[CrimsonTide4]

Bernie Mac will not protest
Tuesday, Jul 23, 2002, 2:26 pm EST

Bernie Mac Won`t Protest Fox
Miami Herald
GLENN GARVIN
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Angered that the only two major-network TV shows with black casts will compete against one another head to head in the new fall schedule, ABC`s Damon Wayans tried to enlist Fox`s Bernie Mac in a joint public protest to force the networks to juggle their lineups and shift one of the programs to a different time slot.

But the protest plan fizzled when Mac refused to go along, he said. "Damon called and told me what he wanted to do. And I told him that I couldn`t support that," Mac told a gathering of television critics here. "I have no problem with Fox. . . . That was a business decision."

Wayans last week said he was angry about the scheduling move that pits his sitcom My Wife And Kids directly against The Bernie Mac Show and called it a "`cynical decision." He said he had telephoned Mac to discuss it, but didn`t reveal that he had proposed a protest.

The lack of ethnic diversity on prime-time television has been a touchy subject in Hollywood recently, with critics complaining that the industry talks a much better game than it delivers. The lack of Hispanic cast members in the new program CSI: Miami, or Asian actors in two new medical shows set in San Francisco, has prompted sharp rebukes to the networks.

But nothing has prompted as much contentious debate as Fox`s decision to shift The Bernie Mac Show to 8 p.m. Wednesday, the time slot where Wayans` program has dominated the ratings for the past two years. The move has been especially controversial because black sitcoms have become the television version of an endangered species: Five have been canceled in the past two years, with Mac and Wayans the only two survivors.

But Mac and his producer say that`s just the way it goes in the hardball business of network TV. No one sees any conspiracy, they noted, when white comedians like Jay Leno and Dave Letterman are scheduled against one another.

"I don`t think there is any insidious decision to do this," said Larry Wilmore, the black executive producer of The Bernie Mac Show. "I can`t imagine Fox saying" -- he switched to a sinister Dracula voice -- "Hmm, we have to kill this black show on television. Bernie Mac, let`s put it up against it. One of them will fall, certainly."

And, Wilmore added, the argument that the two shows shouldn`t be matched against one another presupposes that they only have black viewers.

"To just think of our show in the light of being an African-American show kind of marginalizes what The Bernie Mac Show is," he said. "I`ve always thought of it as an American show about American parenting -- an American family, primarily. And the fact that we`re black is really secondary."

Fox executives echoed his argument. Research shows that more than half the Bernie Mac audience is white, they said, and that three-quarters of Mac`s black viewers don`t watch Wayans` show. With so little audience duplication, the executives said, both programs should be able to survive in the same time slot.

Not that they care if Bernie Mac drives Wayans from the air, added Sandy Grushow, chairman of Fox Television. "We really don`t feel like we`re under any obligation to ensure the success of any of our competitors` shows," Grushow observed drily. "Whether casts are black, white, green, yellow, purple -- we`re in a business here."

Mac and Wayans have long been friends. Mac shrugged when asked if the competition will damage their relationship.

"I was asked to be here, was asked to put together a show with substance, and now I`m here," said Mac, whose program won several awards during its rookie season last year. "Where I am, I have to play. That just raised the bar for me. I`m not into all the other stuff, as I told Damon. You know, whatever he has to do, he has to do. But it has nothing to do with me . . . .

"I think Damon has to worry about Damon. I think Damon needs to worry about My Wife and Kids. And at 8 o`clock, or whatever time we`re coming on, let`s both give good shows, and in between commercials, you flip back to Damon and watch him, and then you make sure you flip back to me."

Miami Herald