The merger of UPN and The WB into The CW, which debuts later this year, will likely result in fewer black- and urban-themed sitcoms, says Suzanne C. Ryan of The Boston Globe, and that's bad new.
Based on industry interviews, Ryan predicts at least seven such programs from UPN alone will disappear because of the merger. Jannette Dates, dean of the School of Communications at Howard
University, calls the potential cancellations a "travesty" because the black middle class already isn't represented much on television. "Sure, some of those shows were silly sitcom fare, but at least
they tried to dive into issues that other shows never touched. 'All of Us' just had a [black] male character confronted with the fact that his son wanted to use the 'N-word.' They explored why that
was such a moment of tension for everybody." Where will black audiences go when some of their favorite TV shows are cancelled? Ryan reports that several of the shows may end up at BET. That's
great news for both that network, which programs for a black audience, and its audience. "If I was still a producer, I would be frustrated," says Redinald Hudlin, head of programming at BET. "Now
that I'm a programmer, I say thank you. I will gladly take that audience. They will free up millions of eyeballs to watch BET."
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