Veteran actress Tichina Arnold is doing double duty on the small screen, playing the co-host of a fictional women’s talk show on VH1’s new series Daytime Divas as well as a feisty mom to a pro basketball superstar in Starz’s comedy series Survivor’s Remorse.

Arnold, also known for her now-familiar roles in such classic comedy series as Martin and Everybody Hates Chris, recently spoke to Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about her current TV projects and the issue of diversity on television. An edited transcript follows.

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MCN:As a veteran of the television industry, do you believe we are in a golden age with regard to multicultural images and themed stories on the small screen?
Tichina Arnold: I think we are. There’s an amazing movement for people of color right now — there’s an amazing platform, because what it’s done is open doors for people to really tell their stories and to call people to task for not telling the truth. This world involves so many cultures and so many types of people in all walks of life, and social media has forced us to be inclusive and to be aware of different people and different walks of live. The television networks are now being forced to do it because there is demand for people to see what they don’t know and what they don’t look like.

MCN:Is this golden age more of a trend or one that will become a permanent fixture on the television scene?
TA: I’m hoping that we’re not in a trend. I’ve been part of trends quite a few times — they’d put all the black shows on back to back on the same night to build up the brand, and then once they built the network, they’d get rid of the shows. I don’t want to see that again.

MCN:Having starred in several hit TV shows, what drew you toDaytime Divas?
TA: I received the script from my agency, and it was the first time I read a script and laughed hysterically. My character is one that could be played by anybody. I like being able to go after a role where people can see me in a different light than my previous roles and it doesn’t pigeonhole me. I can play a superhero and save the world. Roles written specifically for black women are rare, but the upside of it is if we get the opportunity to play other roles that are not written for black women. It opens up more doors for us because it shows we can do anything, which we can.

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MCN:Are you surprised by the success ofSurvivor’s Remorse— now headed into its fourth season — and the popularity of your character Cassie Calloway?
TA: I am not surprised by the success of Survivor’s Remorse. I always knew that it was an amazing show — [series executive producer] Michael O’Malley put his heart and all into the show and it’s a passion for him to make it right, and he allows us as actors to give our opinions and our input which is important because we have to convey these characters. To be able to be such a part of such an iconic show is great. I love playing Cassie — I’ve formed Cassie into being a woman that I think a lot of women will be able to understand and live vicariously through.

On Jan. 8, actor and director Donald Glover was onstage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles accepting the best comedy series Golden Globe Award for FX’s freshman series Atlanta, for which he was a first-time executive producer.

Glover, who would also win the Globe for best actor in a comedy series, thanked the “the black folks” in Atlanta for being “amazing people.”

What’s been amazing for the television industry is the infusion of young, African- American executive producers and creators like Glover who have created popular scripted programming with diverse images and storylines that, until just a few years ago, had been rarely seen on the small screen.

Whether its Selma producer Ava DuVernay examining the complex lives of estranged Louisiana siblings in OWN’s Queen Sugar, rapper 50 Cent and Courtney Kemp Agboh exploring the double life of a club owner who’s also a drug kingpin in Starz’s drama series Power, or Internet sensation Issa Rae keeping it real about the lives of single black women in HBO’s freshman comedy series Insecure, African-American creators and producers are stepping up to the plate and delivering quality, unfiltered programming with broad appeal to a cross section of viewers.

PART OF ‘GOLDEN’ WAVE

More newbie African-American TV creators and producers are set to make their debut in 2017, as an unprecedented 500 scripted series are expected to reach TV scereens this year, according to a recent FX study. Showtime has tapped actress Lena Waithe (Netflix’s Masters of None) to helm its upcoming drama series Chi, while several high-profile movie producers will move to the small screen with scripted projects, including Spike Lee (Netflix’s She’s Gotta Have It) and John Singleton (FX’s Snowfall).

Singleton, an Oscar-nominated director for 1991’s Boyz n the Hood, said television is now providing more opportunities to develop projects targeted to diverse viewers. Singleton, who earned an Emmy Award nomination for his direction of an episdode of FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, will also produce Rebel, a police drama series for BET set to debut in March.

“With TV, it’s like you’re making a movie every week,” Singleton said.

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As the definition of what constitutes TV widens, African-American-helmed scripted series are making their mark in the current environment of high-quality programming.

“There’s been talk about the golden age of television for a while now, and because there are so many ways to get your content out there it opens the door for a lot more voices to be heard instead of when there were just three or six gatekeepers controlling everything people see,” said music superstar John Legend, an executive producer of WGN America’s sophomore drama series Underground, which chronicles the escape of antebellum-era Southern slaves via the Underground Railroad.

Legend added, “It has been great for diversity on television.”

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Still, the question remains whether the influx of African-American showrunners and producers will be a passing trend or a key feature of television’s future. Even as African-American-produced, directed and created projects on cable networks proliferate across cable networks and streaming services, minority producers remain rare behind the camera.

