While I certainly won't opine on whether Bob and David's latest will be a ratings winner (how well did Mr. Show do?). IO can say that anything from that team will be goo. I even enjoyed the Run Ronnie Run abortion.
I think the problem is that while the people who love the duo REALLY enjoy them, it's not necessarily a huge audience. And that affects the decision making by the networks. Despite Cross's complaints, I don't think it's a marketing problem. It's a problem of how big the audience might be for the show.
Please stop reinforcing the aggressive industry storyline that white male tv writers are NOT being displaced by DEI hiring policies, that they are not actually losing jobs, and that when they do lose work it is only due to their own mediocrity. This is a lie — a well-intentioned lie sugar-coated in the feel-good of Hollywood’s self-congratulatory cultural politics, but absolute bullshit nonetheless. Just look at the changing numbers in the various annual employment reports — CAA puts out one, as does the UCLA Department of Social Sciences and the Annenberg School at USC. Despite the vested interest of these earnest folks in the diversity industrial complex to keep shading their statistics toward a narrative of oppression, big strides have clearly been made in recent years on behalf of traditionally under-represented groups. While it’s true that the top tier of TV creatives continues — same as it ever was — to be white and male (and largely Jewish — a statistic which no organization is EVER going to publicly cite) the middle ranks of white males have been gutted by new hiring practices put firmly in place since 2020. After decades of ineffectual diversity lip-service the entertainment business saw the George Floyd protests and decided that the mounting pressure for change was too great to further ignore. The time had come to mollify this simmering mass of criticism and win a few cultural brownie points as well. Hollywood’s various Top Bobs in their top jobs acted in uncharacteristic unison. Of course all of these big guys at the CEO level are still white men. Their magnanimity did not extend as far as actually stepping aside themselves (at least until several were ultimately forced out by #MeToo or incompetence), but they skillfully scattered a handful of women and BIPOC executives into conspicuous C-suite jobs, promoting them out of the middle ranks at networks and studios where women especially had actually long been the dominant foot-soldiers. But the true watershed occurred in the middle ranks among the white male tv writer-producers. Overall Deals for white male showrunners (except for those in the J.J. Abrams and Ryan Murphy stratosphere) dried up overnight in 2020 and strict policies now enforced hiring preferences that overwhelmingly favored women and anyone who could call themselves a minority. A great-grandfather from Spain? Sure. How about being vaguely Middle-Eastern? Does Armenian count as POC? I’m in a wheelchair? Fine. I’m gay? Hmm, not so much. Mixed-race writers who had “passed” for years suddenly rediscovered their cultural roots — with “Andy” becoming “D’Andre,” and women re-embracing their more ethnic-sounding maiden names. And it worked. Industry employment for these groups shot up. New kinds of stories being told by new kinds of storytellers surged on the networks and burgeoning streaming platforms. According to the aforementioned industry reports, in 2022 “under-represented” black writers now found themselves wildly OVER-represented in the tv business (not so much in movies), making up 12% of the general U.S. population but holding 23% of all tv writing jobs. Black over-representation in acting jobs is an even higher figure at roughly 28%. This black over-dominance gets buried a little in these data by skillfully lumping African Americans into a general “minority” employment category alongside Latinos who are still woefully underrepresented compared to their population numbers. But the true innovation of the past four years is the ousting of white males from the middle creative ranks — down 18% according to Annenberg. This is a fact, not some comforting sop offered to clients by their agents and managers. There are absolutely fewer jobs now available to white male writers (also producers and directors), and as they age out of our industry they’re being replaced with something other than white males — to the extent that these jobs are actually being replaced. Employment of baby writers at the staff writer level shows even greater losses for those who are penised and melanin-challenged — down 40% from hiring figures in 2015. So please don’t continue reinforcing the great industry lie that this isn’t happening, and that when someone gets passed over for work it’s their own fault — they’re just not as talented as the woman or BIPOC writer who got the gig. There are other forces at work here. But it doesn’t seem enough to just displace and disparage our beleaguered white males. Further insult has to be added on top of the injury, their purge being greeted with celebratory contempt throughout Hollywood and its related media. Search the term “mediocre white male” and you will find multiple quotes from the current ascendant femme and POC tastemakers and bosses expressing sheer delight at this blood-letting (one presumes out of pent-up rage after decades being pawed and condescended to by their cocksure white-boy bosses). “Stale, pale and male” is openly jeered in the corridors of power these days when the notion of hiring a man-writer gets proposed. “Oh, boo-hoo! Some over-privileged white guys have lost their over-privilege.” Yes, absolutely. No need to send a fruit bouquet. This is a business. And it’s never been a pure meritocracy. Every moment spent working as a writer in tv is a fragile privilege. Nobody is owed a fat-paying job where they are given millions of somebody else’s money to turn their tiny imaginings into entertainment for the masses. Instead we must all excitedly embrace the inspiring new content now coming our way from this new flood of new voices welcomed into the fold since 2020. But what content exactly? Has the new golden age arrived yet? Did I miss something while I was playing Fortnight? Can we really pretend that the tv of now is actually better than it was back before the great and glorious purge of white dudes? There are some really good things, certainly, but generally over-all? Or is it possible that our enlightened corporate gatekeepers have simply replaced a generation of mediocre white male tv writers with a new crop of mediocrities who aren’t quite ready for prime-time?
All DEI policies do is open the door for people. The hiring process up until recently has favored white males. A lot of that is not due to any racist intent, but to the systems for hiring that existed. Rethinking how to attract talent merely caused more people of color to be considered. So, to get to your point, most of these white guys have not been hired because they weren't good enough.
