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GLAAD: LGBT representation on TV is up, but very white

Kelly Lawler   | Paste BN

TV is making small strides towards diversity.

LGBT advocacy group GLAAD released its annual "Where are We on TV" report for the 2015-2016 TV season, and while in general representation of LGBT characters on TV is up, the majority of those characters are white.

The report, which included streaming services Netflix, Amazon and Hulu for the first time, found that 71% of LGBT characters on cable, and 73% on streaming, are white. The report did find that overall racial diversity on primetime scripted broadcast increased 6% from last year, with 33% (287) of 881 regular characters on those shows being people of color. However, only 59 of those characters were women.

"Each of us lives at the intersection of many identities and it's important that television characters reflect the full diversity of the LGBT community," Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO & President of GLAAD, said in a news release. "It is not enough to just include LGBT characters; those characters need to be portrayed with thought and care to accurately represent an often tokenized community."

Some other highlights from the report:

  • Transgender characters are completely absent from primetime broadcast programming, and there are only three recurring trans characters counted on cable (2%)
  • Streaming services have 7% transgender characters (two as series leads), but of the seven there was only one transgender man
  • 35 (4%) of 881 regular broadcast characters identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, with an additional 35 recurring characters
  • On cable the number of LGBT characters increased from 64 to 84, and recurring from 41 to 58
  • In the first survey of Amazon, Hulu and Netflix they found 43 series regular and 16 recurring LGBT characters across 23 series
  • 43% of characters on primetime broadcast are women, an increase of 3% from last year (which is still unrepresentative of the population at large)
  • The percentage of regular characters depicted living with a disability on broadcast has dropped to 0.9% from 1.4% last year, and only one recurring character on broadcast or cable is depicted as HIV-positive 

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