New York I love you, but get off my TV

We all know my disdain for the myopic focus on Los Angeles and New York posessed by the American culture industries. Great news: It’s now quantifiable! The myopicness, I mean, not my disdain.

The 2011 US fall television season began with 83 different programs airing each week. Of these, 19 were news, reality, game shows, or sports programs, and had no identifiable US setting or their location varied. (“Sunday Night Football,” “The X Factor,” “Survivor,” and “Dateline NBC” fall under this category.)

The remaining 64 programs were scripted fiction. Of these, one was set in a fantasy location (“Terra Nova”) and two had settings that changed from week to week (“Pan Am” and “Supernatural.”) Four more either had no discernible setting, or were set in fictional “anytowns.” (“Raising Hope” and “Up All Night” for the former; “Desperate Housewives” and “The Simpsons” for the latter.)

That leaves 57 programs with identifiable, static settings. Eight of these were set in fictional towns in geographically specific parts of the country — “Parks and Recreation“‘s Pawnee, Indiana, for instance, or “Family Guy“‘s Quahog, Rhode Island. The remaining 49 were set in real life American cities or fictional cities within real life metro areas. Here’s how they break down, by metropolitan area:

1. New York, New York: 15 shows (31% of real cities; 23% of all fiction)

2. Los Angeles, California: 8 shows (16%; 13%)

3. Chicago, Illinois: 6 shows (13%; 9%)

4. Washington, D.C.: 3 shows (6%; 5%)

=5. Denver, Colorado: 2 shows (4%; 3%)

=5. Miami, Florida: 2 shows (4%; 3%)

=5. Portland, Oregon: 2 shows (4%; 3%)

=8. Boston, Massachusetts: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. Cincinnati, Ohio: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. Columbus, Ohio: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. Honolulu, Hawaii: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. Las Vegas, Nevada: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. Lima, Ohio: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. Sacramento, California: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. San Francisco Bay Area, California: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. Scranton, Pennsylvania: 1 show (2%; 2%)

=8. Seattle, Washington: 1 show (2%; 2%)

These results indicate a serious disinterest in telling stories that reflect the full diversity of American life. 47 per cent are set in the two biggest cities. But the bias isn’t in favor of urban at the expense of the rural; it’s in favor of the backyard of the TV industry at the expense of everywhere else. The fourth (Dallas), sixth (Houston), and ninth (Atlanta) biggest metropolitan areas in the country — fifth, tenth, and ninth biggest TV markets, incidentally — are entirely unrepresented. In fact, if you exclude Miami, no real life Southern cities were portrayed in the fall line up. (“Hart of Dixie” is set in a fictional Southern town, while “The Cleveland Show” and “The Vampire Diaries” take place in fictional Virginia locales. “American Dad!” and “Criminal Minds” are set in Virginia suburbs in the DC metro area.)

Other notes:

Not only is there an absurd focus on New York, there is an inexplicable obsession with the New York police force. Seven shows are about people solving crimes in New York — and a couple more are about people committing crimes in New York. Is policing in the Rotten Apple really a story so complex that it must be approached in this many different ways, at the expense of so many other stories? And why New York, anyway? It’s not as if it’s particularly crime-ridden; Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, and Oakland top the per capita violent crime rate.
I expected Los Angeles to be portrayed more often. I suspect if I applied a similar analysis to film, LA would dominate more heavily. Still, eight LA shows is excessive.
Chicago is portrayed more frequently than I thought, but if this year’s lineup is any indication, it’s portrayed extremely badly. “Whitney” and “Mike and Molly” aren’t examples of outstanding television, while “The Playboy Club” and “How to Be a Gentleman” were quickly cancelled. “The Good Wife” is probably Chicago’s best representative at the moment.
32 states were not portrayed at all in the line up, including Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, and Georgia, all from the top ten largest by population.
Although one in four people from the DC metro area is black, there’s just one African American character in the main cast of any of the shows set in the city.
Three shows are set in real cities in Ohio and two in fictional towns in Indiana. This is encouraging, but it would be nice if TV could conceptualize the flyover states in more detail than two neighboring locales in the Midwest.