"Roots" Lecture Tuesday at Cal-State San Bernardino

In 1977, the television minseries "Roots" defied industry executives' predictions that the program would flop because it did not cater to a white viewing audience.

The miniseries, which was based on Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, garnered some of the highest television ratings in history and went on to become a world-wide success.

"'Roots' was one of the most watched TV series in the world," said Ece Algan, assistant professor of communications at Cal-State San Bernardino. "In Turkey, when I was growing up, we used to watch it with tears in our eyes. There would be nobody on the streets. Everybody would be tuned in."

Timothy Havens, a African American studies professor from the University of Iowa, will present a free lecture today on how "Roots" was distributed beyond the United States to become an international television phenomenon. His talk will focus on several countries, including Brazil, Germany, Hungary and Nigeria.

The presentation will be held at 4 p.m. at Cal-State San Bernardino's Santos Manuel Student Union Theater, 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino.

The "Roots" miniseries had worldwide appeal because people living in countries that had been under colonial rule for centuries identified with the plot line, Algan said. Haley depicted the hardships and indignities of slavery from the perspective of African Americans, a groundbreaking feat, she said. The miniseries chronicled seven generations of an African-American family from the 1750's to the mid 20th century.

"In the late '70s, early '80s, when people in the world were watching this, they had memories of colonialism and issues of white and black," Algan said. "In people's memories this was so fresh."

The presentation is entitled "Selling Slavery Worldwide: On the Global Popularity of 'Roots' and Industry Perceptions of Race."

Havens specializes in television studies, media globalization and race and media.
"He's been writing about how the American media industry makes decisions when they sell TV programming ... how they present the issues of race to other television executives," Algan said. "It's cutting edge work."