Non-core Post 2 – The Black-ish and NFL Debate

I stumbled across this article on ABC shelving an episode of Black-ish over the national anthem and NFL debate that was supposed to be aired the last week of February. I found it to be an interesting article to debate upon because it touches on many things we have discussed in the past few weeks and the representation of race and gender in primetime television. While the official reason given by ABC is 'creative differences', it pales against the topics that were to be discussed within the episode – an argument over the rights of athletes to kneel during the performance of the national anthem at football game being a major plot point. Considering that Black-ish has become a highly rated show that has been praised for raising multiple political and social issues, what does this mean in the tug-of-war between studios and showrunners? I would love to discuss this in class tomorrow.

You can read the article here – http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/abc-shelves-blackish-political-1202722980/