NAACP to Prod Hollywood on Black Hiring : Entertainment: The civil rights organization plans to establish an office to press for more minority employment in the TV and movie industry. Local branch pickets press conference.

In an ambitious bid to pressure Hollywood to hire more blacks, the NAACP on Monday announced a plan to establish a national office here to oversee the entertainment industry and to negotiate fair-share agreements with networks and studios.

If the agreements are reached, they would be the broadest accords of their kind in the motion picture and television business since the civil rights battles of the 1960s.

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People launched a similar campaign against the record industry in 1987, after releasing a report alleging “rampant” racism. Last year, the organization signed its first fair-share agreement with a record company, CBS Records, after threatening a boycott.

The NAACP has signed fair-share agreements--in which companies agree to hire more minorities both as employees and contractors--with 65 major corporations, including McDonald’s restaurants, General Motors, Pacific Bell and Safeway stores.

In announcing its plans to target Hollywood, NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Hooks also warned that the industry is courting organized boycotts by failing to improve its minority hiring record.

“We may withdraw our enthusiasm for watching certain TV shows or movies,” Hooks warned.

The NAACP disclosed its plans, which still require approval by the organization’s board, during a press conference at which it distributed a report showing few gains by blacks trying to break into the Hollywood power structure.

At six of the major studios, for example, the study found that there is only one black vice president in charge of feature production, two vice presidents for TV production and nine corporate vice presidents. Blacks remain absent from the highest levels of these companies, the study said.

“The entertainment industry is almost unique in this respect,” said NAACP Chairman William F. Gibson. “When we look at just about any other sector of business, we find African-Americans in positions of authority--with banks, insurance companies, financial firms, manufacturing, almost anything you can name.” Gibson blamed Hollywood’s record on “nepotism, cronyism and racial discrimination.”

There’s nothing new about charges that Hollywood decision-makers--despite their proclivity for liberal politics-- fail to hire many minorities. In recent years, such organizations as the Writers Guild of America have pointed out inequities in their own ranks.

But if the NAACP plans are adopted, studios and networks could become the targets of unprecedented organized pressure to hire minorities.

Several top officials in the industry either declined comment on the plan or could not be reached. But in the past, executives have pointed to the increase in TV shows and films with black themes and casts as examples of progress. The NAACP report also conceded that some strides had been made, but maintained that blacks remain “underrepresented.”

A key tactic in the group’s proposal is the fair-share agreement. While not precisely quota systems, many of these accords set goals and timetables for hiring more minority employees and contractors. In the movie and TV industry, these agreements might also require more positive portrayals of blacks on screen.

In addition, Hooks, a former Federal Communications Commission member, said the NAACP plans to throw its weight into regulatory debates in Washington affecting Hollywood, particularly the ongoing battle at the FCC over the so-called financial interest and syndication rules.

That debate--in which TV networks and Hollywood studios are fighting over which owns TV rerunrights--is in last stages of rule-making before the FCC.

If the plan for establishing a national office in Hollywood is approved, it would represent only the second time in NAACP history that it formed an arm to target a specific economic sector. The first such office, in Washington, monitors Congress. Hooks said Hollywood warrants this level of attention because these decision-makers control the images of blacks that are projected on the screen.

But the plan to establish a national office in Hollywood may be hampered by the rift between the NAACP’s Washington office and its local Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch. Monday’s press conference at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was picketed by members of the local office, who say national office is attempting to destroy their branch and replace it with the new office.

They said they also were angry that the NAACP board had taken control of the Image Awards, a nationally televised fund-raising program established 23 years ago by the local branch to recognize people in television and film who project positive images of black people.

Local members said they had been ignored by the national task force that produced the new report, a contention that was denied by Fred H. Rasheed, the task force chairman.

During the press conference, one of the picketers angrily confronted Hooks, demanding to know if the survival of the branch is in jeopardy. He told her it was not. In answer to questions from reporters, he said that no NAACP branch is equipped to handle an issue as large as the role of blacks in the entertainment industry.

Later, local members said, several people offered to work to heal the rift.

“We’re trying to mediate this thing so everybody will sit down and talk,” said Willis Edwards, a former president of the branch. “If this does not work, we will call on others, the mayor or (prominent businessman) Percy Sutton to step in. “

During their research on the report, national NAACP leaders got a taste of how difficult it will be to wring changes from the Hollywood Establishment. They said the studios refused to complete an NAACP questionnaire on their hiring practices. And only two studios--Disney and Warner Bros.--provided written reports on their minority efforts, they said. The task force instead had to collect information through meetings with studio officials, trade guilds and blacks inside the industry.

“They said they didn’t share that kind of information with outsiders,” Rasheed said. “But most companies in other industries readily provide it.”

Still, the NAACP leaders remained optimistic that improvements will come, particularly because of the rise of several black filmmakers with reputations for making hit movies.