Black Sitcom Update (and It's Not Good)

About 8 years ago I posted an article asking why in the hell A Different World had been the last last black sitcom that was a national Nielsons hit, over 20 years earlier:

In his essential memoir depicting his life in the TV-writing trenches, Billion-Dollar Kiss, Jeffrey Stepakoff gives the most succinct answer to a perpetual question in television circles: Whatever happened to the black sitcom? In the ’70s, series like The Jeffersons, Sanford & Son, and Good Times were Nielsen mainstays, all with either black leads or predominantly black casts. Even more sitcoms featured prominent black characters, often navigating or dealing with a white world. This was all prelude, of course, to the popularity of The Cosby Show, one of the most-watched programs in television history and one that spawned both popular imitators—Family Matters—and a popular sitcom in A Different World. Yet A Different World is the last program with a predominantly black cast to land in the top 10 of the Nielsens, and it seems entirely possible it will hold that title for as long as television continues to exist. Through the ’90s, black sitcoms migrated first to Fox, then to The WB and UPN, and finally to cable outlets like TBS, instead of their once prominent homes on the original “big three” networks. Why?

And today that question is updated: what's taken so long for black sitcoms to join streaming platforms?

The ’90s and early aughts was a particularly ripe decade for black sitcoms. Often described as a golden age for storytelling centered on African American lives, the era produced hits such as “Martin,” “In Living Color,” “The Fresh Prince,” “Moesha,” “The Jamie Foxx Show,” “Sister Sister,” “Half and Half,” “The Bernie Mac Show,” “The Steve Harvey Show,” “The Hughleys,” “Girlfriends” and a dozen more debuting on major networks. But in the years since, the vast majority of these popular shows have gone the way of the dodo.  But most of the vast vault of this specific cultural history is nowhere to be found on the major established streaming platforms fans engage with most. The core of the issue, according to Alfred L. Martin Jr., assistant professor of media studies at the University of Iowa, is that blackness is often cast by the mainstream as “extraordinarily culturally specific,” so then the shows that resonate for the black demographic writ large are defined as “niche” and therefore not as palatable for wide-ranging audiences. 

Fucking crazy. There are so many great black sitcoms, and it's a shame that generation after generation we're ensuring they languish in obscurity.