NEW YORK (AP) — TV reveals like “Abbott Elementary,” “Hacks,” “Heartstopper,” “The Last of Us” and “Yellowjackets” helped enhance the ranks of LGBTQ+ characters on prime time by 4% over the earlier season, in response to a brand new research by the advocacy group GLAAD.
This 12 months’s “Where We Are on TV” research, launched Thursday, counted 489 LGBTQ characters throughout scripted prime-time broadcast, cable and streaming reveals — up 21 further characters. It marks a lift after two years of decline, however stays far under the 2021-2022 document excessive of 637 characters.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the group, warned that these numbers may nonetheless lower quickly: Greater than 200 of the LGBTQ+ characters counted this 12 months — in reveals like “Heartstopper,” “Harlem” and “Elite” — won’t be returning because of a flurry of collection cancellations, endings or as a result of they have been restricted collection.
“Storytelling brings us together and this current cultural and political climate calls on creatives and executives to double down on fair and accurate stories of LGBTQ people,” Ellis writes within the report.
GLAAD added that the variety of transgender characters on TV has barely elevated from final 12 months to achieve 33 — 24 trans girls, seven trans males, and two nonbinary characters — however solely 4 trans characters seem on collection which have been formally renewed.
The report is the twentieth version of the annual monitoring by GLAAD and charts a outstanding leap from simply 47 LGBTQ+ characters within the first research. It arrives as President Donald Trump has focused transgender and nonbinary folks with a collection of government orders — together with one declaring the existence of two unchangeable sexes — stripping authorities web sites of “gender ideology” an reinstituting a ban on transgender service members within the navy.
A latest Gallup ballot discovered 9.3% of U.S. adults recognized as lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender or one thing aside from straight or heterosexual. The proportion has greater than doubled since Gallup first measured LGBTQ+ identification in 2012.
The GLAAD research discovered that illustration on broadcast and cable have frequently declined, whereas streaming programming noticed a rise of LGBTQ+ characters.
ABC final season had the biggest proportion of community LGBTQ+ collection regulars — with 12.9% — whereas Netflix had probably the most LGBTQ+ characters on streaming, with 177. It discovered that the eight main streamers added 45 characters from the 327 within the earlier interval.
GLAAD famous LGBTQ+ characters in such community reveals as NBC’s “Brilliant Minds,” which has a homosexual lead, CBS dramas “Matlock” and “Watson,” each of which characteristic supporting queer girls, and ensemble characters on comedies like Fox’s “Going Dutch” and NBC’s “St. Denis Medical.”
On streaming, GLAAD cited Netflix’s “The 4 Seasons,” “Arcane” and “Kaos,” and Amazon’s “Clear Slate,” “Harlem” and “The Wheel of Time.” Hulu, in the meantime, had “Mid-Century Modern,” “Big Boys” and “Wreck.”
The research discovered that the proportion of characters of colour barely elevated as much as 51% of all LGBTQ+ characters counted, and, for the second 12 months in a row, just one LGBTQ+ character was depicted as dwelling with HIV — however that character, on HBO Max’s “Cris Miró,” will not be returning.
Of their 2019-20 research GLAAD had requested the business to achieve 20% illustration of frequently seen LGBTQ+ characters on all three platforms by 2025, and to make sure that half of LGBTQ+ characters on each TV platform have been folks of colour throughout the subsequent two years. This 12 months’s report doesn’t embrace a problem tied to a selected proportion.
“As this study and the TV industry have evolved, so too have our benchmarks,” GLAAD mentioned. “There is a need for urgent action and improvement today across all platforms with this newest study finding a significant portion of the LGBTQ characters counted will not return.”
