On Tuesday, September 22, 2010, a new show debuted on CBS called
Undercovers. The show stars actors Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha- Raw. This is the first show on CBS in 20 years to cast black actors as main characters. According to The Nielsen Company, Undercovers was the 10th most watched show in the United State last week. The show was the 7th most watched show among African Americans. African Americans were 1, 141,000 of 8,710,000 viewers. At 7: 58 p.m. I began to watch CBS. The first 3 minutes of Undercovers showed no black people. After the third minute, Kodjoe and Mbatha-Raw were displayed in a scene. Kodjoe and Mbatha-Raw’s characters are multilingual spies. The fact that they speak different languages suggests that even though they’re black, they’re of different ethnicities. The show airs for an hour on Wednesdays with an estimated 17 minutes of commercial. There was 43 minutes of show footage and only three black people were shown. The ratio of blacks to whites in the commercial was unbelievable. During each commercial break I counted no more than 7 black people in commercials. Old Navy showed two black fashion manikins. The other five were white. A commercial promoting the movie “The Social Network” showed one Black person. A commercial for Smirnoff showed a crowd of people in a party setting. I could only spot three black people in the crowd. A commercial for another show call The Event aired as well. Actor Blair Underwood is the only black main character. Underwood’s character is named President Eli Martinez. Like Undercovers there is a suggestion being thrown around that he is of a different ethnicity even though he is black. Watching television reiterates that the multicultural representation in the media is not equal. Even with black actors being cast on network television we are still the minority on the screen. On top of that, the black representation that we see doesn’t represent the average black person in America.
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