, and advertising that all inform production, and then delves into television programming crafted to appeal to black audiences--historic and contemporary, domestic and worldwide. Chapters rethink such historically significant programs as Roots and Black Journal, such seemingly innocuous programs as Fat Albert and bro'Town, and such contemporary and culturally complicated programs as Noah's Arc, Treme, and The Boondocks. The book makes a case for the centrality of these programs while always recognizing the racial dynamics that continue to shape Black representation on the small screen. Painting a decidedly introspective portrait across forty years of Black television, this book sheds light on under-examined demographics, broadens common audience considerations, and gives deference to the preferences of audiences and producers of Black-targeted programming.--Publisher's description.
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