TV diversity

Why aren’t white audiences getting into the shows that focus on the so-called “black experience” (“Adjusting the Colors,” April 20)? Primarily for the same reason that a whole lot of blacks aren’t getting into them. Studio executives refuse to acknowledge that most people who watch a lot of television are very young or senior citizens.

Since most of the shows that are on now, especially sitcoms, focus on the rude and crude, children aren’t allowed to watch them or don’t understand them and would prefer to watch Nickelodeon or TV Land. Older people don’t get them at all and/or think most of them are vile.

If we look at the past shows that starred blacks and raked in the viewers, they mostly featured children (e.g., “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Cosby”) or older people (“Sanford and Son” and “The Jeffersons”) -- two images that most whites are comfortable with.

If the idea is to get whites looking at more than other whites, it is doable because it has been done before. But does anybody in Hollywood really want that to happen? I don’t think so.

Harriet Taylor

Lynwood