Cancellation of GBH TV show “Basic Black” deplored by viewers and contributors

“We’ve relied on Basic Black for years to get our perspective,” said Michael Curry, executive director of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers and president of the Boston branch of the NAACP. Curry, a frequent guest on “Basic Black,” added that it gives experts and influencers who aren’t often seen in mainstream media “an opportunity to share their perspectives.”

The show will no longer air on television, GBH announced, but station executives said it will be reinvented as digital programming. GBH also suspended production on two other television programs, citing low viewership that did not cover its costs, and laid off 31 employees, including two producers who worked on “Basic Black.”

Originally called “Say Brother,” the series was launched in the crucible of 1968 – the year of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the passage of the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1968. “Basic Black” had aims to diversify public programming and highlight the perspectives of people of color in Boston and beyond. Until its cancellation, “Basic Black” was the longest-running program on all public television focused on people of color.

“This show has survived a pandemic, it has survived the violence that we’ve seen through Trayvon Martin, George Floyd — and now it’s gone,” said Andrew Leong, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and regular guest on “Basic Black”.

“Basic Black”, which included a round table discussion usually bringing together four guests and a host on a set against the backdrop of Blue Hill Avenue and the African Meeting House, broadcast every week on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. on GBH 2. The programs for this year have been further explored. on the experiences of Black LGBTQ+ people in Massachusetts, representation of people of color in media, and an examination of what Claudine Gay’s resignation from Harvard said about women of color in leadership and diversity in education .

In addition to “Basic Black,” GBH announced it would suspend production of “Greater Boston” and “Talking Politics.”

“We are proud of the work done on these shows and their respective stories,” GBH CEO Susan Goldberg wrote in a message to employees Wednesday. “But for now, we are stopping production because, as audience behaviors have changed, these shows no longer attract enough viewers to justify the cost of producing them for television.”

The layoffs and scheduling changes come after GBH management warned employees of layoffs earlier this year, as the company faced a budget shortfall due to stagnant revenue and rising costs, had previously reported the Globe.

Goldberg added that GBH would reinvent its canceled television programs, including “Basic Black,” as “digital-focused programming.”

In an interview Thursday, Lee Hill, editor-in-chief of GBH News, noted that “Basic Black” will return in a digital form, most likely on YouTube. He does not rule out a return to television.

“I know this city has a very long history. . . documenting a city that has a very complex narrative when it comes to race and race relations,” Hill said. “What we’re basically trying to do is build on that history, not erase it.”

Hill added that the show usually takes a break of about five months around this time each year. He hopes the program will return in some form in the fall, but he’s not sure how long the digital reinvention will take.

But two current GBH employees and one laid-off worker, who spoke to the Globe anonymously because they feared retaliation, questioned how GBH was going to bring the shows back in any form, citing the loss of production staff and the lack of concrete plans for the future. .

Curry, who serves on GBH’s advisory board, hopes the station will reinvigorate “Basic Black” for an online audience and added that he is grateful the station has several leaders of color in its ranks.

“To GBH’s credit, no other channel has invested so much in our stories and content creators,” he said.

Across the GBH organization in 2022, 24 percent of workers were people of color and 8 percent were Black, according to the GBH website. For comparison, 34% of residents in the Greater Boston area were people of color and 10% were Black, according to 2022 census data.

Kim McLarin, a novelist, former journalist and professor at Emerson College who hosted the program for a year, said the show “put Boston on the map and improved Boston’s image to the world and the public.” ‘Black America’.

“I’m glad it exists in some form, but it’s part of the increased divide in American society and how we connect and the narratives we hear,” McLarin said.

The show resonated beyond the black community. McLarin recalls being recognized by a white viewer of “Basic Black” at a Dublin airport, who said the show gave her insight into black perspectives.

“This will not be recreated on a digital platform,” she said. “At this particular moment in our society, where we are at risk of losing our democracy and fracturing along racial, class and political lines, it is a terrible time for this to happen.”

While mainstream television news covered Prince’s importance to black culture upon his death in 2016, “Basic Black” allowed Leong, who happened to be a guest that week, to share his thoughts as a Asian American.

“It’s an example of the kind of space, the kind of license, that allowed us to bring in these different voices to represent a diversity of viewpoints on a particular topic,” Leong said. “We will miss it.”

And while other news shows may feature one Black speaker at a time to discuss a current issue, the show’s format, which often includes multiple Black guests and other people of color, features a diversity of opinions. For example, in a 2021 episode, Black scholars debated the significance of Juneteenth and whether the holiday was a celebration of emancipation.

The shutdown of “Basic Black” and other shows at GBH comes at a time when media outlets across the country are cutting programs and laying off staff. Many of the hardest hit organizations are local media.

The show helped make better citizens in Massachusetts, McLarin said, and called on GBH and other public media organizations to consider diverse communities as part of their audiences they should serve.

“I want (the media) to take seriously their role as important parts of our democracy and their role in building better citizens and serving the public good,” she said. “Profits should not be the main motivator. »

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Aidan Ryan can be contacted at [email protected]. follow him @aidanfitzryan.