r/decadeology • u/icey_sawg0034 Early 2010s were the best • Feb 13 '25
Discussion 💭🗯️ What caused the decline of black sitcoms in the 90s and early 2000s?
So this post on Twitter tells us that black sitcoms in the 90s and early 2000s were so popular that that became a part of many people’s childhoods of all backgrounds and then after that, they just stopped being made. I want to find out what could have caused black sitcoms into stopped being made.
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u/snerps2419 Feb 14 '25
Democrats and cancel culture. Too much cultural appropriation. Just like taking Uncle Ben off the rice and aunt syrup lady off the bottle. Oh also the land o lakes. The Democrats only want whites having association with products.
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u/Hevymettle Feb 17 '25
Major network shenanigans. An alarming amount of everything we remember was dictated by corporations and their interests. From television to our school lunches. Why do you think pizza was declared a vegetable? Couldn't afford to lose those lucrative school lunch contracts, or lose money actually improving the food.
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u/treabelle Feb 13 '25
All the yt shows copying them. Friends was a complete rip off of Living Single.
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u/RickyHemorhoid Feb 14 '25
Tyler Perry fucked over the entire black race with his ignorant modern day minstrel shows.
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u/Technical-Dentist-84 Feb 14 '25
The last one I remember watching a bit was Bernie Mac show.....maybe the only one I can think of that came after was Everybody Hates Chris?
The reason why they might not be so popular now as they used to be.....is because tastes change. There just aren't sitcoms that dominate the airwaves like there used to be. Now it's all about gritty suspenseful shows on streaming platforms, like Stranger Things, Squid Games, Breaking Bad (I know it began on AMC....but not a sitcom lol)
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u/Viva_La_Reddit Feb 14 '25
with the way television has changed so drastically, what does it matter? Sitcoms as a whole are a thing of the past as far as I can tell. All the old ones are still here and popular but there isn’t any new ones to my knowledge and none being made.
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u/email253200 Feb 14 '25
Because black folks stopped making good entertainment. They started making Tyler Perry garbage because they preyed on the people who were ‘supporting the culture’ until the entertainment value became garbage. Now billionaires think it’s not worth the investment unless Kevin Hart is in it, so we get less entertainment directed at what they call ‘urban’ people. Plus, you know, advertisers
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u/DiscountBeginning638 Feb 15 '25
They started to call them shit like blackish, and retokenized black people. And came up with new phrases like poc which was just a return of "colored people" the woke shit and pc culture was really the most hanus racist movement in decades.
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Feb 13 '25
I tuned to see what network tv is offering during prime time today:
It’s literally all shit game shows.
And you don’t even see who wins when it’s over.
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u/JayBringStone Feb 14 '25
It had nothing to do with race. It had everything to do with sitcoms not being funny anymore. Sitcoms became lazy comedy. Just go on youtube and watch sitcoms without laugh tracks and you'll see just how bad they are. They catered to the lowest common denominator. Black sitcoms used the same formula, white sitcoms did. They were horrible.
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u/DespicablePen-4414 Feb 13 '25
Because after the 90s and early 00s basically all sitcoms stopped being made except for a few which were targeted at pre teen-teenage white girls, and even those died out.
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u/SisterCharityAlt Feb 13 '25
Tyler Perry.
He began to dominate the black sitcom market and the decline of networks meant they weren't chasing that audience because it went online.
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u/TheYellowFringe Feb 13 '25
The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air and Family Matters were top tier shows from acting to screen writing and even the premise of the sitcom.
I remembered reasoning once that though there were other Black shows, these were the apex of such and when they concluded it left a massive void in American television because they appealed to all people... regardless of social or ethnic background.
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Feb 14 '25
Idk but the Fresh Prince was on at 5:30 on ch.4 every day and I don't think I ever missed an episode
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u/fatwiggywiggles I <3 the 00s Feb 13 '25
Rise of cable over broadcast diluted the market perception. Black shows were made for downmarket broadcast channels like Fox (like In Living Color and Martin) but as those channels gained popularity they dropped black shows for the more lucrative general audience. Cable came around and BET took over, but since we're talking about 40 channels instead of 4, the cultural relevance and perception of the number of black-directed programming was diluted, hence the perception in the OP
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u/MainelyKahnt Feb 13 '25
Likely the decline of sitcoms as a show format. They're still relevant but to a much lesser extent than the 90's when you had dozens running at the same time.
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u/whimsical_trash Feb 13 '25
Yeah I'm a huge sitcom fan. They aren't as mainstream as they were in the 90s, you have some that are like B99 but a lot of them are more niche. The only currently airing ones that are mainstream iirc are Sunny and Abbott Elementary (which btw is mostly black cast).
Hulu has a gazillion sitcoms from the past 5 years, and quite a few are black (I seek them out bc more white ppl sitcoms is not super interesting to me even tho I'm white lol) Grand Crew is a really fun black sitcom on there, recently did season 2. But only people who seek out new sitcoms will find it as they just don't fulfill the same spot in society anymore
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u/MainelyKahnt Feb 13 '25
I really enjoyed B99. I also liked fresh off the boat. Haven't given the others a shit but sounds like I need to!
