ABC’s new president and programming chief, Channing Dungey, is set on making “The Bachelor” franchise less about white people desperate for love and more about people desperate for love.
Dungey said she’s “very proud that [ABC] reflect[s] America authentically in all of its diversity,” and that “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” are her immediate targets to broaden the spectrum of its cast of characters. Dungey hopes to add more people of color to the show’s initial pool of contestants, increasing the odds that the winner or runner-up (who could go on to become the next season’s titular Bachelor or Bachelorette) would be a person of color.
Instead of just casting a non-white person as the Bachelor or Bachelorette from the start, Dungey thinks a person of color needs to enter that role through the “promotion approach” that has already worked well for the show because viewers get a season to lust over them before they step into the role.
Dungey is the first African-American woman to head a broadcast TV network, so here’s hoping she can accomplish her goal of making the cast of hot messes seeking love more representative of actual hot messes seeking love in the real world.
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