ABC Cancels "Welcome to the Neighborhood" Before Its First Show

By Linda Orlando

Television viewers who were waiting with bated breath for the premiere of ABC's new reality series "Welcome To the Neighborhood" will have to give up on their wait, because ABC has canceled the show without airing a single episode. Because of threatened lawsuits and criticisms that the show encouraged bigotry and racism, ABC decided to suck it in and suffer some temporary humiliation from canceling a show that was already finished shooting. Despite the unstoppable wave of reality TV shows in recent years, apparently even reality shows can handle only so much reality.

"Welcome to the Neighborhood" was an outrageous premise: following the lives of three upper-middle-class families in a tony cul-de-sac near Austin, Texas, as they debated who they would choose to be their new neighbors when their existing neighbor moved out of a 3,300 square foot home on their block. The white, conservative families were given the opportunity to choose from a black family, an Asian family, a Hispanic family, a couple covered in tattoos and piercings, two gay white men who are adoptive parents of a black boy, a couple who met at the woman's initiation as a witch, and a white family in which the mother is a stripper. Following the traditional format of reality show competitions, each prospective family was voted out each week of the six-week series, and the remaining family would get the house and move into the neighborhood. The idea was for the public to see the white families' preconceived prejudices slowly disintegrate as they got to know the competing families as people instead of stereotypes.

The huge backlash of harsh criticism that followed ABC's heavy promotion of the show caused the network to stop dead in its tracks, and then kill the show. Shanna Smith, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, may have said it best. "Why should people of color and others...be humiliated and degrade to teach white people not to be bigots? That's not good for race relations in America." Smith said that because it is illegal for homeowners to pick and choose the neighbors they want to live in their neighborhood, her group was preparing to file suit against ABC. She said that the series would lay waste to her groups efforts to see that Americans are not discriminated against in seeking to live wherever they want to. Another disturbing aspect of the show was its lack of balance. The families who were competing to win the house couldn't respond to criticism of them because they were not present when the cul-de-sac residents were discussing them. And because all the competing families were putting forward their best behavior while trying to win a house they would not otherwise be able to afford, they were not showing the residents a true picture of what type of neighbors they would actually be.

Indeed, within just the first couple of episodes, the neighbors questioned whether the members of the Asian family were all American citizens, and the gay men's affectionate relationship was met with disgust. Outrage about the series was so strong that it even brought together typically rival activist organizations. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) found it to be "really disturbing" to watch snobby couples vote out families they don't like for some reason. The Family Research Council was concerned that the conservative Christian neighbors in the cul-de-sac would be portrayed as overly judgmental buffoons. GLAAD's Entertainment Media Director Damon Romine said, "It's clear that the producers intended to send a powerful message about the value of diversity and embracing the differences of others. But regardless of how things turn out at the end of the last show, it's dangerous to let intolerance and bigotry go unchallenged for weeks at a time." In addition, he added, "In terms of structure, if viewers only watched the first episode or two, they could come away with a message that prejudice and discrimination are not that big a deal, which is the exact opposite of what the producers intended."

Surprisingly, the protests overwhelmingly shocked the higher-ups at ABC, none of whom were willing to give interviews to the media about the controversy. Andrea Wong, head of alternative programming at the network, commented that producers "didn't think that people would be this nervous." She added, " I really think it's such a positive show and such a good thing to put on TV and cause viewers to look at themselves. I'm surprised by the negative reaction to it." Apparently it didn't bother Wong that the first family to be knocked out of the competition was the Asian-American family. "You only sort of get half the story in watching the first two episodes," Series producer Blumenfield said before the cancellation. "You see the harshness, the entrenched points of view. These things kind of melt away as the humanity comes out. It was astonishing to watch and I think everyone felt very positive at the end." Blumenfield and others point to the example of the tattooed family, who were instantly disliked by the homeowners, but who were able to bond with their potential neighbors once they revealed that they are Republicans.

According to producer Tony Marsh, "One of the horrible things that is happening right now in this country is that people are so afraid of a healthy debate," he said. "Somehow if you put out a strong point of view you're either painting someone improperly or you're offending the people who might oppose that view. We don't believe that preconceptions and prejudices are something to hide. They're something to explore and hopefully get over." That might be a healthy opinion to have, if it weren't for the fact that "Welcome to the Neighborhood" was in fact based on a preconception and prejudice-that well-to-do conservative white people are snooty and critical of other people different from them. The only remotely good news to come out of this reality show debacle is that the winning family in the series will still get the house of their dreams, even though their joy at winning will never been seen by millions of viewers who have sweated it out with them through all six episodes. But the family will not be allowed to move in until late August, the time when the series was supposed to conclude.