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This introductory chapter looks at media globalization not as a restrictive or liberating force, but as productive of certain kinds of representational outcomes. In some ways, globalization has expanded the diversity of African American television, while in other ways it has restricted that diversity. Globalization has resulted in more diverse portrayals of African American men in terms of class, politics, and professions. For African American women, however, it has helped narrow the diversity of portrayals or eliminate them altogether, largely because African American characters are most frequently used to attract male demographics. The chapter also explains how the globalization of the media industries shapes the representational politics of African American television. Drawing on Michel Foucault's theory that power produces both social realities and forms of resistance, the chapter argues that media globalization is an exercise in corporate capitalist power.

This chapter focuses on the international circulation of the newer forms of African American television, particularly, how different network organizations and audience configurations create opportunities for new kinds of African American television flows. The priorities of premium cable channels, general entertainment broadcasters, and comedy channels abroad, combined with industry lore about “edgy” and “quality” programming, lead to a heavy reliance on black masculinity, heteronormativity, crime, violence, and frequent use of the word “nigger” in contemporary series. These similar aesthetic choices tend to dominate web-based television series as well, largely because online producers often strive to have their programs noticed by more traditional television outlets. The chapter looks at how series creators navigate these institutional expectations of what African American television should include in order to get their shows on air.

This chapter looks at the miniseries Roots (1977), which became a worldwide sensation. The show's portrayals of blackness, particularly black masculinity, draws on black nationalist and Black Power discourses circulating in American society at the time. The chapter reviews how these discourses served differing institutional needs of American, Western European, and Eastern European broadcasters, as well as how other features of the miniseries helped and hindered its export potential. Because miniseries addressing white American history were the main beneficiaries of the international popularity of Roots, the miniseries genre did not become a vehicle for African American stories in the early eighties. Instead, African American characters were relegated to integrated situation comedies involving an otherwise white cast and white cultural surroundings.

This concluding chapter explains how the discussions in African American television constitute highly institutionalized exchanges. The book argues that while these are not the most interesting or important exchanges, they are distinct from the more idiosyncratic kinds of exchanges that less organized conversations give rise to. The chapter also talks about the aesthetic dimensions of African American television and how different kinds of institutional practices encourage different kinds of aesthetics. Since television's inception, its institutional formations encouraged the use of realist aesthetics. Ironically, today's global, digital, post-network era supports highly localized aesthetics of hyperrealism and travesty. Thus, the institutional labors of narrowcasters targeting transnational or subnational audience segments give rise to industry lore about viewers embarking on cultural journeys and seeking out cultural difference.