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u/ghettoccult_nerd Feb 14 '25
justice for maxine shaw (erika alexander)! she is by far, easily one of my favorite depictions of a black woman in mainstream media. i love that woman and i love erika alexander! funny, sexy, driven and a little fucked up. whats not to love!? and irl, erika alexander is just so damn delightful, i wish she got more roles in things. it was a blast seeing her in "get out", tho they played her with that auntie ass wig.
now, was living single replaced by friends? thats debatable, with kim fields headed out the door and terrance carson ejected from the cast, i didnt see the show getting much further regardless. that final season was a little weird.
but the show was something special. just a delightful show with a delightful all-black cast that helped normalize the idea that black people are just people. we do regular shit, it happens.
i mean, there was "girlfriends" but.... ughh. girlfriends was just living single we got at home.
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u/tultamunille Feb 13 '25
70s and 80s- Jeffersons, Good Times, Sanford and Sons, Different Strokes to name a few. Many are still in syndication. All in the Family was diverse, some may say radical, as were others.
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u/Haunting_Bottle7493 Feb 14 '25
So call me old (jk please don't) but as a kid in the 70s I feel like their was so much diversity in TV. Barney Miller, Welcome Back Kotter, Chico and the Man etc.
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u/Mutatis1 Feb 14 '25
Keenan & Kel and My Brother & Me were both some of my favorite shows on NICK as a kid. They were essentially just kids sitcoms. Coolio did the intro for All That and he was my favorite rapper.
I never really thought of them as “black shows” though. Coming from a rural area I just liked rap because it talked about urban issues I was unaware of.
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u/RainisSickDude Feb 14 '25
abbott elementary is a great (mostly black) sitcom! yall should check it out.
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u/fakeprofile111 Feb 13 '25
sitcoms kinda died in the 2000s. Only CBS had popular sitcoms and none of there’s were black
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u/Designer-Common-9697 May 12 '26
That weren't funny or entertaining. They usually had poor writing with stale punch lines in at least 3/4's of the show. There were so many that were just not good at all compared to some of the other ones. I'm unsure what the target audience was, but it seemed like 12 to 17 y/o's that would really notice the change in style and storyline, but it was mostly that they just could not be classified as comedy or dramedy.
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u/Axl_Van_Jovi Feb 13 '25
I was a little white kid in southern Indiana in the 70’s. My only exposure to Black people was on tv. I loved Sanford & Son, Good Times, The Jefferson’s. I think it was good for me and it’s a shame there’s nothing like that anymore.
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u/TATuesday Feb 14 '25
I think sitcoms of all types kind of stopped being a thing around then. I can really only think of like, Big Bang Theory being a big sitcom in the 2010s. Actually don't know of any others. It's all reality tv and crime shows. And the sitcoms they do show are all reruns of friends and fresh prince and stuff.
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u/Yupadej Mar 14 '25
Writers are on thin ice writing jokes for black characters. I don't think many people would appreciate a joke about black kids not having a father or shit like that.
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u/Adgvyb3456 Feb 13 '25
Perhaps because the world is diverse and it’s weird when a show is all one race
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u/Previous_Bus_2965 Feb 13 '25 edited Feb 13 '25
Me growing up in the 90s, I honestly feel racism was going away. I mean I didn't experience any racism towards me, I had friends of all races and colors. Granted parents and grandparents would sometimes have their comments, but our generation seemed to have squashed the indifference. But somewhere in the past 15 yrs it's like we've gone backwards. I don't understand segregation seems like alot of work for no reason, and I've never had an issue with mixed race couples. In-fact I honestly feel mixed race offspring usually look better, the females are beautiful and the males are too. It's like they take the best from both gene pools. I dunno that's all just my opinion 🤷
Just for context I'm Mexican, currently 42 and was 6 to 17 between 90's and early 2000's.
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u/Oohforf Feb 14 '25
Considering events like the LA Riots marked the 90s...I don't think things were nearly as peachy as you think they were. Lots more segregation and inter-community tension back then.
It's just that with social media and general awareness of racism it seems that things have worsened.
Also bro that mixed race baby comment is kinda...
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u/Chance-Ant-452 Feb 14 '25
Was a teen in the 90s, felt the same way. Wtf happen!?
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u/new_accnt1234 Feb 14 '25
What event happened 15 years ago in the US to have trigged this
I will give u a hint, the 2009 crisis and the resulting 99% and occupy wallstreet protests...the rich couldnt have the poor joining up targetting them, so they had to use divide and conquer tactic...suddenly all media were pushing society towards controversies, one side being overly lenient giving positive discrimination to minorities, and he other side going the opposite way and doubling down on discrimination like it was 50yrs ago...this was all orchestrated, a house divided has issues mounting a full protest against the landlord
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u/Thenewoutlier Feb 14 '25
They bombed a black building in Philly it wasn’t going anywhere
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u/passion4film Feb 14 '25
You know… I felt the same way then, I think.
