New TV Season LGBT Roles

The report – which analyzed characters on prime-time, scripted programs airing on broadcast networks, as well as cable networks and streaming services for the 2015-2016 TV season – found that over 70 percent of LGBT characters on cable networks and streaming services were white, despite overall racial diversity increasing since a year ago.

Of the 881 regular characters expected to appear on broadcast primetime scripted programming in the coming year, 35 were gay. lesbian or bisexual, according to the findings released on Tuesday.

Bisexual representations shot up on both broadcast and cable this year, where the latter saw an increase from 10 to 18 bisexual men in its programming. So unfortunately we have a few slippage.

Even though the number of regular LGBT characters on cable jumped substantially from 64 to 84, only 22 percent of those characters are lesbians, with the largest portion (41 percent) of them being gay. Whilst LGBT characters are still underrepresented, such series as Amazon’s Transparent and Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black have main characters who identify as LGBT. Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO & President of GLAAD stated, “Each of us lives at the intersection of many identities & it’s important that television characters reflect the full diversity of the LGBT community”.

“All three programming platforms need to include more racially diverse LGBT characters”, the report reads.

But 7% of characters of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon were trans – including two series leads (Transparent, Sense8).

Seventy-one percent of LGBT characters on cable and 73 percent of those on streaming services are white.

The report also tracks racial, gender, and disability on TV as well, especially with regards to how it intersects with LGBT representation.

On broadcast TV, 33 percent of LGBT characters are lesbians (up 5 percent from last year), while bisexual characters account for 20 percent. Bisexual representation rose two percentage points, and there are now 12 bisexual women and two bisexual male characters on network shows, but no transsexuals. Of note, broadcast TV now offers zero transgender characters, even on a recurring basis, while cable has three recurring trans characters. There are 135 series regulars of color on broadcast, 59 of whom are black women, followed by 33 Latinas, 27 Asian Pacific-Islander women and 16 women who belong to another ethnicity or are multiracial (12%). Additionally, the Studio Responsibility Index will be released in early 2016. It is the first time they have considered streaming networks and without them the picture would be bleak in terms of ensuring LGBT people are fairly and proportionally represented.