Cosby
Cosby
Cosby
Introduction
The Cosby Show changed the face of American television and set a new
standard for representing African American families in non-stereotyped
roles. It rewrote the book on syndication when Viacom required stations to
bid for the privilege of airing the show (Heuton, 1990), and it fuelled the
networks efforts to have the FCCs financial-syndication rules repealed to
allow NBC to share in the shows $600 million syndication revenues
(Andrews, 1992). The Cosby Show also profoundly altered international
television syndication, proving the international marketability of the now
staple comedy format, establishing Viacom as a major distributor during a
time of global deregulation, and drawing dedicated audiences as only
Dallas and Dynasty previously had. While many scholars have addressed
the shows domestic popularity (Boyd, 1997; Downing, 1988; Gray, 1995;
Press, 1991; Taylor, 1989), its international acceptance remains a virtual
mystery.1
Recently, the world has witnessed a dramatic increase in the export of
middle-class African American situation comedies which are directly linked
to The Cosby Shows success. This article investigates the various economic,
textual and audience practices that led to the shows international success,
and that continue to make middle-class African American sitcoms lucrative
international fare. In an era of increased interdependence of television
markets, where shows must exhibit international appeal before anything
moves forward (Schapiro, 1991: 29) in domestic production, The Cosby
Show set the representational and marketing standards that continue to
determine what types of African American shows get produced, and where
Media, Culture & Society 2000 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi), Vol. 22: 371391
[0163-4437(200007)22:4;371391;013258]
372 Media, Culture & Society 22(4)
those shows are sold. While the international syndication industry learned
many lessons from The Cosby Show, including the global appeal of
domestic sitcoms, this article suggests that deeper revelations regarding the
importance of televisual representations of race in global programming
remain unrecognized.
culture. In South Africa, for instance, The Cosby Show was so incendiary
that a Member of Parliament publicly criticized the show for its ANC
messages (BBC, 1988). As the current study demonstrates, audiences around
the world do find important pleasures in The Cosby Shows dignified rep-
resentations of an African American family. Their pleasures cannot be
explained solely by the cheapness and ubiquity of US programming.
Contrary to Rosss (1996) argument, Gillespie (1995) has found that
imported popular culture can be integral to the creation of new ethnic
identities. Through extensive ethnographic research, she demonstrates how
Punjabi youth living in London use domestic and imported audiovisual
culture to understand their identities in relation to the family, the nation,
the neighbourhood, the diaspora and the world. In their talk about the
Australian soap opera Neighbours, for instance, these viewers work out
their relationships to local gossip culture, parents and white British society.
However, her analysis is not centrally concerned with the appeal of indi-
vidual artefacts like The Cosby Show, which somehow speak to variously
situated audiences. Neither is she interested in the economic imperatives
that drive most cross-cultural media exchanges. What she offers for the
current study is compelling evidence that imported programming can have
important intersections with audiences understandings of social identities
like ethnicity.
Jones (1988) provides an important corollary to Gillespies (1995) work
in his ethnography of white British fans of Afro-Caribbean music. Jones
accounts for the industrial, textual and audience practices that explain this
popularity. He demonstrates how Afro-Caribbean music, especially reggae,
was intentionally altered and packaged by the music industry to appeal to
white youth. However, he also accounts for audiences continual reappro-
priation of these musical forms and the subversive potential that inheres in
the most commercialized forms, which can provide important utopic ideals
and an entree into Afro-Caribbean culture and counter-economies. These
working-class white youths exhibit a sometimes deep affinity with black
British politics and culture on the basis of shared economic disadvantage.
Like Gillespie (1995), Jones (1988) is interested in micro-analyses of
macro-social processes, which causes him to concentrate on one neighbour-
hood. This article, on the other hand, aims at comparing audiences across
local particulars. While Gillespie shows that extranational television culture
can help articulate ethnic identities and Jones demonstrates how economic
and textual practices must operate together in international exchanges of
popular culture, we still need to understand how race can signify trans-
nationally in order to begin our investigation of the roles that race played
in The Cosby Shows international success.
Gilroy (1993) addresses the problem of imagining race transnationally
when he attempts to theorize the appeal of black popular music within the
African diaspora and beyond. According to Gilroy, black music displays an
374 Media, Culture & Society 22(4)
The Cosby Shows international popularity began in the Fall of 1985 and
continued until 1995. During this period, the show ranked in the top ten in
such diverse markets as the Philippines, Australia, Lebanon and Norway.
The only regions where the show was not a marked success were Central
and South America, although many of these television markets did import
the show for a period of time. In the Caribbean, The Cosby Show experi-
enced its greatest and earliest popularity outside the USA. Many countries
in this region depend on the USA to provide large tracts of their pro-
gramming schedules, and some simply re-transmit US signals via satellite.
