The Cleveland Show and the sorry state of black television

 The news of "The Cleveland Show" getting a second season is bittersweet actually.

 Seth McFarlane's "Family Guy" spinoff "The Clevelend Show" was a hit and its returning for a second season. Great news right? Especially in a television landscape where there are so few predominantly black casted television shows. And Cleveland marked perhaps the first time a black cartoon family was in primetime.

It's a little sad though because that season Cleveland was the only minority lead character for a television show. Is this the best we can do?

 This isn't to knock Cleveland, I enjoy the show. It's just a little sad that in 2010 when we've got a black president and plenty of black entertainers that the only representation we're seeing of the black or any minority family on primetime television comes in the form of a African American cartoon family. We can consider "The Boondocks" and the Tyler Perry franchise of TBS television shows, "Meet the Browns" and "House of Payne" but neither of those shows are broadcast in the big four primetime networks. Cleveland's all we got. (And he's not even voiced by a black man, but I digress).

It's always been interesting to me how black Americans have almost always been able to garner mainstream appeal with our music, but for some reason we've never totally been able to crossover with our movies and television. There are a few actors who have done it: Will Smith, Denzell Washington, Halle Berry, but there are so many more talented people in front and behind the scenes that have been overlooked.

 In Stuart Hall's "What is this Black in Black popular culture?" he discusses cultural hegemony and how we a Americans tend to wrap ourselves in this shell of "nothing ever changes" because we're afraid to take a chance on something and not succeed. I think that's fascinating that in 2010 networks execs still don't see black television as being something that would interest the masses. CW and the WB began as networks with almost exclusively black programming. Today its just Gossip Girl, 90210, and America's Next Top Model. A totally different demographic altogether. At some point they realized that it wasn't profitable to make television featuring African Americans. I can't help but wonder how much of that is because there are so few African Americans in television to offer a vast offering of all the great possibilities we have to offer.