{"id":725,"date":"2005-01-16T16:16:04","date_gmt":"2005-01-16T16:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=725"},"modified":"2005-01-16T16:16:04","modified_gmt":"2005-01-16T16:16:04","slug":"media_matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=725","title":{"rendered":"Media Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

People with disabilities have never had great representation in popular media. There aren’t many people with disabilities with starring roles in television shows or movies. The experience of people with disabilities in the media probably mirrors the experiences of people of color. For whatever reason, entertainment executives think there isn’t an audience for content that features characters with disabilities. But other identity groups have one advantage that we don’t: they have established niche media markets. Telemundo<\/a> targets Hispanics. Lifetime<\/a> and Oxygen<\/a> target women. Bravo<\/a> has a lot of gay-themed programming. And then you have all the other niche channels like the Outdoor Network<\/a> and the Food Network<\/a>. But people with disabilities are left to observe the media explosion from the sidelines.
\nI’m working with a few other parties to explore possibilities for creating a disability-focused media outlet. Everything is very preliminary; we’re basically testing the waters to see whether there’s a market for something like this. I think the trick is to create something that doesn’t have too narrow of a focus. Imagine a hypothetical cable channel for people with disabilities. Ideally, the channel should have a variety of programming; drama, comedies, reality shows\/documentaries, all of which feature people with disabilities. But the programming should be able to appeal to a general audience as well. The problem with web portals like ICan<\/a> (which seems to be down right now) is that they never make much efforts to reach a broader audience. If you’re not disabled or closely involved with someone who is disabled, you’ve probably never heard of ICan. But most people know about the Food Channel, even if they never watch it.
\nWhat do you think? Is there a market for a disability-themed channel? What kind of programming would you want to see? I don’t know if this concept will go anywhere, but I want to hear your thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People with disabilities have never had great representation in popular media. There aren’t many people with disabilities with starring roles in television shows or movies. The experience of people with disabilities in the media probably mirrors the experiences of people of color. For whatever reason, entertainment executives think there isn’t an audience for content that […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-bH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}