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Just under 8 percent of HBO’s
original dramas and miniseries
came from women, and 2.6 percent came from people of color.
Less than 5 percent of its onehour dramas — one of the most
high-profile entertainment products in the world — were created
by women. That’s over the course
of nearly 40 years.
HBO is one of the most highly
regarded entertainment brands
in the world. During its Sopranos heyday, it represented the
gold standard for TV dramas,
and its shows still frequently
dominate pop culture and critical discussions. Even though
the TV universe is expanding in
a multitude of directions, what
HBO does — and doesn’t do —
matters a great deal.
The shows included in our research are one-hour dramas and
dramatic miniseries that HBO
has aired between 1975, when
the network went national, and
April 15, 2014. If no “created by”
credit exists, we identified the
person who was considered the
project’s lead writer, chief adaptor or lead developer. These were
the people in charge of the storytelling at the time of the program’s debut; let’s call them the
TV
“narrative architects.”
Of 38 narrative architects of
one-hour HBO dramas and dramatic miniseries between 1975
and 2014, Cynthia Mort of Tell
Me You Love Me (2007), Abi Morgan of Tsunami: The Aftermath
(2006) and M.M. Kaye, co-writer
of The Far Pavilions (1984), are
the only women, and Mort was
the only woman to create a onehour drama series. According
to HuffPost’s research, Michael
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
The Killing
showrunner
Veena Sud
is one of two
people of
color running
a show at
the five top
networks:
AMC, FX,
Showtime,
Netflix
and HBO.