It is not uncommon for a popular US show to be popular in the Caribbean
at the same time, and The Cosby Show is a prime example of this tendency.
Broadcast throughout the region during its network prime-time run, the
show was as popular in the Caribbean . . . as it [was] in the United
States (Payne, 1994: 233), and audience surveys show that Caribbean
viewers enjoyed the show more than any other viewers outside the USA
(Fuller, 1992).
At first glance, the shows popularity in the Caribbean seems to suggest
that The Cosby Show was most popular in countries with predominantly
black audiences. However, non-white audiences in the Middle East and
Asia also responded favourably to the show. In Lebanon, for instance,
the show was the rated number one in 1988 (Raschka, 1988), while in the
Philippines, Indonesia and Hong Kong, the show appeared frequently in
the top ten between 1986 and 1989. Prior to 1987, the show was exported
predominantly to non-European countries, with the exception of the Scandi-
navian countries. Significant differences in export policies, programming
376 Media, Culture & Society 22(4)
needs and market size played an important role in keeping the show out of
Europe during the first two years of its export. The reasons for success or
failure of the show are nicely exemplified if we compare the fate of The
Cosby Show in the UK and South Africa.
Both the UK and South Africa have large white, English-speaking
populations who made up the main audience for The Cosby Show. Language
transfer was not a concern in these countries. Both countries also have a
large non-white population, but there the similarities end. In South Africa,
the show was popular with black audiences, while in the UK it was not.
The UK has well-established broadcasting networks that produce original
programming, while the South African Broadcasting Company (SABC) had
been on the air little more than a decade when The Cosby Show aired
(Nixon, 1994), and had recently upgraded to three channels (Mufson,
1986). As a result of the upgrade, much of SABCs programming came
from the USA and the UK during the mid- and late 1980s.
In the UK, The Cosby Show was aired from 1985 through the mid-1990s
on Channel Four, which was generally regarded as the nations upscale
television channel. The show attracted only a cult following of between 2
and 3 million viewers (Griffin, 1990). By comparison, the first episode of
the UK comedy One Foot in the Grave drew 14.75 million viewers on the
mainstream BBC1 channel (The Independent, 1992). Because of the shows
lacklustre ratings, Channel Four paid the paltry sum of 10,00015,000 per
episode (Henry, 1986), while its US counterparts sometimes paid close to
half a million dollars (Ziegler, 1988) per episode. The series was targeted
at, and mostly watched by upscale white audiences, or ABs as they are
designated by the industry, whereas non-white audiences tended to find pro-
gramming geared toward them on Independent Television (ITV). Among
ABs, the show performed well for Channel Four, securing its continued, if
unremarkable run for nearly ten years (Henry, 1986). Despite the shows
lack of popularity among non-white audiences, those black Britons who did
watch the show rated it exceptionally highly (Fuller, 1992).
Likewise, in South Africa, The Cosby Show was the most popular show
among Whites (Mufson, 1986: 17) in 1990, but black South Africans also
responded very positively to the show (Fuller, 1992; Mufson, 1986). The
show was carried on SABC TV4, a newly introduced channel aimed at a
general audience, unlike TV1, TV2 and TV3, which were targeted toward
specific racial and ethnic groups. Ranked consistently number one, The
Cosby Show generated very different responses from black audience
members than it did among some whites. A black grocer explained that,
Cosby is a big doctor, he is consulted, he has authority, and he receives
full respect due to him. This is the kind of thing we blacks want here in
South Africa (Mufson, 1986: 17). On the other hand, one white fan
expressed his belief that African Americans first world values make
them fundamentally different from black South Africans. He argued that
Havens, Race and the global popularity of The Cosby Show 377
white South Africans could identify with the Huxtable family because they
shared the values that black South Africans lacked (Fuller, 1992: 114). For
blacks, then, The Cosby Show could serve to expose the fallacy of black
South African inferiority, while for whites it could encourage that fallacy.
The contrast between the UK and South Africa makes clear many points
that are relevant to our discussion. First, we can see that numerous factors
influenced the decision to import The Cosby Show and the popularity of the
show. Among the more prominent are the state of the television industry,
the channel on which it was broadcast, and the racial-political climate of
the period. In the UK, racial and ethnic minorities could find locally
produced shows geared toward them, and The Cosby Show could not fill
the void it did among black South Africans. Still, race was not a non-issue
in the popularity of the show in the UK. In fact, the marketing director for
Viacom UK, Martha Burke-Hennessy, suggested that white Britons resisted
The Cosby Show because the family was black (Henry, 1986).
