CBS Picks Up Exactly Zero Female-Led Shows For The Fall But Claims They Are “Cognizant of the Issue”

Members of the Television Critics Association had a lot of questions for CBS execs during their panel this week, namely: where the ladies at? Of the six series picked up for the fall schedule, not one of them features a female lead, and only one, Shemar Moore in S.W.A.T., is a non-white man.

While the network did develop female-led projects, they ultimately were not picked up. Senior executive vice president of programming Thom Sherman explained to the crowd, “The way things turned out, those pilots were not felt to be as good as some of the other series that were picked up. That’s just the cycle of business and how it happens sometimes.” Sure, but it’s a cycle that needs to be broken, and soon.

TV critics also took the opportunity to ask about the all-white casting department at CBS, with Sherman saying, “They’ve been together for a long time. We are cognizant of the issue, we hear you and we will be looking to expand the casting department.”

CBS Entertainment president Kelly Kahl claims that the network is “making progress,” but one glance at their primetime lineup, and that becomes a bit hard to believe. Recently, the network was criticized for the way they handled the contracts of Hawaii Five-O actors Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park, who demanded to be paid as equally as their white co-stars, and walked away from the show when those demands were not met. Kahl explained that they offered them “a lot of money to stick around,” but the actors stood their ground.

There’s always mid-season, CBS.