Pretty Much Pop #19 Discusses Race and the Target Audience w/ Rodney Ramsey

We’ve all felt at var­i­ous points (maybe at most points) that some media cre­ation has reached us by mis­take, that we are not the tar­get audi­ence. 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can TV was aimed large­ly at a white major­i­ty, with a par­al­lel, under­fund­ed chan­nel of con­tent aimed at peo­ple of col­or.

So how have things changed? There still seem to be “black shows,” but how do they fit in to a land­scape where inclu­sive­ness is a tool by which shows attempt to appeal to every­one (i.e. get all the mon­ey)? Comedian/actor/writer/producer Rod­ney Ram­sey joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing out­side your demo­graph­ic, whether iden­ti­fy­ing with char­ac­ters requires phys­i­cal com­mon­al­i­ties, “black voice,” and the evolv­ing TV land­scape.

We touch on Watch­men, Atlanta, Black Pan­ther, Inse­cure, Sor­ry to Both­er You, BlacK­kKlans­man, Tyler Per­ry, Dear White Peo­ple, Black Jesus, and the black Her­mi­none issue.

Some of the arti­cles we con­sid­ered includ­ed:

• “What Does It Mean to ‘Sound’ Black?” by Han­nah Gior­gis
• “A Racial Divide Widens on Net­work TV” by James Str­ern­gold (in 1998!)
•  “Why White Peo­ple Don’t Like Black Movies” by Andre See­wood (2014)
•  “Mov­ing Beyond Audi­ence Seg­men­ta­tion: What Mar­keters Can Learn from Post-Demo­graph­ic Con­sumerism” by Lau­ren McMen­e­my

Fol­low Rod­ney @Rodney_Ramsey.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.