Long live Family Matters and The Cosby Show, btw!
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u/WanderingAlsoLost Feb 14 '25
Did you mean, What caused the decline of black sitcoms after the 90s and early 2000s?
Yes, I watched a lot of them. I never thought of them as black sitcoms. Fresh Prince, Moesha, Family Matters, Martin. They were just on. Sitcoms aren't watched anymore. Not many people go home and watch what's on at 3:30. They go home and look for something to stream. Everything network looks so plastic. It went from everyday life to everyone is rich to everything is an algorithm. It's impersonal and people checked out.
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u/Spyrovssonic360 Feb 13 '25
Also there was alittle more black cartoons back then compared to today. Atleast in my opinion, but i could be wrong.
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u/Buy_MyExcessStuff256 Feb 15 '25
I enjoyed the Cosby show, family matters, what's happening, the Jefferson, 227, living single, gimme a break, good times, a different world
And I'm white... I've stopped watching white sitcoms, too
Interests change when cultures change
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u/Any-Excitement-8979 Feb 14 '25
They used to be more relatable to racists. Gospel music, dress clothes, etc.
At least this was how they were portrayed in the cosby’s, family matters and fresh prince.
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u/Wills4291 Feb 14 '25
UPN was one channel that did black sitcoms and it's gone. Obviously there where black sitcoms on other channels, but UPN had a bunch and they don't exist anymore.
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u/Ga11agher Feb 14 '25
Sitcoms just died out. Also the chapelle show came out and nothing else mattered lol
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u/kagerou_werewolf Feb 14 '25
Just went out of style i guess, that happens with things all the time.
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u/OneToeTooMany Feb 13 '25
They didn't stop getting made, they became part of the black owned networks, and moved to isolated markets.
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u/Sixpacksack Feb 14 '25
Man white people can't do anything apparently; imagine if we had "white people SiTComS", how stupid.
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u/ay-foo Feb 13 '25
They didn't stop getting made but they do seem less prevalent and less a part of shared culture. I'd say with streaming now everyone watches shows dedicated to their specific interests where when I grew up I'd watch whatever was playing on Nick or Cartoon Network at any given time.
We used to watch Cosby show, Family Matters and especially Fresh Prince. The shows were good but if I had the option to pick any episode of any show in existence I'd probably be watching cartoons instead. Still today they have shows like Blackish, Grownish, Dear White People but I wouldn't say any of those are widely viewed by everyone due to streaming options
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Feb 13 '25
Just my theory, I don't think they went anywhere, but definitely declined in viewership to people watching Jersey Shore, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, 16 and Pregnant and other reality TV. Early 2000's MTV caused a decline
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u/keragoth Feb 13 '25
A black comedian who i don't remember his name, said that there was the Cosby Show, and there was Maury Povitch, there was the Fresh Prince, and there was Jerry Springer.
One was Aspirational, one was the dirty truth. Then cosby started raping people and Will started smacking people, and the whole idea collapsed. Who wants to go become an upper class happy family when you end up rappin bitches and slappin down motherfuckers like you was on Ricky Lake? They just cut out the middle man.
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u/Ramus_N Feb 13 '25
It is hard to keep the sitcom writing in a modern setting, it was always about people with infinite leisure time that was cooked down to: oh they are meeting for lunch or weekends, it was already a stretch in the 90's and already caused a bit of a dissonance between viewers and plot (Friends was a big culprit of that) and nowadays, in a modern setting? Damn near impossible to balance it out and this is before we account for tech which is also really hard to write about.
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u/dumbdude545 Feb 14 '25
Am I one of the few people that despise sitcoms in their entirety? I don't think I've ever watched one unless it was the only thing to watch. They're not funny. They lack any entertainment value to me. They force stupid jokes and the writing seems ass at best.
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u/UnableLocal2918 Feb 14 '25
most of the sitcoms focused on family and self reliance and discipline. this is NOT the message they want taught anymore. just like having a sitcom with a strong competent farther was slowly phased out giving way to competent mothers and idiot fathers.
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u/RelativeObjective266 Feb 13 '25 edited Feb 13 '25
There is really no mainstream anything (maybe the Superbowl) anymore. It's all about niche audiences. There's more out there but you have to seek it out. In the old days, you watched what was on. In the Seventies, for example, the Jeffersons, Good Times, What's Happening, Sanford and Son, later on Cosby Show, 227 -- those were watched by (nearly) everybody and are still beloved by those who grew up with them, regardless of their race.
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u/ExplorationGeo Feb 14 '25
I was listening to a podcast about 1990s television and they were saying things like "this final episode of this throwaway late-80s/early-90s sitcom that stars no one really special had 17 million viewers". TV executives would shoot their own dicks off these days if it meant they could get 17 million viewers.
