Black on the Channels

In the first episode of Julia, a new TV series, the heroine has just lost her husband, a helicopter pilot, in Viet Nam. To raise her six-year-old son, Julia wants to resume her nursing career. She phones a physician and is immediately offered an interview. But she wavers. "Oh," she asks, "did they tell you I'm colored?" "Mm," he replies, "what color are you?" "Wh-hy, I'm Negro." "Oh," says the doctor. "Have you always been a Negro, or are you just trying to be fashionable?"

In TV nowadays, it is not merely fashionable but an absolute advantage to be black. By next season, just about every series will feature a Negro player. NBC, which will carry Julia, has had Diahann Carroll tied up for the title role since March. CBS signed Comic Flip ("Heah come de judge") Wilson for four Ed Sullivan dates next year, but NBC won exclusive rights to him for 1969-70. And CBS is reportedly trying to buy Bill Cosby away from NBC with a 20-year, $20 million deal.

Unfortunately, few of the roles for Negroes that are being so hurriedly written into next fall's shows will have any individuality or credibility. Executive Producer Paul Monash, who next month will bring the first Negro family onto Peyton Place, says: "All the Negroes I've seen on TV are colorless--absolutely devoid of character, humor or idiom. They are prideless Negroes, castrated men and desexed females. These people are really gilded Rochesters."

Occasional Clinch. Seldom do television's blacks have on-screen families, common vices or even sex lives. As Harry Belafonte puts it: "For the shuffling, simple-minded Amos-and-Andy type of Negro, TV has substituted a new, one-dimensional Negro without reality." Rarely does a Negro portray the villain; the networks are fearful of being accused of racism. As a result, the black character in the average TV drama is likely to represent what Belafonte calls either "Super-Negro" or "a button-down Brooks Brothers eunuch."

In Peyton Place (pop. approx. 10,000), the first black will be a neurosurgeon. In NBC's I Spy, Bob Gulp loves his way round the world, while Co-star Bill Cosby enjoys only an occasional clinch--with a black girl.

Though Diahann Carroll's Julia is one of the first series to have Negro writers, she doubts that Negroes will be able to identify with her. But she hopes at least that whites will for once see a believable black on TV. Says she: "I'd like a couple million of them to watch and say, 'Hey, so that's what they do when they go home at night.' " Preferential Treatment. The attempt to add black to the TV spectrum is not confined to entertainment shows. Net works and stations all over the country have started a hunt for black reporters, film men and technicians. In the past few weeks, TV channels in New Orleans, Miami and St. Paul have added Negro staffers. They are not easy to find since, as in so many other fields, too few Negroes have had training. Many stations are offering on-the-job experience to likely prospects and giving preferential treatment to black applicants. Network-level Negroes include ABC's U.N. Correspondent Mai Goode and some top local newscasters on network-affiliated stations, such as Bob Teague and Gil Noble in New York, Bill Matney and Les Brownlee in Chicago, and Mel Knox in San Francisco.

It is through news and public-affairs programming that TV has made its greatest impact on racial matters. The industry cliche of the month is "tell it like it is." The National Education Television network and individual stations in at least three U.S. cities have worked up programs using variants of that phrase for a title. One production is aimed at the Negro audience; the others explain the ghettos' problems to the white world. CBS is preparing a history and cultural series tracing the U.S. Negro back to the time of the slave traders. ABC last week announced a sixpart exploration of racism in the U.S. Next fall on NBC, Bell Telephone will drop its music specials in favor of documentaries on the urban crisis.

Identity Search. Within three weeks, some 55 U.S. channels will forgo their prime-time schedule for a Westinghouse Broadcasting Corp. program called One Nation, Indivisible, a 3-to 31-hour inquiry into the race problem. Sixteen citizens, including a Bible-quoting white minister, a policeman and a housewife P.T.A. president, quietly discuss their feelings--and biases. In contrast to the fiery confrontations between white bigots and black militants that are all the rage on many public affairs shows, the Westinghouse production is an unsensational, subtle and at the same time shattering view of the unconscious prejudice prevalent in the U.S.

By coincidence, a five-day series on the same subject also bearing the title One Nation, Indivisible begins midweek for high school audiences on 140 Public TV stations. NET and the three commercial networks all contributed to the project. In NET's Journal series, two powerful programs in the past month chronicled the search for black identity among the Negro middle class and university students. This week the subject is racism in suburbia, with a revealing case study of Mount Vernon, N.Y.

Individual stations are also dealing increasingly with the race question. On Minneapolis' WTCN, Let's Talk--A Black and White Dialogue is staging a candid examination of the difficulties of living off welfare. Houston's KPRC continues a similar series with a discussion of the role of the police. Chicago's WTTW has just launched a lively Today-type show called Our People. Guests include Negro entertainers, Legal Aid staffers who tell viewers their rights in dealing with ghetto merchants, and city officials who are grilled on Negro grievances.

Next month NET will broadcast a similar nationwide show, Black Journal. In discussing such plans at a recent NET affiliates meeting in Manhattan, the program manager of one station took the floor to complain: "You are going too fast for our primarily white middle-class audience. After all, TV is still largely an escapist medium. They don't want to be reminded of all that stuff."

Responded NET Program Director William Kobin: "You're wrong. We're not going fast enough."

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