Programming: Black on the Channels

In the first episode of Julia, a new TV series, the heroine has just lost her husband, a helicopter pilot, in Viet Nam. To raise her six-year-old son, Julia wants to resume her nursing career. She phones a physician and is immediately offered an interview. But she wavers. "Oh," she asks, "did they tell you I'm colored?" "Mm," he replies, "what color are you?" "Wh-hy, I'm Negro." "Oh," says the doctor. "Have you always been a Negro, or are you just trying to be fashionable?"

In TV nowadays, it is not merely fashionable but an absolute advantage to be black. By next season, just about every series will feature a Negro player. NBC, which will carry Julia, has had Diahann Carroll tied up for the title role since March. CBS signed Comic Flip ("Heah come de judge") Wilson for four Ed Sullivan dates next year, but NBC won exclusive rights to him for 1969-70. And CBS is reportedly trying to buy Bill Cosby away from NBC with a 20-year, $20 million deal.

Unfortunately, few of the roles for Negroes that are being so hurriedly written into next fall's shows will have any individuality or credibility. Executive Producer Paul Monash, who next month will bring the first Negro family onto Peyton Place, says: "All the Negroes I've seen on TV are colorless—absolutely devoid of character, humor or idiom. They are prideless Negroes, castrated men and desexed females. These people are really gilded Rochesters."

Occasional Clinch. Seldom do television's blacks have on-screen families, common vices or even sex lives. As Harry Belafonte puts it: "For the shuffling, simple-minded Amos-and-Andy type of Negro, TV has substituted a new, one-dimensional Negro without reality." Rarely does a Negro portray the villain; the networks are fearful of being accused of racism. As a result, the black character in the average TV drama is likely to represent what Belafonte calls either "Super-Negro" or "a button-down Brooks Brothers eunuch."

In Peyton Place (pop. approx. 10,000), the first black will be a neurosurgeon. In NBC's I Spy, Bob Gulp loves his way round the world, while Co-star Bill Cosby enjoys only an occasional clinch—with a black girl.