‘Generations’ Draws Blacks Despite Ratings

A year after NBC introduced “Generations” as the first daytime soap opera to center around a black family, the program has won praise for its presentation of black issues but remains locked in last place in the ratings.

According to A. C. Nielsen ratings released last week, “Generations,” which celebrates its first anniversary Tuesday, ranks 12th out of the 12 daily soaps aired by the three major networks and 19th out of 21 daytime programs. It reaches about 2 million households a day--about a third of the audience garnered by the highest ranked soap, CBS’ “The Young and the Restless.”

Airing weekdays at 11:30 a.m., “Generations” chronicles the lives of two wealthy Chicago families, the Marshalls, who are black, and the Whitmores, who are white. The families have been linked for three generations--since the days when the matriarch of the Marshalls worked as a maid for the matriarch of the Whitmores.

Besides the typical soap fare of relationships, money and personal tragedy, “Generations” gives viewers a dose of themes not normally seen in daytime drama. Last year, one of the characters struggled with sickle-cell anemia, a disease that strikes blacks, and the current story line involves racial hate crimes that befall the Marshalls when they move into an all-white, upper-crust neighborhood.

As television programs go, observed Gerald Horne, chairman of black studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, “Generations” has made progress in portraying the black experience.

“Relative to some of the images that have been projected--for example, ‘Driving Miss Daisy,’ which portrays blacks in an antiquated manner--then at least ‘Generations’ is a step forward,” Horne said.

Where it falls short, Horne said, is in the fact that the Marshalls, because of their wealth, are less than typical.

“I think ‘Generations’ and the other television programs have not really captured the vast majority of the black American experience,” Horne said. “They either portray the extreme underclass or the very wealthy blacks. Most blacks are somewhere in between.”

NBC executives insist that the program’s low ratings are to be expected after only one year on the air and say that the network is as committed to “Generations” as it was to “Hill Street Blues” in that groundbreaking series’s difficult first years.

Soap operas are a daily habit, and before viewers will bring a new show into their lives, they have to be slowly weaned from other programs, explained Sally Sussman, the program’s creator and executive producer. She said that the show will not be changed to court viewers.

“We came on the air as a landmark show fully integrated, and we’ve kept that commitment even in the face of low ratings,” she said. “We just hope the audience will grow with us.”

One factor in the show’s favor comes, ironically, from the very obstacles that blacks face in television. Because the job market for black actors is so limited, the program has managed to snag and hold on to a number of fairly well-known players, including Taurean Blacque, whose credits include “Hill Street Blues” and “The White Shadow,” and Richard Roundtree, who starred in the “Shaft” movies of the 1970s.

“For a long time, I’ve been pushed into stereotypical roles as policemen” in action films, said Roundtree. “I wanted to do some drama.”

“My agent turned (‘Generations’) down two times,” said Blacque, who plays Henry Marshall, the entrepreneurial scion of the Marshall family and owner of a string of ice cream parlors. “Coming off a hit show like ‘Hill Street Blues,’ they didn’t think I wanted to do a soap. But, when I read it, I saw what it could do for me as a black person and what I could portray to the community.”

The program’s most recent addition is daytime Emmy winner Debbi Morgan, who left a long-running stint on ABC’s “All My Children” to join the fledgling soap.

For these actors, the appeal is simple: “Most of what’s out there is garbage,” said Blacque.

“The younger generation, when they see (negative roles) all the time, they think maybe that is something we ought to do--be a pimp, sell drugs, drive a big Cadillac,” he said. “I think our responsibility to the younger people coming up is to project a positive image.”

NBC’s motives in creating “Generations” were not entirely altruistic, however.

Statistics compiled by Nielsen Media Research show that blacks watch an average of 55% more daytime television than other groups. And, before “Generations,” NBC’s daytime programming garnered fewer black viewers than the other networks’.

“It was quite obvious that we were not reaching as much of the black audience as the other guys, the other networks,” said NBC spokesman Gene Walsh.

“Generations” ranks about equal with the other networks’ major soaps in terms of audience composition, with 21% of its audience black. It leads NBC’s other soaps: Just 11% of “Days of Our Lives” viewers are black, 12% of “Another World” viewers and 16% of “Santa Barbara” viewers.

“One of the reasons the networks have been running more black shows and more black characters is (that) blacks disproportionately don’t have access to VCRs and cable television and satellites,” said Horne, the UCSB professor.

That means they are more likely than whites to watch network advertising and buy the products offered for sale, Horne said.

Ron Dobson, vice president of daytime sales for NBC, said that while “Generations” has not attracted advertising aimed specifically at blacks, the increased percentage of black viewers--even with the show’s low ratings--has meant an increase in ad revenues.

This year, commercials on “Generations” will cost 45% more than when the program started, Dobson said. And, even at its inception, advertisers were willing to pay 24% more for an ad on “Generations” than they were for an ad on “Scrabble,” the game show previously aired in its time slot.

One reason “Generations” is appealing to advertisers despite its low ratings is that black households have 13% more women in them than other households, and it’s women that the advertisers are trying to reach, Dobson said.

While “Generations” has afforded black actors opportunities not generally found in television, the people behind the scenes are mostly white. Sussman is white, as are four of the show’s six writers.

“I haven’t found any more,” Sussman said. “I don’t know of any other black soap opera writers.”

She said that she would be open to a Writers Guild apprentice program for minorities and women, but “they’ve never contacted me.”

Blacque hopes this situation will change. “On both levels--behind the scenes and in the decision-making process, the writing staff--of course there should be more (blacks),” the actor said. “Because you need a black person to really get to the essence of our experience as black people.”