While I certainly won't opine on whether Bob and David's latest will be a ratings winner (how well did Mr. Show do?). IO can say that anything from that team will be goo. I even enjoyed the Run Ronnie Run abortion.
I think the problem is that while the people who love the duo REALLY enjoy them, it's not necessarily a huge audience. And that affects the decision making by the networks. Despite Cross's complaints, I don't think it's a marketing problem. It's a problem of how big the audience might be for the show.
Please stop reinforcing the aggressive industry storyline that white male tv writers are NOT being displaced by DEI hiring policies, that they are not actually losing jobs, and that when they do lose work it is only due to their own mediocrity. This is a lie — a well-intentioned lie sugar-coated in the feel-good of Hollywood’s self-congratulatory cultural politics, but absolute bullshit nonetheless. Just look at the changing numbers in the various annual employment reports — CAA puts out one, as does the UCLA Department of Social Sciences and the Annenberg School at USC. Despite the vested interest of these earnest folks in the diversity industrial complex to keep shading their statistics toward a narrative of oppression, big strides have clearly been made in recent years on behalf of traditionally under-represented groups. While it’s true that the top tier of TV creatives continues — same as it ever was — to be white and male (and largely Jewish — a statistic which no organization is EVER going to publicly cite) the middle ranks of white males have been gutted by new hiring practices put firmly in place since 2020. After decades of ineffectual diversity lip-service the entertainment business saw the George Floyd protests and decided that the mounting pressure for change was too great to further ignore. The time had come to mollify this simmering mass of criticism and win a few cultural brownie points as well. Hollywood’s various Top Bobs in their top jobs acted in uncharacteristic unison. Of course all of these big guys at the CEO level are still white men. Their magnanimity did not extend as far as actually stepping aside themselves (at least until several were ultimately forced out by #MeToo or incompetence), but they skillfully scattered a handful of women and BIPOC executives into conspicuous C-suite jobs, promoting them out of the middle ranks at networks and studios where women especially had actually long been the dominant foot-soldiers. But the true watershed occurred in the middle ranks among the white male tv writer-producers. Overall Deals for white male showrunners (except for those in the J.J. Abrams and Ryan Murphy stratosphere) dried up overnight in 2020 and strict policies now enforced hiring preferences that overwhelmingly favored women and anyone who could call themselves a minority. A great-grandfather from Spain? Sure. How about being vaguely Middle-Eastern? Does Armenian count as POC? I’m in a wheelchair? Fine. I’m gay? Hmm, not so much. Mixed-race writers who had “passed” for years suddenly rediscovered their cultural roots — with “Andy” becoming “D’Andre,” and women re-embracing their more ethnic-sounding maiden names. And it worked. Industry employment for these groups shot up. New kinds of stories being told by new kinds of storytellers surged on the networks and burgeoning streaming platforms. According to the aforementioned industry reports, in 2022 “under-represented” black writers now found themselves wildly OVER-represented in the tv business (not so much in movies), making up 12% of the general U.S. population but holding 23% of all tv writing jobs. Black over-representation in acting jobs is an even higher figure at roughly 28%. This black over-dominance gets buried a little in these data by skillfully lumping African Americans into a general “minority” employment category alongside Latinos who are still woefully underrepresented compared to their population numbers. But the true innovation of the past four years is the ousting of white males from the middle creative ranks — down 18% according to Annenberg. This is a fact, not some comforting sop offered to clients by their agents and managers. There are absolutely fewer jobs now available to white male writers (also producers and directors), and as they age out of our industry they’re being replaced with something other than white males — to the extent that these jobs are actually being replaced. Employment of baby writers at the staff writer level shows even greater losses for those who are penised and melanin-challenged — down 40% from hiring figures in 2015. So please don’t continue reinforcing the great industry lie that this isn’t happening, and that when someone gets passed over for work it’s their own fault — they’re just not as talented as the woman or BIPOC writer who got the gig. There are other forces at work here. But it doesn’t seem enough to just displace and disparage our beleaguered white males. Further insult has to be added on top of the injury, their purge being greeted with celebratory contempt throughout Hollywood and its related media. Search the term “mediocre white male” and you will find multiple quotes from the current ascendant femme and POC tastemakers and bosses expressing sheer delight at this blood-letting (one presumes out of pent-up rage after decades being pawed and condescended to by their cocksure white-boy bosses). “Stale, pale and male” is openly jeered in the corridors of power these days when the notion of hiring a man-writer gets proposed. “Oh, boo-hoo! Some over-privileged white guys have lost their over-privilege.” Yes, absolutely. No need to send a fruit bouquet. This is a business. And it’s never been a pure meritocracy. Every moment spent working as a writer in tv is a fragile privilege. Nobody is owed a fat-paying job where they are given millions of somebody else’s money to turn their tiny imaginings into entertainment for the masses. Instead we must all excitedly embrace the inspiring new content now coming our way from this new flood of new voices welcomed into the fold since 2020. But what content exactly? Has the new golden age arrived yet? Did I miss something while I was playing Fortnight? Can we really pretend that the tv of now is actually better than it was back before the great and glorious purge of white dudes? There are some really good things, certainly, but generally over-all? Or is it possible that our enlightened corporate gatekeepers have simply replaced a generation of mediocre white male tv writers with a new crop of mediocrities who aren’t quite ready for prime-time?
All DEI policies do is open the door for people. The hiring process up until recently has favored white males. A lot of that is not due to any racist intent, but to the systems for hiring that existed. Rethinking how to attract talent merely caused more people of color to be considered. So, to get to your point, most of these white guys have not been hired because they weren't good enough.
Just an FYI that When Calls the Heart is airing new episodes on Sunday nights.
I haven't seen you include it in the "WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND THIS WEEKEND" section.