“It's color-blind casting,” says Sony Pictures TV casting director Dawn Steinberg. “There used to be a time when it had to be written that way to look for an actor with a specific ethnicity. Now it's just who is the best actor for the role.”
But when trying to sell overseas, American shows are finding the color barrier is still there. Why? Insiders say it's because international audiences have yet to truly embrace diversity on the small screen. "These shows are a reflection of our society, but [they are] not a reflection of all societies," says Marion Edwards, president of international TV at Fox.
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“I love the show and we took a big risk on it. But our courage was not rewarded,” says Rudiger Boss, head of acquisitions at ProSiebenSat.1, which bought Empirefor German TV.
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Adds Edwards: "Having a diverse cast creates another hurdle for U.S. series trying to break through; it would be foolish not to recognize that. We are telling our units that they need to be aware that by creating too much diversity in the leads in their show means … problems having their shows translating to the international market."
The diversity issue comes at a particularly perilous time for U.S. television studios because foreign outlets increasingly are creating their own shows or buying from producers in their region. American series simply aren't as popular as they used to be. This is significant because international sales can provide significant revenue. A 2013 study by U.K. group Digital TV Research estimated the sale of U.S. drama series to European television generated $5.4 billion for U.S. rights holders, $1 billion less than in 2008.
But it would be simplistic to call viewers in Europe, Canada or Asia racist. Edwards points to global juggernauts NCIS and CSI “two hugely popular shows, both of which have had versions with diverse actors as major characters, without hurting their performance internationally.” The Digital TV Research study appears to confirm this, noting that NCIS generated $205 million in revenue for CBS from sales to Europe in 2012, making it the most valuable imported series.CSI was second on the list, with an estimated $188 million in revenue from European TV sales.
Edwards also notes the success of The Cosby Show “which broke all the rules of international television: a half-hour comedy, with a black cast. And it translated everywhere,” she says. “It was the same thing with The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”
“Those shows and the success of the original Roots mini-series proved there is an interest in black stories abroad,” says Timothy Havens, a professor in African-American studies at the University of Iowa and author of Black Television Travels: African American Media around the Globe. “But the pattern we've seen, again and again, is that black shows break new ground that white shows benefit from. So Roots was followed by a number of white miniseries that were very successful abroad, Fresh Prince by white youth-oriented shows.”
A broader issue on the international television market is the difference in viewing habits between U.S. audiences, who have largely embraced complicated story-telling and non-generic drama formats, and international viewers, at least those watching on mainstream channels, who prefer traditional, episodic TV of theNCIS, CSI variety.
"Diversity is an issue with our audience, but it's also the kind of shows coming out of the U.S. now -- almost everything is serial, with long multi-episode story arcs, [and] that doesn't work for us," says Philipp Steffens, head of drama at RTL, Germany's leading commercial network. Out of necessity, RTL in 2015 signed a deal with French network TF1 and NBCUniversal International Television Production to directly produce U.S. series themselves with a European audience in mind. The initial plan sees the financing of two development cycles with a target of producing three series over the next two years.
Says Steffens, "We're hoping the deal will mean we'll get the kind of shows we used to from the U.S."
