On the one hand, the importance of televised imagery can't be ignored. The average American invests nearly 30 hours a week watching the tube, so a typical citizen will spend more time with TV fictional characters than with his own neighbors. TV portrayals of minority groups can achieve real world consequences: Most social critics would agree, for example, that the more frequent and sympathetic treatment of gay characters in prime time has encouraged the vastly greater acceptance of homosexuality.
In the case of Asian-Americans, it's hard to imagine how favorable stereotyping or slight under-representation have damaged a segment of the population already enjoying disproportionate educational and economic success. If the networks suddenly provided one-out-of-20 TV characters who were recognizably Asian (instead of today's one out of 37), the programming might provide a marginally more accurate reflection of reality. But who would benefit?
Meanwhile, an increased presence of African-Americans in network executive suites might enhance the power of a tiny handful of black producers. But given the fact that black viewers already watch more TV than any other portion of the public, raising viewership to even higher levels probably would harm, rather than help, the African-American community. Most educational experts agree that excessive engagement with TV leads to an array of negative outcomes, including diminished school performance, lack of exercise, obesity and other problems. For the black community at the moment, the biggest challenge isn't the low quality of TV, but the high quantity that most children watch.
As for complaints from conservatives about PBS, fairness argues against any use of government money to advance a one-sided agenda. Nevertheless, even the most indignant activists can't claim that sparsely viewed liberal shows on struggling public TV stations across the country somehow pose a serious threat to the current Republican hegemony in Washington.
In other words, the complaints by interest groups illustrate the same unfortunate tendency to emphasize supply-side solutions, rather than demand-side solutions, to the problems of TV's impact. We spend too much time fretting over the way the industry produces programming, and too little worrying about the way the public consumes it. Statistical analysis shows that black characters are over-represented on TV, while Asians are under-represented. But that hardly means that the medium is good for blacks and bad for Asians. The influence of broadcast images depends on how selectively consumers choose to watch, not the ethnically based casting decisions executives agree to make.
Ultimately, the only television schedule the public and activists reliably can control is the schedule of what we watch. We might not be able to determine what the industry makes, but we always make the final decision on what we take. In short, complaining about the weather may do nothing to change it, but you always have the option to come in out of the rain.