EthnicMajority

(Christian Science Monitor) While watching Melissa Harris-Perry debut her own show on MSNBC last weekend, I found myself reacting with a sort of battered awe: A woman of color, hosting a serious show on a serious cable-news channel? Another glass ceiling, shattered.

Ms. Harris-Perry is the first African American woman to ever solo-host a news and politics show on a major television outlet. But here’s another eureka coup: She’s a tenured professor of political science at Tulane University in New Orleans.

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(Huffington Post) Though ESPN apologized for referring to Jeremy Lin as "Chink in the Armor" Friday night, an Asian-American civil rights organization isn't satisfied with the response.

ESPN changed the headline, and apologized, but the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, an organization that promotes civil rights for Asian Americans, wants the network to do even more.

In a statement posted its site, the AALDEF said that the term used was "inexcusable" and wants ESPN to apologize on air so that "it is clear to all viewers that this racist language is unacceptable."

The AALDEF offered to meet with the network to help educate its staff and establish procedures to prevent such slurs from appearing in their work.

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(Contact Music) Former couple Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez's new talent contest has found an English-language TV home on the U.S. network which airs her American Idol show.

Fox executives have snapped up the English-language version of Latin America-based series, Q'Viva! The Chosen, and the first episode will air on 3 March (12).

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(Inquisitr) Walt Disney Co and Univision Communications are currently engaged in talks that would bring a new English language 24-hour cable news channel aimed at a Hispanic audience.

The inside source that revealed the talks to Reuters has not revealed specifics but has cautioned that the deal is far from completed and could still unravel at any time.

The move is seen as a way for the newspaper to capture an ever changing demographic of U.S. Hispanic viewers and to reach a growing number of English specific people of Hispanic origins.

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(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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