The Decline of Ethnic Oriented TV Shows

As an aspiring actor and writer that has a keen interest in politics, social economics, ethnic culture, current events, and so forth, I have seen a lot of different TV shows within the past few years. Frankly, while I like watching other shows I'm very much dissatisfied with a bunch of others. As a minority living in the United States, I have seen minority based TV shows especially sitcoms go on the decline.

Shows that had minority characters have seemed to have been axed later down the line. Doing research on the shows currently airing on various TV networks (MTV, NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, and CW), I found a disturbing trend in their decline. As a result, I keep seeing more reality TV shows or some other TV show pop up in its place. Gathering this information, it seems that this information needs to be brought into the light.

Within the early 1990s to the start of the year 2000, there were plenty of Black sitcoms that were pretty decent. None of them had portrayed blacks as the stereotypical "thugs" and "gang bangers". I remember watching sitcoms such as "The Cosby Show", "A Different World", "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", "Family Matters", "Cosby", "The Jamie Foxx Show", "Martin", and "In The House".

I remember In The House being a spin-off from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. If not a spin-off, both shows were in the same world with each other. Still, the two of them were great sitcoms. Fresh Prince starred A-list actor Will Smith before he started going into major big screen movies. It revolved around Will who was forced to move out to Los Angeles to live with his family in the secure neighborhood of Bel-Air after getting into a fight back home in Philadelphia. There were so many things that were funny about these episodes and most of the time Will's line of thinking usually put him at odds with his Uncle Phil who's a federal judge.