How Hollywood left Black TV behind

This month, a two-part documentary on the history of Black television, Seen & Heard was released on HBO Max.

It comes at a tense moment for the genre.

In April, CBS sparked backlash after canceling three Black-led shows in one day: spinoffs of The Equalizer starring Queen Latifah and The Neighborhood featuring Cedric the Entertainer, along with Damon Wayans Sr. and Jr.’s comedy Poppa’s House.

Sharon Waxman, who is the founder and editor of the entertainment news site The Wrap, summarized the moment we're in for the New York Times last month. Its title: “Hollywood is ‘Hot, Horny and White’ Again.”

Her take: “The entertainment industry is nothing if not finely attuned to the social and cultural signals that affect the box office. ... The pendulum that swung all the way left after the killing of George Floyd in 2020, with among other things the installation of DEI leaders at the studios, started to go the other way in 2023.”

Giselle Bailey, a documentary filmmaker and director, had a front row seat to that swing while making Seen & Heard. Even as she was putting the documentary together, shows like Rap Sh!t, a comedy series following two women MCs, and Random Acts of Flyness, a surrealist sketch comedy show led by Terence Nance, got the ax.

How did we get here?

“I  think we're in another moment …” Bailey said, pausing while she searched for a tactful way to put it. “I'm going to say ‘of rebirth.'”

“I think it is very hard right now. Opportunities are rather limited,” she said. “And also, I see from studying this history that this is another time of ingenuity. And I feel that with my peers — other Black filmmakers — are really thinking about, ‘How do I wanna tell this story? Where can I distribute it? How do I do it myself? How do we partner? How do we collaborate?'”

Giselle Bailey and Issa Rae speak onstage following the "Seen & Heard" premiere during the 2025 SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas this March.

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Seen & Heard, produced by Issa Rae, asks those questions in interviews with icons who have shaped the television landscape, including Oprah, Tyler Perry, Shonda Rimes, Debbie Allen, Rae herself and and many more.

The backstory

The first episode of Seen & Heard highlights the history of Black entertainment as early as the Chitlin circuit of the 1930s, an informal network of venues where Black musicians, comedians and other entertainers performed for Black audiences during Jim Crow era segregation.

These venues were mostly in the eastern, southern and upper Midwest U.S., but the story of Black television takes place here in L.A., in the world of board rooms and sound stages from the '50s to today.

“LA is the central hub, the womb, the battleground of the story that we're telling,” Bailey said.

Bailey noticed there was a cycle to Black TV There would be pockets of time when Black shows were popular, like in the '70s, when the prolific producer and writer Norman Lear created and championed sitcoms like Sanford and Son, Good Times and The Jeffersons — and then those pockets would close.

How the Black TV Renaissance of the '90s and 2000s waned

UPN's ``Girlfriends" featured, from left, Jill Jones, Persia White, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Golden Brooks.

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To understand this cycle,  Seen & Heard explores what happened in the '90s and early 2000s, when there was a huge renaissance of Black shows on TV.

“In the 90s, 'UPN (United Paramount Network) and WB (Warner Brothers) had many of the Black shows that come to define the era,” Bailey said.

Shows like Girlfriends, Moesha and Sister Sister, which amassed large audiences and helped their respective networks establish their voice and loyal viewership. But then…

“At a certain point in early 2000s, UPN and the WB merged and created the CW. During that acquisition, they started moving to what often is called a ‘mainstream appeal,’” Bailey said. “And so that leaves a lot of things behind, including things that are considered a creative risk — that tends to be voices of people of color.”

Throughout the aughts, CW became known for shows like Gossip Girl rather than Moesha. In Seen & Heard, Ralph Farquhar, co-creator of Moesha said, "Our shows have systematically been used to pump networks since we've been on TV. To pump up the ratings, to pump up the network. And then when they get what they need, they let it go.”

Farquhar also called out Fox — another network — that started running In Living Color, a comedy sketch show starring Keenan Ivory Wayans, in 1990, “until, one day when they bought NFL football and they decided to get rid of everybody. Football meant white males to them. They cancelled everything Black 'cause they considered the Black audience a downscale demographic."

“It is a bit of whiplash,” Bailey said. “Because the most popular shows went from being very Black to being very not in a span of just a couple of years.”

What to do with a fickle Hollywood system?

Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry attend the "Sidney" Premiere during the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival in 2022. Both are highly influential in the entertainment industry.

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Bailey noticed a theme emerge in her interviews for the documentary: Black creatives feeling it was necessary to navigate or bypass the studio system.

“There's controlling how something's getting made, which community is making it, how is that reflected on the screen? […] All of those things are really rooted in having real control of the thing. And the best way to do that is to own the content,” Bailey said.

Tyler Perry's studio — which he takes viewers on a tour of in Seen and Heard has multiple sound stages named after legendary Black performers like Denzel Washington, Whoopi Goldberg and Sidney Poitier. Oprah also talks in the documentary about the importance of owning her own network: OWN, the Oprah Winfrey network.

A push to create or contribute to a system that is not bankrolled by white executives, extends beyond billionaire industry tycoons. After Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness was canceled, Nance came together with other Black creatives in Baltimore to open Lalibela, a space with sound stages and equipment where Black creators can make their own productions without waiting for a studio green light.

“Terence’s Lalibela is really exciting to me,” Bailey said. “Those are the kinds of projects that I believe [are] going to create another kind of renaissance.”

Watch the full interview below.