This next fall television season is being heralded as the most diverse ever in front of the camera, but numbers from the Writers Guild of America, West show that’s not the case behind the scenes.
The writing staffs of a vast majority of these shows are overwhelmingly white and male, according to an article in Quartz.
Minorities comprise just 15 percent of all writing staffs on television and women make up 30 percent of those staffs. The IFC cable network had no women writers on its staff and no minority writers.
One Asian American writer says she was told there was no more room for pitches about Asian American characters, at least until the success of the upcoming show, Fresh Off the Boat, could be determined.
“It will take people like me pushing these ideas and saying no, that’s ridiculous,” said Lisa Takeuchi Cullen. “To write the script and say ‘Look, this is so good that you have to shoot it.’”
The WGAW numbers also show that Asian writers make a median salary of $129,000. That’s the highest median of any ethnicity. But one has to wonder if the number of Asian writers is so small that one person is skewing those figures.
You can get a breakdown of the numbers by network in Quartz.
