Exit
a collaborative art form: The creators, developers and narrative
architects compiled here weren’t
solely responsible for a given program’s content. Women and people of color are or were employed
— sometimes in important capacities — on many of these shows.
So it’s certainly possible to slice
and dice names, titles and job responsibilities differently. But it’s
unlikely that a list, for example, of
every person who held the title of
“executive producer” at the time
of a drama or miniseries’ debut
would look significantly different
in its percentages.
Even as a snapshot of the industry, however, the numbers tell
a clear story about who gets the
keys to the fanciest car, culturally speaking. At the outlets responsible for many top programs,
women and people of color are
enormously underrepresented
as creators. If one focuses only
on the last dozen years at AMC,
FX, Showtime, Netflix and HBO,
around 12 percent of the creators
and narrative architects in the
dramatic realm were women.
According to the Women’s Media Center, “Shows with no women creators had casts that were
41 percent female. Shows with at
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
TV
PRESENT AT THE CREATION
A breakdown of the 90 people who created or wrote one-hour
dramas and miniseries for Netflix, HBO, AMC, Showtime and FX
in the last 12 years, at the time of the programs’ debut.
JANUARY 2002 - APRIL 2014
WHITE MEN
WHITE WOMEN
NON-WHITE WOMEN
As long as this debate
is limited to individual
dramas, and doesn’t consider
the entities that commission
and distribute them, the
conversation is likely to go
around in circles indefinitely.”
least one female creator had casts
that were 47 percent female.”
Given how few women and people
of color are present at a show’s
creation, is it any wonder we
can’t escape this debate?
And so we find ourselves in one
of those closed loops that True