The Breaking Bad finale got 10.3 million viewers in 2013. Better Call Saul finale got 2.7 in 2022. The audiences are more and more fractionated every year and there's probably never going to be a "must-watch" series like they had back then ever again.
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Feb 13 '25
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u/Lazzen Feb 13 '25
Nah
Game of Thrones was at a lower level than say Marvel Movies, it was the biggest niche if we had to title it. Stranger things was more mainstream but still a Netflix show.
Squid game has bootleg toys from Mexico to Timbuktu, roblox games and lots lots more general global appeal. Even mom knows what Squid Game is.
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u/wikipuff Feb 13 '25
I have never seen any of those shows. Those are not something that we watch as a family because it's not something we would like.
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u/GeeWilakers420 Feb 13 '25
Alot of persons of color grew up to resent them too. I can recall a TON of instances where I can clearly see that a person whom I love and respect sees me as a sitcom character. A sitcom character never has a serious problem that last more than 3 episodes. The plucky black kid with the mental issue only has to ask for help before his problems are solved. The party girl stops drinking and shes okay. This is devastating for someone working their ass off to make ends meet and they are still not meeting.
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u/crispytoastyum Feb 13 '25
The 2007 writers strike was a huge reason. That led to the rise in reality tv because it required basically zero writers and was really cheap to make. It then slowly took over after the strike ended.
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u/DownhillSisyphus Feb 14 '25
There are plenty of sitcoms featuring black casts, it is more a matter of the splintering of channels. When there was only three to five channels, they were on there. 90s there were cable channels, but the big channels still had the lion's share of viewers.
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u/shadowstar36 Feb 13 '25
It's not just black sitcoms, although I agree. As a kid in the 80s and teen in the 90s,I remember and loved, Sanford and son(best) , Cosby show, Different Strokes, Webster, What's Happening (&now), Jeffersons, family maters, fresh prince and Martin. (probably more I'm missing but these stand out in my mind). Oh different world and sister sister but those werent to my taste. I'm a white guy in his 40s btw, if that matters.
I think all sitcoms to an extent have vanished some after the reality TV craze. Then what we have left isn't thr wholesome shows we used to get. There is a lot more edgy content. Which is fine for cable or some streaming, but there needs to be a balance. Shows back then could be enjoyed by a family both kids and adults as most indenudo was subtle allegory, not in your face and no cursing.
We used to get tons of cool sitcoms of all types. Shit we had alien sitcoms like Alf. And 3rd rock from the son. Now what do we have?
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u/excellent-throat2269 Feb 13 '25
Abbott Elementary is out here winning all sorts of awards with a primarily black cast in a Philadelphia school. Like c’mon.
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u/GraniticDentition Feb 17 '25
Can we get a remastered Cosby show with his bartending skills showcased?
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u/Lucky-Royal-6156 Feb 13 '25
Thers a Disney plus show about some girls who roller skate...I like teen comedies but it's not it...maybe writers just got worse?
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u/chris_s9181 Feb 14 '25
I feel that alot of white families probably.didnt want their kids to relate
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u/Oilfeild Feb 13 '25
Black people make a show for only themselves and if anybody else watches it it’s cultural appropriation. Then get mad that nobody else watches it and they loose the show.
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u/constantin_NOPEal Feb 13 '25
How about Friends lifting its entire premise from Living Single, who did the concept SO much better and funnier?
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u/Routine_Condition273 Feb 13 '25
People are afraid of getting called racist, and even if the entire cast and crew is black, the slightest, most innocuous thing could get the show literally canceled.
I remember watching My Wife And Kids as a kid and loving it (I'm white). I can imagine it would be lambasted for a lot of stereotypes nowadays.
Also there's just less white people caring about black-centric entertainment because we are specifically told not to. We are constantly told that kind of stuff is "not for us".
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u/Muskratisdikrider Feb 13 '25
Comes down to ratings.
Everybody Hates Chris and The Office both debuted in 2005.
Chris: https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/everybody-hates-chris-ratings-21441/
Office: https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/the-office-ratings-17546/
More people watched the office during the same time span Everybody Hates Chris was on each year. Almost 1.5 points higher most episodes. TV isn't made to tell storys, it's made to sell advertising.
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u/Certain_Drop_902 Feb 13 '25
The first writer's strike took out almost every black show that existed at the time. They were excluded from the big return of new episodes when the strike was over. Some were recycled into Caucasian-casted shows, e.g. "Living Single" into "Friends".
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u/ScottShatter Feb 14 '25
It also started much sooner than the 90s. I grew up with The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Family Matter, 227, Cosby Show, Good Times, Fresh Prince, and more, and it never felt unnatural.
Turn on the TV now and you'll have a black person, Japanese person, gay, person, trans person, and a cranky old white guy all living and working together. It just doesn't feel natural anymore. It feels forced because it is.
They had racial issues put to bed by the 80s but now race is used again to divide people.
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u/MonsterkillWow Feb 13 '25
I sometimes wonder if it was because it was an unrealistic portrayal of the typical black family life in America. Most of these showed the families as exceptionally wealthy and practically never facing consequences of racism, crime, or poverty.