Minority show creators in general represented just 7.8% of cable scripted shows during the 2013-14 season, according to the UCLA 2016 Hollywood Diversity Report. While those numbers will undoubtedly climb over the next few years as post-2014 shows like ABC’s Black-ish and Starz’s Power are factored in, Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, said at September’s NAMIC Conference that the representation numbers will still remain below the overall U.S. minority population.

The history of the entertainment industry is littered with periods when movies and TV shows featuring African-American culture looked to have broken into the mainstream, only to nearly vanish within a few years, Insecure showrunner Prentice Penny said.

In particular, he pointed to what was initially thought of as the “Golden Age” of diversity in movies during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when films such as Menace II Society, She’s Gotta Have It and Boyz n the Hood seemed ready to open doors to more films directed and produced by African-Americans. But in the 2000s, few movies from mainstream studios were being helmed by African-American writers, directors and producers.

“The truth is I have no idea,” Penny said when asked whether the current trend of African-American produced content will be long-lasting. “There are always those moments where they make all of these projects and then, 10 years later, there’s nothing. I hope this is [sustainable] and that lots of voices can get heard.”

Certainly, the critical and audience appeal for these shows bodes well for a potentially sustained future. FX’s Atlanta, which follows the lives of cousins trying to make it big in the city’s rap scene, drew 3 million viewers in its Sept. 6 premiere, the most for an FX series in five years. That was followed by a slew of industry accolades, including a Critics’ Choice Award and two Golden Globe Awards for Glover, both as an actor and producer of the series.

Last month, FX rewarded Glover with an exclusive television production deal that includes a second season of Atlanta, set to return in 2018 after Glover finishes his work on the next Star Wars film.

“We’re going to try to get that show back as soon as we can because there’s a great audience that wants that show,” FX president Eric Schrier said during the network’s Television Critics Association tour press event last month.

HBO’s Insecure, which drew 1.1 million viewers in its Oct. 9 premiere, has also been renewed for a second season. Penny — who will produce and star in truTV’s reality series Upscale With Prentice Penny, set to debut in March — said he was initially surprised at the incredibly positive response to the show.

“There’s no formula … you have no idea what people will respond to,” he said. “I feel blessed that people responded to it. You can’t control what the viewing public decides to watch, so you just have to do the best you can.”

He also said that the expansion of distribution outlets via online streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube will continue to create opportunities for diverse images and stories to be produced.

Added Underground’s Legend: “The landscape was much different then because there are way more distribution channels now — not just cable, satellite or premium channels but so many other places, like Netflix and Hulu, where people can view content. As content creators, its gives us more latitude to populate these different channels with interesting and diverse content.

“It’s made TV more diverse than film because there are so many different opportunities for audiences to get what they’re looking for on television, which means a diverse range of viewpoints and voice can be seen and heard,” Legend added.

Beyond selected hit shows, networks are well aware that African- American viewers are an important audience. African-Americans continue to consume more video than any other group, thereby increasing the viability of content that appeals directly to those viewers. African-Americans average more than 42 hours of live TV viewing during the third quarter of 2016, according to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report, well above the U.S. average of 29 hours, Hispanics (22 hours) and Asian-Americans (14 hours).

KEY TO KEEPING AUDIENCES

Also, as the overall U.S. population continues to diversify, the need for new, unique stories told from a different point of view will force linear network distributors to continue to foster the development of content created by producers and creators of color — otherwise, audiences will migrate to the web, Penny said.

“I think that in the digital space people can just make their own content and put it out there for people to connect to right away,” Penny said. “It changes how we get content to the marketplace, so it definitely opens the door for literally anybody of any color or nationality that has something to say to put it out and get a response right away.”

FX Networks president John Landgraf said 52% of FX’s show directors in 2017 will not be white men, in an effort to better reflect the diversity of the network’s audience.

“We’re going to keep going until everything about our channel and every aspect of our channel is fair and better reflects the diversity of the population of the country we live in, and is not as skewed as the whole industry has been towards white heterosexual males,” Landgraf said at the last month’s Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour.

Added Underground executive producer Misha Green: “I think the diversification of stories that are being told right now will continue because there are more outlets. I think more content is needed, and the gatekeepers who wanted to keep the gate closed are now saying we need shows. I think the increase of content has helped more diverse voices come through, but more still need to come through. I can’t wait to see and hear those voices.”

For most Americans, television is in a new “golden age.”

We have more diverse choices — and a richer menu of sports, news, education and entertainment available than ever. There’s more direct streaming from the likes of HBO and Netflix, more services like Apple TV and Amazon Fire, and more innovative devices from Roku boxes to wall-size smart TVs with cross-platform search.

We are in the midst of a revolution — one that is allowing television and video to serve the multicultural world that is the America we celebrate. And it has birthed new and diverse voices like my network, Crossings TV, which offers hyper-local programming in six different languages in markets throughout the United States, serving communities that are too often shut out or overlooked.

Yet worrisome new federal regulations proposed by Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler, with the support of large technology companies such as Google, have thrown a dark cloud over this revolution — one that could deprive many communities of the tailored, in-language program options we have worked so hard to provide.

