The Writers Guild of America West released its "2013 TV Staffing Brief" this week, examining the percentage of female, minority, and older writers staffed on shows during the 2011-12 TV season. While there's been a little bit of progress in the way of diversity, TV writing still seems to be a field dominated by white dudes as you can see in the full report.
Throughout Saturday Night Live's history, the show's cast has been mostly culled from four places: the stand-up world, L.A.'s Groundlings Theatre, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatres in L.A. and New York, and the Chicago improv sketch/scene (the Second City, iO, and Annoyance theaters). Sure, there are wildcard hires who avoided these standard comedy training grounds, like Fred Armisen – a drummer for a punk rock bank who caught the eye of Bob Odenkirk after making some videos of himself bothering strangers at a music festival – or Anthony Michael Hall – an actor from John Hughes's Brat Pack who had a one-season run on the show in the [...]
Most television sitcoms are obsessed with sex. Typically, there is at least one character that continually brags about his or her sexual conquests. Some well-known lotharios include Barney from How I Met Your Mother — although Ted is getting up there since after six seasons he has still not actually talked about who the mother is — and GOB from Arrested Development, even though many of the women he has “sealed the deal” with have been out of spite for his brother Michael. This doesn’t stop with men though, as female characters have also been use for comedic sexual exploitation like Elaine’s “sponge-worthy” theory on Seinfeld and Samantha from [...]