So much so that many whites who grew up during that era mistakenly believed racism did not even exist. If your image of a typical black family is Fresh Prince or Family Matters, you won't even take the realities of systemic racism seriously. You would erroneously believe everything was already fine.
People were shocked at that study showing the median net worth of black families in Boston a few years back was $8. That's because they watched too much TV and never talked to any black people in their lives.
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u/Aquariusofthe12 Feb 14 '25
Being real, black art IN GENERAL was a huge part of my upbringing. My family was white lower middle class when I was young but I worked with predominantly African Americans or Mexican immigrants and because of that I loved the culture. It does feel like there’s been this weird rejection of it from my POV where suddenly white people are taking on this crusade I don’t remember them having when I was young. I’ve watched my family move into upper middle class once I left home and my dad won the corporate lottery and my family has shifted from left to right visibly and audibly. I just wonder if the wealth gap widening has something to do with it as the rich get more insular and more desperate to maintain control.
Meanwhile I’m a freelance artist and have moved further left because I love my friends and want them to live safely and live happily. I still haven’t come to terms with how people can hate so implicitly the instant they get their hands on money.
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Feb 16 '25
The decline was the overshadowing of other TV shows (Like how friends ripped off living single and got more attention) or bad writing (PROUD FAMILY)
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u/funny_jaja Feb 13 '25
They used to be "normal people" doing "normal things", then post911 everything got militarized and became "black people" doing "rich things" and here we are. Thank Tyler Perry and Beyonce
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u/Constant_Tower_380 Feb 13 '25
It’s true. White boy here. James Avery was my TV dad. I loved Uncle Phil. RIP Mr. Avery.
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u/SketchSketchy Feb 14 '25
The rise of the mini-networks like CW, UPN, WB was fueled by black programming that appealed to the minority audience. Once those stations grew and grew and became popular and or merged with a major network they stopped making black shows. Fox did the same thing in the 1990’s.
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u/Invisible_Stud Feb 13 '25
The government started pushing an agenda into everything in the late 2000s (when Obama got into office) and that’s when everything started becoming more identitarianism based and not “for the people” based.
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u/boulevardofdef Feb 13 '25
The key here is "formative part of so many people's childhoods." The sitcoms she's talking about were family sitcoms. There were black sitcoms for adults as well, but they weren't widely watched among non-black audiences. As someone else pointed out, there are still black sitcoms, but the genre has largely changed and there aren't really many family sitcoms anymore.
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u/phanophite2 Feb 14 '25
Many tried, but eventually everyone came to the conclusion that we just couldn't improve on Urkel.
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u/Radiant_Ad3966 Feb 13 '25
I would argue that the quality of all sitcoms—but specifically black sitcoms—has dropped significantly. The writing is so generic that it's painful to watch.
I'm a lowly white guy from a podunk country town and I grew up watching all sorts of black shows whenever I could. They were funny, edgy, had interesting characters, and had a flavor all their own. Now...it's just a corporate show with a black cast. There's is nothing unique for them to stand out with. There are major differences in the quality of those 90s shows vs what is presented now. A true dumbing down of the content is the biggest notable issue for me.
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u/JCTrick Feb 13 '25
We watch Abbott Elementary, Poppa’s House and Clean Slate. 🤷♂️ Maybe I just know where to look.
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Feb 13 '25
Abbot Elementary is arguably the most popular sitcom currently airing. I think its more to do with sitcoms in general just being made a lot less.
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u/Mr_Cerealistic Feb 13 '25
Everybody Hates Chris was so funny, there wasn't much point in trying anymore. The genre peaked there lol
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u/Wise-Juggernaut-8285 Feb 16 '25
Spoiler alert, shows were more woke before. People are being brainwashed.
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u/AdorableTrashPanda Feb 13 '25
Reality TV killed the sitcom format because it was ridiculously cheap to not have to pay writers and star actors.
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u/DraperPenPals Feb 13 '25
Sitcoms dropped off in favor of “prestige TV” thanks to runaway hits like The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc
We also have to blame the writer’s strike of the 00s—that’s when a ton of television programming pivoted to reality TV and reality competitions, especially on channels like Fox.
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u/RainbowLoli Feb 14 '25
Overall it had to do with the death of sitcoms.
More specifically, a lot of sitcoms started becoming political... but in a way that wasn't actually relatable unless you had a very specific world view. Like the overall quality of writing kinda dipped.
Like - not a sitcom exactly but take the Proud Family reboot. Quite a few of the episodes - the one that stands out to me being the one with that celeb boy - that... very few people like. Including black people. Even just criticisms of colorism aside, it feels like, even though they still have the original writers or at least started with them, it feels like they're... out of touch.