Big Tech ‘Poachers’

Under the FCC’s proposed new rules (known commonly as “AllVid” after an earlier industry lobbying eff ort the Obama administration rejected in 2010), big technology companies such as Google would be given the right to poach the program license deals we negotiate with pay TV providers like DirecTV or Time Warner Cable without being bound to the underlying license terms that help fund our networks and ensure they get enough exposure to thrive.

The FCC chairman says the rule is intended to create competition for set-top box devices. He argues that exempting these companies from the obligation to negotiate for rights will enable them to focus on developing new boxes to repackage your existing programming and place it alongside the more underfunded Internet video in a single “cross -platform” search.

It’s an odd argument on behalf of competition — asking the federal government to subsidize the most wealthy companies so that they can bring more search and advertising services into our living rooms and require yet another in-home box.

Leaving aside that the rationale for this giveaway to Big Tech is totally undermined by the fact that smart TVs and other home gateways already provide cross-platform search, there is an even more compelling reason to oppose the AllVid mandate: It will likely bring us less diversity, not more, in television’s golden age.

Today, small and niche networks like mine can negotiate for channel placement they think will help them be seen by their target audience and can cross-promote with other networks to gain exposure from potential fans.

Crossings TV has grown because it has been able to create meaningful local programming in partnership with locally based multichannel distributors — builders of infrastructure and creators of jobs who are physically on the ground in the communities we serve.

But the Wheeler “AllVid” rule directly attacks that crucial system and allows tech firms to disregard negotiated terms such as channel placement, digital rights and much else.

At the Box’s Mercy

Further, the cross-search function leaves our channels all at the mercy of the new box’s often-mysterious algorithms — notorious for burying disfavored and smaller companies in its ash heap. The dedicated viewers who value networks like Crossings TV have no currency with Google, its fellow Silicon Valley technology inhabitants or profit-maximizing cross-platform search algorithms. Certainly many have observed that the Google workforce looks nothing like the diverse communities it purports to serve. For programmers like Crossings, these giant new boxes could mean a one way ticket to the back of the bus.

While working to create an African-American focused search browser through Blackbirdhome.com, I saw this problem up close when the Google search algorithm consistently buried African-American-generated content on the lowest rung of search results. Extrapolating that experience to a world of television that is subservient to a Google universal search master box promises a continued outlier existence for African- Americans and Asians, as well as other minorities.

AllVid will further strip-mine our value and harm viewers by serving up new banner ads (for which creators will get no compensation), ignoring privacy protections for your personal television viewing habits, and driving up bills with the massive re-engineering needed to accommodate these privileged devices.

The FCC should step back. Promoting competition is a goal we all share, but the government putting a thumb on the scale in favor of technology giants so that they can sell more ads, track our viewing habits and bury diversity programming — all in the name of competition that already exists — hardly seems to be part of the progressive legacy this FCC should leave.

Frank Washington is the CEO of Crossings TV, an award-winning, small, independent provider of Asian-language programming, information and entertainment. He conceived of the Minority Ownership Tax Certificate while a consultant in President Jimmy Carter’s administration and has served as the legal assistant to former FCC chairman Charles Ferris.

British broadcaster ITV called for major U.K. TV platforms like BSkyB and Virgin Media to pay for transmission of free over-the-air content after a recent report said that so-called retransmission consent helped fuel the current “Golden Age of Television” in the United States.

According to the report, Delivering for Television Viewers: Retransmission Consent and the US Market for Video Content, and conducted by NERA Economic Consulting, retrans has “contributed significantly to the overall health of the U.S. broadcasting industry.”

According to the report, commissioned by ITV in partnership with Germany’s VPRT and Free TV Australia, free-to-air broadcasters received about $3.3 billion in retrans payments in 2013, accounting for less than 3% of cable operator revenue – but about 15% of total broadcast revenue – and “having little or no impact on pay TV prices.”

ITV estimates that UK commercial Public Service Broadcasters invest around $4.8 billion on programming – and that it alone spends almost $1.6 billion annually – most of which is pumped back into original content. Under the current regime, no payment is made by the pay TV platforms to PSBs who fund this programming.

In a statement, ITV chief executive Adam Crozier said that introducing retransmission fees would have clear benefits to the UK creative industries and the wider economy by enabling PSBs to continue to invest in original programming.

“The majority of viewing on these pay TV platforms is PSB programming yet ITV, whether as producer or broadcaster investing in creating that content, doesn’t receive any payment – despite the fact that pay TV platforms pay commercial terms for other channels,” Crozier said in a statement. The impact of this wholly outdated regime is that UK Public Service Broadcasters are forced to subsidise major pay TV platforms. In today’s highly competitive media marketplace that is simply wrong – and to the detriment not just of the PSBs, but the consumer and the wider UK creative economy.”

“It is in the interests of all broadcasters that we encourage the regulator and government to look again at this issue for the benefit of the industry and viewers,” he concluded.