TELEVISION: TV'S BLACK FLIGHT

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There's a standard explanation that white-run companies employ when they are taken to task for having homogeneous work forces. "Hey," upper-level management types will say, "we looked for qualified folks. There just were no black candidates." It's the old "N.B.C." answer, and in the face of a historic turnabout, the National Broadcasting Co. happens to be using said answer to defend its just-announced fall season. NBC, the network that broadcast the pioneering Cosby Show in the '80s, the network that carried the Nat King Cole Show in the 1950s when virtually no advertisers were willing to sponsor a variety show hosted by a black man, will not have a single minority-themed series in its fall lineup. A fluke? Don Ohlmeyer, president of NBC West Coast, says the simple fact is none of the ethnic shows they had in development were good enough to air. "To look deeper," he adds, "is an attempt to attribute false cause and effect."

Indeed, failed pilots are hardly news. But is there a more complicated explanation than NBC's N.B.C. answer? Perhaps. TV seems to be undergoing a racial restructuring, a kind of ethnic perestroika. The four biggest networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, which finished announcing their prime-time fall lineups last week, appear to be turning away from minority programming. CBS will have only one black-themed show next fall, a new Bill Cosby sitcom. ABC will have only the aging sitcom Family Matters and the new sitcom Common Law, with Latino stand-up Greg Giraldo. Fox, once a bastion of black comedy, is down to Martin, Living Single and the multiracial drama New York Undercover. All told, that's six minority-themed shows on the Big Four networks. Three years ago, there were 12.

Today the networks are scheduling either all-white shows (the sitcoms Friends, Seinfeld, Ellen and Mad About You are set in urban centers, but the only thing black on them is the coffee) or, increasingly, shows with multiethnic ensemble casts, like the NBC dramas ER and Homicide or Fox's new sitcom Lush Life, which stars two female friends, one white and one black, as does ABC 's new Clueless. A significant number of minorities still appear on TV, but they are only intermittently at the center of the action.

However, the two newer, smaller networks, the upstart United Paramount Network and the Warner Bros. channel, are embracing minority-themed programming as a way of differentiating themselves from the bigger, established players in the TV game. In a classic case of counterprogramming, the two mininetworks will between them air 11 ethnic-themed shows in the fall--nearly twice the big-network total. Some of them star familiar names like Sherman Hemsley, Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Robin Givens. One, UPN's Homeboys in Outer Space, is a must-see for the high-concept title alone. Some are refugees from the Big Four: Moesha, an urban sitcom starring teen singer Brandy Norwood, was developed for CBS, but after the network passed, UPN put it on the air in January and saw it blossom into a moderate hit.