Just like... even though the "moral" of the episode was about trusting your friends and not dating fetishizers, something about it felt... gross. Like the issue of the episode was Zoe and not the guy that was fetishizing her for her race.
and even at the kinda downward end of sitcoms, a lot of them felt like that... written by people that were out of touch with what they were actually writing about. Not to mention, a lot of sitcoms also started trying to "play it safe" especially when it came to race to the point a lot of writing kinda felt like it lost it's edge.
Like, part of the reason Everybody Hates Chris is so popular despite having political episodes and aspects, is because Chris Rock lived that life. Hell the entire show is largely based around Chris being the butt of the joke or getting the short end of the stick in damn near every aspect of life. If the show were to be made today, some people.. particularly executives who are avoidant of any kind of backlash - might find that kind of depiction of black people offensive to modern audiences.
Even as a black person, if I were to make a sitcom or show (ignore the fact that I'm an unfunny redditor) about my life as a undiagnosed neurospicy black girl, some people would find it offensive for me to depict certain parts or aspects of my life or turn the mirror within on the black community for how "we" treat our own. They'd decry it's stereotyping, it isn't true, never happened, didn't happen to them, etc. and people who control the money flow don't like that - they want something that is... corporate in every sense of the word.
and that also contributed.
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u/MikeX1000 Mar 07 '25
i'm kinda confused by your post. You're complaining about shows being too political and not political enough?
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u/OriginalUseristaken Feb 14 '25
Oh, i wish they did sth like the one with Steve Urkel. It was called "All under one roof" in my country. I watched it every day on TV as a kid. I especially liked the time travel episode where he left himself a message to buy Microsoft shares and the fucked up present they returned to. Like Back to the future in small.
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u/Empty-Refrigerator Feb 14 '25
it ended because the golden age of sitcomes, (friends, fresh prince, sister sister, kenan and kel, will and grace etc) started to decline in viewship, people started watching cop dramas and court room stuff CSI skyrocketed and people started watching Blue line, SVU, CSI, CSI Miami, CSI newyork etc, and it moved to cop stuff and drama... then around 2010 it started with Reality TV and prank shows....
People watching jackass and the real house wifes of orange county...we didnt really see the rise of sitcoms again until HIMYM (how i met your mother) and it was just something to watch
i think peoples tastes changed and Tv executives made some decisions, some good, some bad.... sadly we lost the "sitcome" golden age, but we traded it for reality TV..... it was a poor trade
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u/learn2earn89 Feb 13 '25
Girlfriends (funny and dramatic)
The Parkers (super funny)
Sister, Sister
That’s so Raven
All great shows
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Feb 14 '25
💯As a white girl growing up in rural Canada, I was raised by Family Matters, Fresh Prince and Oprah.
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u/CarlShadowJung Feb 13 '25
Sitcoms in general took a dip. In the 90’s they felt like they were everywhere. It seemed to be the go-to format for most television. Then reality TV started moving its way in and production companies jumped on pushing those because they are a hell of a lot cheaper.
So I’d suggest it wasn’t just black sitcoms, but the sitcom genre in general.
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u/CommitteeofMountains Feb 13 '25
There are weirdly strong fads in sitcoms. The 1920's had a big one for ethnic families, from Italian to Scandinavian to black to multiple Jewish because The Goldbergs was such a runaway hit. While Mama Bloom's Brood did go in a more straight comedic direction and TV/suburb era Goldbergs (which do survive and are on YT) had recognizable sitcom plots like a nebbish Urkel cousin showing up for an episode and annoying the family, they were largely light dramedies showing the normal life of exotic families rather than cheap stereotype gags (although they could go melodramatic, as one of the few surviving radio episodes is Dovid Goldberg having to lead his unwitting crush back to the asylum and then as the cliffhanger running off with her instead). While The Goldbergs kept going for another couple decades, Americans clearly got bored of the genre and radio switched over to suburban comedian-led series like Life of Riley (originally pitched for Groucho, so you can see how it got less ethnic/Jewish), Aldrich Family (which I can't stand), Fibber McGee,
The Great Gildersleeve, Bob Hope, and the one I can't remember the name of with the silver sponsorship and man-chasing maid who at one point told the story of how she'd failed to land a literal bear once it saw what she looked like the morning after.
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u/fr0wn_town Feb 14 '25
The internet happened and instead of media being made for mass appeal, on national TV, with universal messages we all got sequestered into micro-communities with prejudices toward all the other micro-communities
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u/SqueaksScreech Feb 17 '25
I consumed a lot of black media because of cartoons and black movies and shows being dubbed in Spanished and air for free and the Spanish channels.
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u/VoicesInTheCrowds Feb 14 '25
Whatever… Hangin with mister cooper was awesome. It wasn’t a black show. It was just a funny show with more black people than other shows…
Plus Vanessa was hot
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u/Efficient-Whereas255 Feb 13 '25
I feel like we celebrated black people in the 90s. As a little white boy i wanted to be Westly Snipes. All the music i listened to was pop rap like "whoomp there is it" and "baby got back" and fresh prince was like the coolest guy ever.
