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Saturday Night Live Diversity Analysis

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Diversity Within Saturday Night Live Rough Draft
When a regular viewer tunes in the hit show, Saturday Night Live, what do they see on their screen? They see a comedy show with primarily young Caucasian men and some Caucasian women. There is a problem with the level of diversity within Saturday Night Live, otherwise known as SNL. Since its beginning, Saturday Night Live has had a very long history with not displaying actors from a variety of races and backgrounds. I, Hannah Rabitoy, head writer for SNL, am writing to the executive producer, Lorne Michaels, to address this issue of diversity and what must be implemented in the future. In order to improve viewership and creativity within the hit television show, Saturday Night Live, the producers must enforce a plan to diversify the cast members by placing quotas on the Human Resources department to ensure all are represented properly, recruiting from more standup comedian centers rather than typical non-diverse comedy …show more content…

In order to understand current race and gender diversity issues, we must first examine current and past statistics involving this issue. Diverse inclusion is very important to consider when handling a public medium, such as television. Blogger Erik Voss states the fact that “since SNL premiered in 1975, only 15 black performers have been in the cast (and only two Latinos and zero Asian-Americans), and only four of those black performers have been women: Yvonne Hudson (1980-81), Danitra Vance (1985-86), Ellen Cleghorne (1991-95) and Maya Rudolph (2000-2007)” (Voss). Joe Blevins, another television blogger and firm believer in diversity said “just a few seasons ago, Saturday Night Live had only two African-American cast members, neither of whom was female. Unless either Kenan Thompson or Jay Pharoah agreed to wear a dress, the show did not even have someone to play

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