CVK
There’s an interesting article on Alternet about the problematic nature of the way Asian-American, Latino, and Native American media advocacy groups compile information for their annual “report cards” on minority representation in television. Essentially, they focus only on network television and discount all cable programming, and even most sports and news programming:

In fact, television has never contained a greater percentage of colored faces and programming written and produced by such people. Myrka Dellanos, Sujin Pak and Dave Chappelle are, for small example, television personalities of large influence and heat among certain segments of American culture. Such actors and personalities aren’t included in the report cards, which are compiled and presented by the Multi-Ethnic Media Coalition.

The reports count primetime network presence and ignore all else, although this year a reality show category has been added. Under those criteria, the partially Spanish-language children’s phenomenon that is “Dora The Explorer” goes unrecognized. Likewise, Peter Chung’s mid-’90s MTV phenomenon “Aeon Flux,” one of the greatest influences in the TV animation movement, would not have been counted.

I think this really has to do with a lack of resources. I don’t know what the funding or staffing situation is like at these organizations, but I would imagine a lot of this work is done on a volunteer basis. It makes sense to me that they would limit their monitoring of TV to something that’s manageable given their size. Anyway, I’m grateful that these organizations exist *at all.* Media representation is such a crucial issue for people of color.