TV Today: the Most LGBTQ Characters Ever

GLAAD, a media monitoring organization, tracks the number of LGBTQ characters in television and released their 15th “Where Are We on TV” report on Thursday morning of last week.

There were exciting results. This year of television had the highest percentage of LGBTQ programming ever, with 10.2 percent of series’ regular characters counted as queer. On top of that, it’s a real increase from last year, when 8.8 percent of regular characters on primetime, scripted, broadcast shows were LGBTQ. We’ve come a long way, folks.

Plus, there was also an increase in queer recurring characters, with an additional 30 LGBTQ characters.

The breadth and length of GLAAD’s research, as well as increased awareness and actual queer characters, has given us some rich information this year. For the first time, there were more queer women than LGBTQ men on primetime broadcast scripted series. Broadcast also features one nonbinary character.

This year marked the second year in a row where queer people of color outnumber white queer people on broadcast, 52 percent to 48 percent. This is not true for other television platforms like cable or streaming.

A plurality of LGBTQ characters were bisexual at 26 percent, and bisexual women were the largest group within that demographic.

Moving forward, GLAAD is expecting more from the media industry. By 2025, they are demanding that queer characters make up 20 percent of series regular characters on primetime scripted broadcast. They are also challenging all television platforms, including broadcast, cable, and streaming, to have 50 percent of their queer characters be people of color as well. GLAAD says, “This is an important next step towards ensuring that our entertainment reflects the world in which it is created and the audience consuming it.”

These demands show development and change in the industry. GLAAD is asking for more than just a queer presence. It’s time to have more multidimensional narratives offered to us, and it’s time for us to tell our own stories. We deserve to been seen and humanized in media as the beautiful, important, complex people we are.