EthnicMajority

(Los Angeles Times) LMFAO’s head-pounding “Party Rock Anthem” pulsated through North Hollywood’s El Portal Theatre as a multiracial group of young performers stormed the stage, promising in song to provide a lively evening of laughs. They then launched into a rapid-fire parade of sketches filled with gleeful raunch and pokes at racial stereotypes.

The performance had the usual trappings of a night out at any comedy club around town. But little about this invitation-only night was typical. The actors, writers and directors were all amateur, and they were mostly people of color — young blacks, Latinos, Asians, Indians — performing original material they had helped to develop before a crowd of managers, agents and creative executives from major networks and studios.

The event marked the culmination of this year’s CBS Diversity Sketch Comedy Showcase, an annual talent forum that also functions as a three-month boot camp designed to boost the chances of minorities hoping to land roles on TV comedies and dramas.

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(LostRemote) Univision, the leading media company serving Hispanic America, launched a new iPhone app for news called Noticias Univision, which can be downloaded here. Univision Network has a huge reach, serving 97% of US Hispanic households. The app’s main purpose for now will be to deliver their 24/7 news coverage, and later this month users will be able to “report breaking news by uploading photos and videos,” and share their favorite Noticias Univision content with friends and family on Facebook and Twitter, according to their release.

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(The Root) Is Hollywood backsliding when it comes to providing high-quality, realistic roles for African-American women? According to the veteran black film and TV actresses, industry insiders and everyday observers the Daily Beast's Allison Samuels talked to in a piece exploring the issue, the outlook doesn't look great. Check out some highlights of the piece here:

Kim Wayans: I didn’t think we’d still be having this same conversation so many years later … The 90s were so bright and promising for people of color in Hollywood, and I for one thought it would only get better with the chance for me and other black actresses to portray any number of characters and in all types of stories.

Debbie Allen: I remember in the 80s when my sister Phylicia (Rashad) was on the The Cosby Show and I was on Fame, girl, you couldn’t tell me that it wasn’t a brand new day for black women and the way we were portrayed in film and television … No one could have told me we’d go in the complete reverse in the decades to come.

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(Voice of America) For many years, actors whose ancestors came from Asia and the Pacific Islands landed few major roles in Hollywood. And when they did appear, they were often typecast. But recently, the face of Asian Pacific Islanders in film and TV has been changing.

In a recent documentary, “To Whom It May Concern: Ka Shen’s Journey,” actress Nancy Kwan looks back on her life. Ka Shen is her Chinese name. She was born in Hong Kong to a Chinese father and English-Scottish mother.

Kwan made her acting debut in 1960, in "The World of Suzie Wong." She was one of the first Asian actors to star in a Hollywood film.

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(ThyBlackMan.com) The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) has been struggling as of late. That’s not breaking news. Desperate times call for desperate measures and that too is not breaking news. You can best be sure, OWN executives made the announcement of targeting African-American  viewers as a weather balloon, a message in the bottle, smoke signal… call it what you want. This information was released specifically so the network could gauge if there will be any initial uptick in chatter in Black media; how the move is perceived and whether it will translate to expanded viewership.

Be careful what you ask for…

With that in mind, know that Mo’Kelly’s thoughts will also be in their stack of press mentions. OWN president Erik Logan and Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav, I’m speaking to you. 

The inherent selling point of OWN was found in its name, the “Oprah Winfrey Network.” It was to be an extension and expansion of its mogul and namesake’s media vision. People literally the world over love Oprah Winfrey. The  assumption that such love extends to all things related to Oprah, yet not necessarily starring Oprah, has turned out to be a misguided one.

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(Huffington Post) The nation's first free broadcast network targeting African-American audiences arrived in the nation's fourth-largest media market on Thursday.

Atlanta-based Bounce TV is an over-the-air free channel supported by sponsors and is geared toward black viewers ages 25 to 54. Unlike cable channels, Bounce TV is one of a growing number of networks carried on the broadcast digital signals of local television stations.

Bounce TV executives – among them Martin Luther King III and former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador Andrew Young – said the new network's targeted demographic is vastly underserved and hungers for positive programming that speaks to them.

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(Huffington Post) Slowly, the entertainment industry is taking notice that Latinos are a demographic force to be taken seriously.

In baby steps, tiny foot-dragging steps, Hollywood seems to be moving away from the days when the principal roles available to Latinos were either those of the sultry femme fatale or the dark-haired, language-mangling villain.

For Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas, their star power has delivered them to the point where their heavily-accented voices alone are being relied on to carry a film.

Case in point: "Puss in Boots," the sixth collaboration by the Mexican and Spanish heartthrobs, premiers in the United States Friday. It is their first animated film together.

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(Kansas City Star) It's rare that a week goes by where I don't catch an old episode of "The Cosby Show."

I talk about the Huxtables a lot. During "The Cosby Show's" eight-year run, it was one of the most-watched shows on television, breaking stereotypes as it introduced America to the black, educated, upper-middle class.

I used to talk about it because of the main characters' careers. Cliff is a successful doctor, and Clair is a big-time lawyer. The couple taught their kids the importance of education and culture. To say it had a big effect on me is an understatement.

But more and more, I find myself watching the show because I appreciate the relationship between Cliff and Clair. You just don't see black marriage on television anymore unless you're watching old episodes of "My Wife and Kids," "Everybody Hates Chris" or "Good Times." Oh wait, I guess there's "The Cleveland Show," the lone black family on network television. And they're animated. It's sad.

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(The Root) The near-whiteout at the 2011 Emmy Awards drew criticism from The Root and other sources. But the problem for this show, or for its sibling, the Oscars, is about who the directors are. Producers hire directors, and the directors decide who and what goes on the screen. But Hollywood's overwhelmingly white male producers rarely hire blacks, Latinos, Asians or women of any background as directors. 

A new Directors Guild of America report shows how woeful the record is, but it's the same news — just a different day. The report analyzed more than 2,600 episodes produced in the 2010-2011 television season for more than 170 scripted television series shown on broadcast TV, basic cable and premium cable. The shows were produced by production companies including ABC, CBS, Fox, HBO, NBC, Sony and Warner Bros.

White males directed 77 percent of the shows, and white females directed 11 percent of the episodes. Minority males directed 11 percent, and minority females directed 1 percent. The racial and gender near-shutout was more striking for one-hour series, in which white males directed 80 percent of episodes.

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(Multichannel.com) Comcast's international-content director assured a panel of Hispanic programmers that the top cable operator will bring in new Spanish-language channels, though those channels are not likely to break into the broadest digital tiers.

"Some difficult decisions will be made on the programming slate," Homer Gonzalez III said during a distribution-focused discussion in which he was the only distributor represented.

Responding to a comment by Imagina U.S.'s programming & distribution VP Antonio Briceno that some networks that initially helped populate Hispanic tiers several years ago were still on those tiers, leaving no room for newcomers "new channels and new ideas," Gonzalez said over the last several months he has been studying hundreds of pages of ratings data, independent focus-group reports and other information about Spanish-language channels.

"What I can assure you of is that Comcast's Hispanic programming slate will not be static," Gonzalez said. "Right now I have 60 channels. Hopefully I can put more out there. But in the absence of more bandwidth being out there I have to optimize and keep my package relevant … You should anticipate changes in the Hispanic programming slate to bring more value to those Hispanic subscribers that we try to service."

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