While our analysis so far has shown why a sitcom might have been aired
in several countries around this time, it cannot explain why this specific
show became such a hit, and not one of the other 135 sitcoms that Viacom
licensed. The answer to this question lies in textual and audience practices.
In many areas of the world, audiences are accustomed to and even prefer
Western popular culture, and we might suspect that The Cosby Show
appealed to international audiences simply because it was the most popular
US show at the time. While this assumption is surely accurate, it neglects
the importance of race in US popular culture. Western popular culture has
long enlisted black culture, performers and bodies in order to build a mass
white audience (Hilmes, 1993; Lott, 1993; Pieterse, 1992; Roediger, 1991;
Rogin, 1996). The recent explosion of African American images in US
television and advertising (Boyd, 1997; Gray, 1995) at a time when these
products are expected to appeal to disparate international audiences should
cause us to ask whether we are witnessing a similar strategy.
382 Media, Culture & Society 22(4)
the family members perform a lip-synch pantomime of Ray Charles and the
Raelettes Night Time Is the Right Time for the Huxtables grandparents
(Downing, 1988). Bill Cosby, like most black comedians, delivers his lines
with recognizable expressions and gestures, which, in themselves, are a
source of humour (Watkins, 1994: 41). For international television, the use
of physical humour facilitates the shows export: it transfers to different
cultures and languages much more readily than verbal humour. Audiences
for The Cosby Show obviously responded to the shows representations of
blackness, and their comments about the show give us important insights
into how they see their own racial identities intersecting with the Huxtables. I
draw these comments from published audience interviews and newspaper
feature accounts that include interviews with non-US audiences for the
show, and reanalyse them with an eye toward their articulations of race,
class and regional identity.
Non-white audiences appreciated The Cosby Shows portrayal of dignified
blackness. Black audiences worldwide reported similar feelings of pride
from watching the show and knowing others in the world were watching it.
Compare the following statements made by an American, a Caribbean and
a South African respondent:
I like this show because it depicts black people in a positive way. I think hes
[Cosby] good. Its good to see that blacks can be professionals. (Jhally and
Lewis, 1992: 81) (USA)
Black people in this show are not isolated, no fun is made of Blackness, and the
characters are shown as leading wholesome moral lives. (Payne, 1994: 235)
(Barbados)
The show makes me proud of being black. (Fuller, 1992: 111) (South Africa)
The pride these respondents feel issues in part from the fact that white
audiences are watching, and that the show breaks with traditional portrayals
of blacks. Each of the statements indicates an understanding that images of
blacks in white popular culture have long been derisive, and expresses
pride that, finally, blacks are being positively portrayed. These viewers
believe that blacks throughout the West share a history and a common
political goal of challenging the representations of blackness in Western
popular culture. Their racial identity stretches beyond the borders of the
nation-state, and must be understood as a transnational phenomenon (see
Gilroy, 1993).
The Cosby Show also offered black viewers solace to help them through
their daily struggles. As one black South African fan explained:
[T]he Cosby Show . . . is saying, Come on, you white guys [in South Africa],
the blacks are not so bad as you make them out to be. Look at us, we are having
a good life and normal problems here in America. Give those guys down
Havens, Race and the global popularity of The Cosby Show 385
there a chance. Lets change for the better and live together, not apart. (Fuller,
1992: 114)
The greatest divide between black and white in this country is not the colour of
ones skin but the first- and third-world values and attitudes displayed by the
different race groups. . . . Therefore, we do not see the Cosby show as being
about black people but we see it as a very entertaining sit-com displaying beliefs
and values we can associate with. (Fuller, 1992: 114)
Notes
References
Andrews, E.L. (1992) Studios Get a Reprieve In Battle Over Reruns, The New
York Times 8 December: D2.
BBC (1988) S African MP Says Cosby Show Conveying ANC Message ,
BBC Summary of World Broadcasts 3 June: 4B.
Boyd, T. (1997) Am I Black Enough for You? Popular Culture from the Hood and
Beyond. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Broadcast (1988) French Network M6 Has Bought Six Years 124 Episodes of
The Cosby Show 22 April: 20.
Downing, J. (1988) The Cosby Show and American Racial Discourse, pp.
4673 in G. Smitherman-Donaldson and T.A. Van Dijk (eds) Discourse and
Discrimination. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Fanon, F. (1967) Black Skin, White Masks, trans. C. Markham. New York: Grove
Press.
Flanigan, J. (1987) The American Dream Is Best Export US Has, Los Angeles
Times 9 September: Sec. 4, 1.
Fuller, L. (1992) The Cosby Show: Audiences, Impact, and Implications. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press.
Gillespie, M. (1995) Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London: Routledge.
Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goldberg, D.T. (1993) Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning.
Cambridge: Blackwell.
Gray, H. (1995) Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Griffin, S. (1990) Errors of Comedy, Broadcast 11 May: 17.
Hall, S. (1995) Black and White Television, pp. 1328 in J. Givanni (ed.) Remote
Control: Dilemmas of Black Intervention in British Film and TV. London: British
Film Institute.
Hall, S. (1996) What Is This Black in Black Popular Culture?, pp. 46575 in
D. Morley and K. Chen (eds) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies.
London and New York: Routledge.
Henry, G. (1986) Why Is It that a Show Which Pulls a Massive 51 Per Cent
Following in its Home Country Can Only Muster a Measly Three Million
Viewers Here?, Televisual 21 April: 334.
Herman, E. and R. McChesney (1997) The Global Media: The New Missionaries of
Global Capitalism. London and Washington: Cassell.
Heuton, C. (1990) An Enviable Situation: The Format Once Declared Dead Now
Rules Syndication, Channels 17 December: 368.
Hilmes, M. (1993) Invisible Men: Amos n Andy and the Roots of Broadcast
Discourse, Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10(4): 30121.
Hoskins, C., S. McFadyen and A. Finn (1997) Global Television and Film: An
Introduction to the Economics of the Business. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Huff, R. (1996) Sharing the Joke, Television Business International October: 52.
Jhally, S. and J. Lewis (1992) Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences,
and the Myth of the American Dream. San Francisco, CA: Westview Press.
Jones, S. (1988) Black Culture, White Youth: The Reggae Tradition from JA to UK.
London: Macmillan.
390 Media, Culture & Society 22(4)
Lott, E. (1993) Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working
Class. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marable, M. (1983) How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in
Race, Political Economy and Society. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Miller, D. (1992) The Young and the Restless in Trinidad: A Case of the Local
and the Global in Mass Consumption, pp. 16382 in R. Silverstone and E.
Hirsch (eds) Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic
Spaces. London and New York: Routledge.
Morley, D. and K. Robins (1989) Spaces of Identity: Communications Tech-
nologies and the Reconfiguration of Europe, Screen 30: 1035.
Mufson, S. (1986) The Cosby Plan for South Africa, Wall Street Journal 30
July: Section 1, 17.
Nixon, R. (1994) Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood: South African Culture and
the World Beyond. New York and London: Routledge.
ORegan, T. (1992) The International, the Regional, and the Local: Hollywoods
New & Declining Audience, pp. 7598 in E. Jacka (ed.) Continental Shift: Global-
isation and Culture. Double Bay, Australia: Local Consumption Publications.
Patterson, R. (1995) Chapter Four, Entertainment and Drama, in A. Smith (ed.)
Television: An International History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Payne, M. (1994) The Ideal Black Family? A Caribbean View of The Cosby
Show, Journal of Black Studies 25: 23149.
Pieterse, J. (1992) White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular
Culture. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.
Press, A. (1991) Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the
American Television Experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Raschka, M. (1988) Hold Your Fire, Its Cosby Time: TV Shows Popularity
Cuts Across All Factions in Beirut, Chicago Tribune 19 June: C16.
Richter, P. (1985) Viacom Quietly Becomes Major Force in TV, Los Angeles
Times 22 September: Sec. 5, 1.
Riggs, M. (1991) Colour Adjustment, videocassette. San Francisco, CA: California
Newsreel.
Robins, K. (1989) Reimagined Communities: European Image Space, Beyond
Fordism, Cultural Studies 3: 14565.
Roediger, D. (1991) The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the
American Working Class. London and New York: Verso.
Rogin, M. (1996) Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood
Melting Pot. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ross, K. (1996) Black and White Media: Black Images in Popular Film and
Television. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Schapiro, M. (1991) Lust-Greed-Sex-Power: Translatable Anywhere, The New
York Times 2 June: Section 2, 29.
Securities and Exchange Commission (1987) Viacom, Inc. 10-K Filing 31 December.
Securities and Exchange Commission (1991) Viacom, Inc. 10-K Filing 31 December.
Spivak, G. (1990) The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New
York and London: Routledge.
Taylor, E. (1989) Prime Time Families in Postwar America. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
The Independent (1992) Television/Statistics 13 February: 36.
Tomlinson, J. (1991) Cultural Imperialism. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Viacom (1985) Annual Report.
Havens, Race and the global popularity of The Cosby Show 391
Watkins, M. (1994) On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying, the
Underground Tradition of African-American Humour that Transformed American
Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Ziegler, P. (1988) The $600-Million Man: Will a Record Syndication Gamble on
Cosby Show Re-runs Pay off?, Los Angeles Times 2 October: 4.