Then 911 happened and shit got dark. Then Obama happened and the racists just slithered out of their filthy cess pools and the world got worse. Then they elected Trump as revenge and now the gloves are off and racists are openly racist.
It wasnt like this in the 90s.
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u/youburyitidigitup Feb 13 '25
I think it’s because a lot of them were seen as pushing stereotypes, and then they were all too lazy to create new characters.
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u/No-Variety7855 Feb 13 '25
Kinda felt like that was everything pop culture in the late 90s early 2000s. Even the grammy's in the 90's it seemed like there were just more black artists in everything then it became this weird white devil wears prada anorexia fever dream until like 2014 ish.
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u/itz_my_brain Feb 13 '25
Just came here to say Martin, Jamie Foxx Show, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, and even Living Single (when big sis has control of remote) were some of my favorite shows growing up.
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u/Willing-Opening7530 Jan 07 '26
Look how "The Neighborhood ", and the show that Damian Wayans and his son starred in. Both comedies had strong positive characters. Then all of sudden.................Gone. I wonder, why comedies like this don't last?
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u/lions2lambs Feb 13 '25
It’s not that black sitcoms stopped being made. Sitcoms in general stopped being made and the few that made it onto mainstream were absolute garbage.
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u/OddSilver123 Feb 13 '25
I have a feeling a similar thing happened with gay characters in 70’s sitcoms disappearing once Reagan was elected.
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u/Khaled_Kamel1500 Feb 13 '25
Friends happened
People love seeing neurotypical white people living perfect neurotypical white lives
That's why there are so many Instagram models and "iNfLuEnCeRs" nowadays
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u/Zardozin Feb 13 '25
The decline of the independent broadcaster.
The high number of black sitcoms in the 90s was mostly the result of a single “network” which specialized in truly horrible sitcoms, which it produced cheaply by using a lot of underpaid actors and keeping production outside of Hollywood.
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u/unsolvedfanatic Feb 17 '25
Just like what we see with social media apps today, the entertainment industry is built on the backs of black people. A lot of burgeoning channels were popularized by featuring black shows and amassing a large black audience before flipping. The 90s was a time when television became deregulated, so there was a flood of new channels who needed to stand out, so they chose black content.
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u/ironlocust79 Feb 14 '25
I think the way content is viewed changed things too. The slow transition from sitcom to reality tv is nearly complete. There are more game shows, or reality tv shows on regular and cable television than non-syndicated sitcoms. Two sitcoms on right now are spin offs of Big bang, one is a retooled rossanne show, a few are animated comedies filled with bits in them. some of the more "popular" ones are not on cable at all, you need premium subscriptions or a streaming app.
I would assume, and this means that I could be wrong, but the companies are tailoring thier shows based on the data they recieve.
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u/jabber1990 Feb 14 '25
which is funny because now if they have a sitcom designed for white people with 1 black character the white people complain that its too woke
...the same white people who liked Cosby and other shows
(my parents didn't let me watch Cosby, they thought he was racist....come to find out he was another R word too!!)
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u/mlo9109 Feb 13 '25
Because it would piss off a lot of keyboard warriors who'd call for the station to go off the air for being "too woke."
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u/Muskratisdikrider Feb 13 '25
Thats a heck of an opinion you can't back up. Maybe do a little research into the decline of sitcoms or the costs in TV. Studios are taking less and less risks because they are trying to maximize profits.
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u/JakovYerpenicz Feb 14 '25
As much you would like to tie this to the modern culture wars, the early 2000’s were actually 20+ years ago, and these notions do not apply.
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u/cameltony16 Feb 17 '25
Yeah I’m sure the multi-billion dollar media conglomerates cared soooooo much about what fat slobs in their mothers basement labeled their shows.
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u/icey_sawg0034 Early 2010s were the best Feb 13 '25
I hate how they took the word “woke” and bastardized it.
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u/Cool_Dust_4563 Feb 16 '25
Thank you!! I remember the word woke as in “I’ve woke up from sleeping”.
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u/mlo9109 Feb 13 '25
Same... Though, I do wish I had the free time and lack of problems these freaks seem to have in order to spew BS over the internet and worry about things like mermaids in movies.
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u/CreamyDiarrheaFarts Feb 14 '25
I'm happy to see people are calling you out on the bizarre shit being said on the left just as brain dead the right can be.
We are doomed. The Internet has killed civil society and critical thinking.
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u/WeFightTheLongDefeat Feb 13 '25
Ah yes, the 90s and 2000s, the heyday of anti woke YouTubers….before YouTube was even around.
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u/Bluegrass6 Feb 14 '25
So these same people weren’t racist in the 70s, 80s and 90s?
The correct answer is they quit making sitcoms in the early 2000s. Very very few sitcoms are made anymore.
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u/memewatcher3 Feb 13 '25
that is bullshit and you know it
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u/Galliro Feb 14 '25
Buddy people are calling the new assasins creed woke for havihg a black man and a woman as the playable characters
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u/Disciple_Of_Hastur Feb 15 '25
Was it really that many people, or just a bunch of whiny incels on the internet that nobody IRL pays any attention to?
