Girls That Television Will Never Know
Angela Nissel is a multi-talented author and TV writer. (She’s also the co-founder of Okay Player.) Back in 2001, Nissel penned “The Broke Diaries,” focusing on the lifestyles of college students and those post-graduation. Her book was sidesplitting and memorable, presenting stories that should be familiar to anyone who is broke–like finding herself counting out 33 pennies for a pack of ramen noodels and then not being able to pay the tax or making value judgements about food or lights. Or as she writes on the Broke Diaries site:
You’re broke? Learn to laugh about it. Being broke sucks, but being a broke miserable ass sucks even more. When you’re broke all you have is your sanity and that expired can of tuna. Don’t give away your sanity (but return that can of expired tuna for a new one. Express outrage at the store for selling outdated product even if you bought it a year ago. If you’re truly hungry, I believe you will be forgiven for this sin.)
Chris Rock provided a blurb for the book; it got a coveted Oprah shoutout in 2002. Aaron MacGruder, of The Boondocks fame, did all the illustrations. It was popular and well-received. Nissel started writing for the popular show Scrubs in 2002, so she was at least a player in television circles and a known quantity. And to top it all off, Halle Berry bought the options to BOTH The Broke Diaries and her memoir Mixed! So where’s the show/movie on either book? Nissel explains:
Is Mixed going to be on TV? I heard you’re working with Halle Berry.
Wow, how’d you hear that? I just said it was a super-secret television project. Hmmm, okay…Halle Berry and her manager, Vincent Cirrincione have optioned both of my books. We are combining our powers and executive producing a show. Will it ever actually make it onto television? We’ll see. Television is a weird and fickle chick. But, of course, if it doesn’t make it on the air, I’ll erase this paragraph and act like it never happened.
That’s just one story. But for the sake of argument, one could convincingly chalk Nissel’s experience up to the time before YouTube was huge and people get deals these days from their web series.
Dunham and friends created Delusional Downtown Divas back in 2010, which aspires to be an NYC art world version of Portlandia. Watching the series just made me nostalgic for this Liquid Television relic:
But my own feelings aside, then a web series should be the key to big time, right?
Tell that to Issa Rae, creator of the popular and award-winning series Awkward Black Girl. Even by the standards of the new playbook, Issa Rae did everything right. She built her own following, with each webisode averaging from 300,000 – 500,000+ viewers on YouTube. (I would compare this to the viewership for Delusional Downtown Divas but the first season has been removed, and the second is hosted on Vimeo where the stats trend lower than YouTube.) She went outside of the usual framework for a heroine and boldly presented a different vision of black womanhood. She got tons of online accolades and buzz from blogs as well as mainstream media outlets.
The first episode has 900,000+ views on YouTube.
Contrast this to YouTuber Stevie Ryan, who’s “Little Loca” persona (yes, she’s playing a Latina stereotype) trended lower initially–many of the videos went from 20,000+ – 200,000+ views, with a few that got major play. Here’s Loca, the video that got 717,000+ views:
Stevie Ryan received a 10-episode order for a pop culture show currently airing on VH1. So, clearly, Awkward Black Girl should have at least been fielding pilot offers, right? Not quite, as Rae explains in an interview with Vulture:
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