But in terms of what could be pulled into their syndication stream that could reach a similar audience there is Everybody Hates Chris (which I think BET syndicates now), The Bernie Mac Show, My Wife and Kids, Girlfriends, The Game (those are the contemporary ones that come to mind right now). TVOne, BET, Magic Johnson’s recently launch Aspire, all seem to manage to build a set of syndicated texts that can fill out their schedules that would presumably attract and retain a black audience — the question is how much (or little) the network (and its advertisers) covet those black eyeballs.

But what I think is more problematic is that a “Tyler Perry audience” has industrially been coded as black – which means that theoretically those who tune in for Friends or The Big Bang Theory are not expected (or supposed) to stick around for House of Payne or Are We There Yet? And certainly these “black shows” will receive no “mainstream” critical acclaim that would get those who are not already watching interested in consuming these texts (although I am not arguing that they necessarily should). In short, the television is raced in the ways in which we conceive that because a show features black bodies that it will only appeal to black bodies whereas Friends, with its white bodies can be read as universal.

However, I wanted to get your thoughts on another piece of the puzzle. Like every cable network, TBS relies on syndication in addition to original programming in order to fill out their schedule. While the Conan/George Lopez transition and the Cougar Town acquisition are both great examples of the network’s shift, their decision to strip schedule The Big Bang Theory is the missing link here, one that has an incredibly wide-ranging impact on the network’s identity.

TBS’ purchase of TBBT was intended as a jump start to Conan’s flagging ratings, and it has largely paid off: I see numerous tweets/headlines about TBS reruns of TBBT outdrawing NBC in recent months, and fewer stories about Conan’s ratings (which remain less-than-thrilling, but haven’t dropped further). However, if TBS sees syndication as a way to draw in a mass audience, are there any sitcoms in the syndication pool which would reflect the same audience as their Tyler Perry sitcoms? Was there any way that cable syndication wouldn’t move them away from their original programming strategies?

I raise this point not as an excuse, but rather as another way in which the absence of black bodies on network television bleeds into the cable networks that could potentially save it: when TBS needed a boost in viewers, and turned to syndication as an option, network television was not giving them an option to continue to commit themselves to the African American audience that had helped them build a stable of original series.

But back to the larger issues I raise in the post, it will be interesting to watch how this all develops with TBS. It seems that the writing is on the wall that black bodies are going to be evicted from this space when all the dust settles. And we can’t continue to assert that black folks “have their space” with BET because that comes along with its own set of representational problems and politics.