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u/SpacemanSpiff25 Feb 14 '25
The funniest part of this (truthful) statement is just how fucking the opposite of “woke” shows like In Living Color were. Half the “woke” people today would be HORRIFIED by that show.
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u/PanthersJB83 Feb 14 '25
Because no one focused on things like black sitcoms versus white sitcoms back then. Grew up on Fresh Prince, Cosby, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, Sister Sister and Family Matters and never once were they thought of as "black sitcoms." They were funny shows on TV in time blocks with things like Boy Meets World, Step by Step, Home Improvement, and Saved by the Bell. All I guess "white sitcoms." Sitcoms in general started losing popularity in the late 90s. They became less family-oriented and more directed.to.Gen-X at the time. Eventually only a select few for made. Then it just became a numbers game. Certain demographics were more likely to be watching nighttime TV so cater to them. And let me tell you catering to only 13% of a population isn't how you when in tight numbered Nielsen ratings
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u/max_servant Feb 15 '25
As mentioned above, the merger of the CW was part of the reason. The other reason was the 2007/2008 Writer’s Strike. Studios used it as an excuse not to “take a chance” on Black writers and producers. This led to less Black shows being produced, especially if they didn’t feature a star main lead.
The presidency and popularity of the Obama led to studios “taking more chances” and providing internships/apprenticeship programs to diverse writers/directors/producers. This, in part, led to the explosion of diverse stories and storytelling.
Lastly, Netflix enter the tv/movie making game forced studios to compete with the network, who promised diverse programming, creative freedom, and large budgets for diverse creators.
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u/Careful_Thanks_4882 Feb 13 '25
I’d say there is a bright side to this though. Some of the best black media is coming out now on streaming platforms. Black voices are reaching new audiences in ways they’ve never been able to and I think it’s a good thing.
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u/Spazyk Feb 16 '25
As a white kid who grew up in the middle of nowhere these shows were my only exposure to black families.
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u/Harpua81 Feb 14 '25
As an innocent little white kid, having no sense of "us" vs "them", I loved watching Martin. My parents were probably so confused, but hey, at least didn't stop me!
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u/el_payaso_mas_chulo Feb 13 '25
I'm not sure about the decline, but yeah, I saw a lot of them in the 90's as a kid since we didn't have Cable. That and The Simpsons. Jamie Foxx Show, Martin, Moesha, Fresh Prince, Wayans Bros (my fav), etc.
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u/PapaVitoOfficial Feb 14 '25
Unfortunately the premise of a nuclear family became more & more alienating/unfamiliar to audiences with each passing generation. Black audiences are too fragmented to ever reach those levels of viewerships again.
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u/Ahdamn90 Feb 14 '25
Uhh there are still a ton of black sitcoms?
Its just they went more towards the American drama TV direction instead of straight up sitcoms.
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u/det8924 Feb 14 '25
Sitcoms in general declined around the mid 00's. Largely because reality TV was cheaper and produced similar ratings. Then you had scripted shows going for the "prestige" model of high end dramas as AMC had hits with Breaking Bad and Mad Men so what space there was for scripted shows were not given to sitcoms.
There were some sitcoms that trickled out but those were outliers for the most part.
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u/Bush_Hiders Feb 14 '25
It wasn't really black sitcoms in particular that stopped. It was the genre of sitcom that can be summed up as "people who are existing in the same house and doing things" that stopped. No more Friends, or Seinfeld, or Family Matters, pr George Lopez. I genuinely don't think I've seen a sitcom of that type in my adult life. I think it has to do with the progression to streaming. Shows like that don't fit with that media distribution format. They were confined to the cable era.
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u/Awkward-Swordfish-12 Feb 14 '25
After Obama got elected I feel some powerful folks thought "we'll that's too much, that can't be happening"
Abbot Elementary bringing back those black sitcoms though
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u/JJFrancesco Feb 14 '25
Decline? There were multiple popular black sitcoms in every decade. Even recently, they had BlackIsh and GrownIsh. One of the most notable sitcoms on the air today has black leads with Abbot Elementary. And there are shows like Poppa's House and The Neighborhood on CBS. Sitcoms in general have been declining from their peak for decades now. But saying that there weren't any "black sitcoms" after the 2000s are literally writing an alternative history.
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u/BloodSugarSexMagix Feb 18 '25
Fresh Prince & Everybody Hates Chris were staples in my house growing up. I also felt like me & my siblings were keeping the Cleveland Show alive while it was airing haha
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u/SAKabir Feb 15 '25
Because having racially segregated sitcoms is weird af. Black people watched and loved shows like Friends and How I Met Your Mother, even if the main cast was all white.
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u/Kingspark2 Feb 14 '25
Almost like the last decade of nonsense and propaganda has not been about helping black people. Like the gaslighting that some things were back when was to make it seem worse than it actually was
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u/eric_the_demon Feb 17 '25
Because they done it to the boredom and the quality has descended: