gavin, you wrote a great peek in 2012 in the logic behind hollywood s resistance to black entertainment. which was a sort of i think a different cultural moment then. but why has it been difficult at other periods for films that are about folks that aren t white to get made or tv shows? that s really simple. people have a tendency to want to make film product about things that they really understand, and that they connect to. unfortunately, and wrongly, the people who run major entertainment companies, in the big media conglomerates, are generally a very homogenous group of white people who come from upper and middle class backgrounds and have similar points of view. therefore, their world view is very different from that of the market. and i think it not only is bad because it doesn t represent america properly on screen, but it s also bad economically, because 30% of the audience is not white, or more. and they actually go and buy
paying attention to. part of what s driving part of this is the tremendous success, i think first of scandal and then empire. gavin, what always strikes me about people that are in the position of being executives in television, or movies or anything, is that they have this sense they ve gotten there because they ve figured out what the audience wants. no one actually knows what the audience wants. people throw stuff on the air, some of it works, and some of it doesn t. empire comes along, and people are like holy smokes right? unfortunately that happens not because there s not been that much forethought, it s just an anomaly. as it comes through, people are saying, wait a second black people watch television. i do think that you have to look at this period right now, where there seems to be more progress. a lot of it is really due to one woman, who is just a good writer. and she created a show which became a huge hit, which is grey s anatomy, which was not particularly, not nece