L-r: David Lambert, Cierra Ramirez, Jake T. Austin,
Teri Polo, Sherri Saum and Maia Mitchell
We don’t often talk about ratings and all the ‘inside baseball’ maneuvering on network and cable TV, but sometimes it tells us something real about the changing nature of American viewers. And here’s one of those moments: The Fosters, the ABC Family drama exec produced by Jennifer Lopez and starring, among many others, young and talented Latino actors Cierra Ramirez and Jake T. Austin, is actually increasing its viewership as it enters its midseason.
It’s fairly common for even the most popular TV series to see a decrease in viewers as the weeks go on; a significant portion of people just get bored, distracted, or simply move along. But this week, The Fosters reached a new zenith on Monday in total viewers (1.89 million), adults 18-49 (805,000), viewers 12-34 (1.15 million) and females 12-34 (909,000) at 9 p.m. ET. This improved on its series launch in June by an impressive 33 percent in total viewers and as much as 60 percent in viewers 12-34. Interestingly, it out-delivered its lead-in, mixed-family drama Switched at Birth by seven percent in total viewers and in all key demos.
Think about: in this confusing world where DOMA is struck down, marriage is re-legalized in California, the Voting Rights Act is de-powered, and there are hate-mail campaigns about a commercial showing a mixed-race couple, American TV viewers are voting with their feet–or, in this case, their eyeballs…and telling us that self-made families, including proudly Latino twins being raised by a mixed-race lesbian couple, isn’t just okay, it’s popular.
The Fosters focuses on female cop Teri Polo and her female partner Sheri Saum, an educator, who have created a family of their own, including a biological teen from Polo’s previous marriage, a set of adopted Latino twins, and a new foster child, an Anglo teenage girl with problems of her own. And the first episodes have shown us that the Latino twins are truly Latino, struggling with the reappearance of their biological mother, slipping easily in and out of Spanish, dealing with their ethnic ‘separateness’ at their fancy-schmancy Southern California charter school. Bianca Santos and Alexandra Barreto also appear in multiple episodes as friends and relatives of the family.
It’s pretty clear: Supreme Court rulings and short-term sensations and scandals notwithstanding, the world is changing, and TV is changing with it.
You can watch the two most recent episodes of The Fosters at the ABC Family web site, here.
