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PRIME TIME BLUES by Donald Bogle

PRIME TIME BLUES

African Americans on Network Television

by Donald Bogle

Pub Date: Feb. 1st, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-23720-4
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

An exhaustively documented history of the changes African-American actors have experienced in television since its beginnings.

Bogle (Dorothy Dandridge, not reviewed) begins in 1950 when television was young, the rate for a 60-second commercial was a mere $1,510, and only six million sets had been sold nationwide. Things soon changed abruptly: by 1951 there were over 16 million televisions, advertising costs had soared, and corporations competed to sponsor popular shows. The author notes that early shows like Beulah and Amos ’n’ Andy still celebrated such racial stereotypes as saucy maids and irresponsible males. The medium was not yet ready for regular appearances of “serious or more complicated African American characters.” During the 1960s, new images of African-Americans emerged, as the civil-rights struggle and its leaders came to dominate national news. Quite suddenly, African-American actors began appearing in more substantive roles: Bill Cosby in I Spy, Greg Morris in Mission: Impossible, and Diahann Carroll with her own show, Julia. As television matured, black actors were given more opportunities to display a range of characters and types, but primetime programs still failed to “present African cultural references and perspectives.” As Bogle charts these developments, he also notes the changes in television itself: the introduction of cable, made-for-TV movies, and new networks like Fox. He also details the rise of such black stars as Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby, who are popular with blacks and whites alike. Cautiously hopeful for the century ahead, he is encouraged by the way African-American performers have used “their fierce talents to tell a story . . . that transcends television’s myths and misconceptions about African Americans.”

Sometimes the message gets lost in the accumulation of detail about the medium, but a useful record as well as a timely history.