Victory for Color of Change Plug Pulled On TV Show, " COPS " (860 hits)
May 9, 2013 Thanks to ColorOfChange members that COPS will no longer air on network TV in primetime. Wins like this are putting industry decisionmakers on notice that Black audiences deserve and demand better. If you're ready to see real change on your television screen, please contribute $3 or more today. After more than two decades of exploiting fears and preconceptions of Black criminality in primetime, COPS has lost its mainstream audience and is being pushed to a niche cable outlet with drastically fewer viewers.1 With this victory, we're beginning to change the way that crime and the criminal justice system are portrayed on TV — and that change will impact the way millions of Americans see the Black community.
It wasn't easy going up against a long-running fixture of network TV like COPS, but we did it because it was right — and we won. Together, we're changing the media landscape — whether it's by pressuring media executives at Oxygen to axe the degrading "reality" show All My Babies' Mamas before its premiere or convincing advertisers to abandon Glenn Beck on FOX News — ColorOfChange members are building a formidable track record for changing the way corporate media does business. You don't have to take my word for it. Just last week, FOX News finally admitted after years of silence that ColorOfChange members were responsible for Beck's disgraced departure from the cable news network. After Beck attempted to rewrite history, publicly claiming he left FOX News to "save his immortal soul," a company representative spoke up to correct the record, explaining that "Glenn Beck wasn't trying to save his soul, he was trying to save his ass....Advertisers [pressured by ColorOfChange members] fled his show, and even Glenn knows what that means in our industry."2
Let's keep this amazing momentum going: together, we can let Hollywood know that Black audiences demand real change. Please take a moment to contribute $3 or more today. COPS spent decades in primetime peddling dangerous racial stereotypes to millions of Americans. Because of ColorOfChange members, it's headed off primetime network TV. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am.
