Hollywood's sweeping generalizations about 'mainstream America' are getting it wrong
"Roseanne" has been the big sitcom story of the season, and recently Ad Week talked with ABC honcho Ben Sherwood about the show's revival. If Hollywood has been out of touch with "mainstream America, " Sherwood asserts - a sweeping assumption Ad Week simply repeats as fact - the obvious move postelection was to ponder: "What is our responsibility to reflect what just happened on our airwaves?"
ABC then "began to develop some ideas about how perhaps inclusion doesn't just mean 'Fresh Off the Boat' and 'black-ish.' Maybe inclusion also means reflecting the working poor in America, and the middle of America where there is daily struggle."
OK, hang on. Hang on. There's so much to unpack here. For nine seasons the network did carry a show about the limited finances and daily struggles of a family in middle America called, ahem, "The Middle," which just aired
