Media producers often argue that the lack of diversity in programming is about money, not racism. Foreign markets and domestic advertisers, the story goes, pay more for entertainment products which feature white people in lead roles.

Pressures from Foreign Markets

The foreign market is a huge influence on the cultural content of films and television programming. Software and entertainment products are now America’s biggest export, and exportable movies bring in more on the world market than they do domestically. This means that the foreign market, to a great extent, drives content.

Journalist Sharon Waxman reports that U.S. film executives and producers are very aware that "foreign distributors have almost no interest in movies that have African-American or other minority casts and themes." Since studios anxious to cash in on the foreign entertainment market believe that action films with white characters are what foreign box offices want, they are reluctant to include minorities in casting for domestic films and television.

Advertising: The Colour of Your Money

Producers also argue that there are fewer shows about visible minorities because domestic audiences—especially prime-time audiences—are 70 per cent white. And advertisers, first and foremost, buy audiences.

But as journalist Janine Jackson points out, the industry treats mainly white audiences and more diverse audiences differently, in terms of ratings and advertising dollars. For instance, WB’s two most successful black series—The Steve Harvey Show and The Jamie Foxx Show—draw the same number of viewers as the predominantly white-audience show Felicity, and yet a 30-second commercial on Felicity costs twice as much. And even though The Steve Harvey Show attracts 500,000 viewers more per episode than the popular white series Dawson’s Creek, a 30-second commercial on the Creek still brings in $63,000 more in advertising revenues.

A Federal Communications Commission report in 1999 attributed the disparity to a variety of factors, including "economic efficiencies derived from common ownership, assessments of listener income and spending patterns, or ethnic/racial stereotypes that influence the media buying process." It went on to say that in certain instances, the media buying process is guided by "ethnic/racial stereotyping, underestimations of disposable income, the desire to control product image, unfounded fears of pilferage, etc."

In Canada, the lack of minority representation in advertising was addressed in 1990, when the Canadian Advertising Foundation (now Advertising Standards Canada) set up the Race Relations Council on Advertising. With funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Council commissioned a study to find out the actual and projected numbers of visible minorities in Canada. 

The Council polled 600 advertising executives and 2000 citizens across the country on the issue of diversity in advertising. It found:

• Canada’s population of visible minorities was projected to hit 5.7 million, or 17.7 per cent of the population by 2001
  
  
• most Canadians expected and wanted to see visible minorities included in advertising
  
  
• public opinion was well ahead of executive thinking

As a result, the Council began a campaign in the advertising industry to raise awareness and sell the business case, and the situation improved steadily throughout the '90s. Today it’s quite normal for TV viewers and readers of advertising to see a variety of races in ads for everything from cold medications and breakfast cereals to luxury cars.