With the 2014-15 television season now in the books, a recent Ratings Intelligence report revealed that three of the top five highest-rated broadcast dramas of 2015 featured a predominately African-American cast or was headed by an African-American actor/actress: Empire, How to Get Away with Murder and Scandal.

With the success of those broadcast TV shows as well as cable series such as Power, Being Mary Jane and the Haves and Have Nots featuring predominately African-American cast or lead actors, it’s hard to believe there was a time when such images weren’t a major part of the television landscape.

Yet a recent Paley Center Tribute to African-American Achievements in Television reminded the many actors, writers and network executives in attendance how far African-Americans have come in portraying their stories and their images on the small screen.

Oprah Winfrey, who has been a mainstay on television for more than 30 years, spoke during the Paley Center tribute about a period in the early 1950s through late 1960s when there were no TV shows featuring an African-American actor or actresses in a starring or supporting role.

To have come from that point through the 1970s and 1980s when a few shows like Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons,Good Times and eventually The Cosby Show began to showcase African-American images and stories, to today’s array of programs showcasing African Americans across multiple platforms is not lost on the veteran actors and actresses who lived through those often lean times.

Antonio Fargas, best known for his role as the iconic, streetwise informant Huggy Bear on the 1970s crime drama Starsky & Hutch and who has been embraced by contemporary audiences through appearances on Everybody Hates Chris and most recently on Showtime’s House of Lies, recently told Multichannel News that he’s impressed with the strides African-Americans have made on TV.

   “For me I know whose shoulders I stand on. To now know that I’m a young pioneer in TV history because of the opportunities that I had in the 1970s is special," said Fargas, who is currently serving as brand ambassador for the vintage TV network Cozi Tv. "[Today’s performers] gave me opportunities in their shows because they wanted to say thank you for the shoulders that I gave them.” 

The other message heard loud and clear at the Paley Center tribute was that the beat must go on for African-American images on TV beyond Scandal, Empire and Black-ish.  

“It’s imperative that we keep telling our stories because our experiences are so broad, rich and multifaceted – there isn’t one way to be Black or ish,” said Winfrey. “The more stories we share the more reflective we can be of the whole diverse African-American community.”

The 2014-15 television season is almost in the books, and it will arguably go down as one of the most groundbreaking as it pertains to diversity.

The success of a group of new shows on both traditional and digital TV platforms has helped to eradicate some long-held preconceived notions about shows created by and starring people of diverse backgrounds.

First, this TV season has proven that content with diverse themes and lead characters can appeal beyond specific niche groups. The explosion this year of shows such as Empire, Jane the Virgin, How to Get Away With Murder, Black-ish and Power on traditional cable and broadcast TV, as well as Orange Is the New Black and Transparent on over-the-top subscription video services, is remarkable, given the unprecedented competition and fragmented viewership of the current TV environment.

The fact that all of these shows performed well — especially Fox’s Empire, which, incredibly, saw its viewership climb virtually every week of its 12-week run — is a testament to each show’s ability to appeal not just to multicultural viewers who are watching lead characters that reflect their images and cultures like never before, but to mainstream viewers as well.

Second, services including Amazon and Netflix have proven you can build successful series around transgender characters who are complicated, compelling and three-dimensional, rather than cartoonish caricatures that viewers could easily dismiss as weird or somehow not real. Jeffrey Tambor’s Golden Globe-winning portrayal of a middle-aged woman inside a man’s body in Amazon’s Transparent, as well as Netflix’s depiction of multiethnic and LGBT characters in Orange Is the New Black, have shown that realistic portrayals of LGBT people will get viewers to tune in, not tune out.

Third, it’s good to have diversity behind the camera as well as in front of it. From Empire’s Lee Daniels to The Haves and the Have Nots’s Tyler Perry, to How to Get Away With Murder’s Shonda Rhimes to Power’s Courtney Kemp Agboh and Fresh Off the Boat’s Eddie Huan, this new wave of multicultural producers, directors, writers and showrunners is providing viewers with narratives that reflect unique experiences and cultural nuances — no better or worse than anyone else’s; just different than what viewers have seen in the past — that have put a fresh and colorful coat of paint on traditional TV genres that viewers love to watch.

Strong ratings performances from a number of multicultural-themed shows during the 2014-15 television season are proving that an audience exists for quality programming featuring people of color.

The Jan. 6 season-three debut of OWN’s primetime soap opera Tyler Perry’s The Haves and The Have Nots set a network ratings record for a series premiere, averaging 3.22 million viewers and ranking as the network’s second most watched telecast among male viewers.

The Fox broadcasting network’s drama series Empire, starring Terrance Howard and Taraji P. Henson, drew nearly 10 million viewers for its Jan. 7 premiere, the second biggest launch on broadcast TV this season behind ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder, starring African-American actress and recent People’s Choice Award winner Viola Davis.

Add ABC’s comedy sitcom Black-ishto the list, and three of the highest-rated new series for the season are headed by African-American actors and/or actresses.

The Latino family dramedy Jane The Virgin on the CW was the best reviewed new series, according to Ratings Intelligence, and the show’s star, Gina Rodriguez, recently won a Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a TV comedy – the network’s first major Golden Globes win.

Also, ABC Latino family sitcom Cristela was the only freshman comedy besides Black-ish to get a full-season pickup, according to Ratings Intelligence. 

The Television Critics Association press tour provided TV writers and viewers with a glimpse at several new projects featuring prominent multicultural characters and storylines. ABC will soon air the Asian-themed series Fresh Off The Boat, while TV One Feb. 7 will launch a monthly series of original movies featuring African-American themes, starting with White Water.

BET will debut its first-ever mini-series The Book Of Negroes, based on Lawrence Hill’s award-winning novel which chronicles a young slave woman who, in exchange for her freedom, s ides with the British during the Revolutionary War.

Emmy and Academy Award winning actor Lou Gossett Jr. said TV series like The Book of Negroes in which he stars as well as movies like Selma and 12 Years A Slave are being developed for an audience looking for programming that tell stories about the history, lives, struggles and stories of people of color.

“It took a minute to tell our stories … now it’s okay for us to tell our stories to the world,” Gossett told nearly 200 TV critics at BET’s recent Television Critics Association Winter tour presentation. “This is the tip of the iceberg as far as information about our roots are concerned,” he said. “We’re going in the right direction, and you ain’t seen nothing yet.”