Just three years after his long stint as the host of ABC’s The Bachelor ended, Chris Harrison is coming back to TV. After the network cut ties with him over a problematic podcast episode, which Anastasia wrote about here, he and his wife Lauren Zima are getting not one but two shows on a new network being launched by none other than Dr. Phil himself, called Merit Street Media, as announced on Chris’s social media feed.
The pair will be hosting a morning show as well as a dating series, which Chris has dubbed the “most dramatic show ever” with Dr. Phil adding that it’s going to be "so novel, so different." I don’t know how to take that given that it’s coming from Dr. Phil, but I suppose we’ll see.
I’m not surprised by this announcement – we knew it was coming, or at least I did. I’ve written before about how all the performative equity, diversity and inclusion work done in 2020 has finally started fading, but it says a lot that this new space is being carved especially for Chris and Lauren on a network being unveiled by Dr. Phil.
According to the website for this new media company, it’s going to be “one of the most widely distributed TV networks in modern history”. The television network says it’s exceeding 65 million commitments in homes with TVs with several “pending agreements” that will exceed that figure. It’s “poised” to become one of the most widely distributed startup networks in modern history.
“We are thrilled to embark on this ground-breaking journey by creating a network that is not only widely accessible but also a hub for diverse, engaging content,” said Joel Cheatwood, COO of Merit Street Media.
The mention of diversity is…interesting, to say the least. Partially because I couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t one Black person in the Dr. Phil audience shown in Chris’s announcement reel, and I didn’t see one Black person in the sizzle reel on the company’s website, either. And the other part is because of how non-diverse the programming actually is.
Despite the network not releasing much information about its lineup, it has made it clear that it includes more shows with Dr. Phil, including prime time content that features live news programming. And one woman you can expect to see even more frequently on your screen is Nancy Grace.
In addition to Nancy Grace bringing her legal commentating career to Dr. Phil’s new network, a few other shows will be making the rounds, including Cops and Jail. And there’s a new show coming to town, called The Behavior Panel, which features four white men discussing their interpretation of gestures, fidgets, posture and speech patterns. Hm.
Reading all this, it might be hard to believe that a swath of cable TV and streaming shows are being cancelled left, right and centre, that people are becoming increasingly unwilling to pay for cable, and that jobs in the news industry are becoming elusive. But when you’ve got pockets as deep as Dr. Phil’s, you can afford to throw caution to the wind.
It’s one of many scary things happening in the aftermath of labor strikes and budget cuts. The slashing of shows which are either written by or starring mostly women or people of colour is being met with more white content, spearheaded by white people. There is a very clear and increasing monopoly that people with pockets as deep as Dr. Phil are beginning to have over certain parts of the industry.
There’s a very obvious connection between the names of these networks and the content being chosen to air on them. Take Great American Country, for example. Originally, it was a country music channel, but when it was taken over by new ownership, the 2021 relaunch saw them premiere as Great American Family. The network’s programming was almost exclusively white, and focused on traditional, patriotic American (read: MURICA!) values.
It was headline news that the queen of Christmas movies, Candace Cameron Bure, was leaving her post at Hallmark to go to Great American Family because she “knew that the people behind Great American Family were Christians that love the Lord and wanted to promote faith programming and good family entertainment,” or whatever. Even with Merit Street Media, merit quite literally means “the quality of being particularly good or worthy”.
I’m not sure if we’re better or worse off having all the Candace Cameron Bures and Dr. Phils and Chris Harrisons over on their own networks or not, and what, if anything, it will change for the more mainstream TV companies and networks. Perhaps the migration of stars like these, along with what I imagine is a very loyal audience and following, could mean more diversity in programming for the people tuned in to the networks they’re migrating from. At least, one can only hope.
So what does it mean that previously deplatformed Chris Harrison is now getting his spot on screen back? That we have a very short memory, in some cases, and longer memories in others. And that if you just disappear for long enough, you don’t have to re-address your past transgressions in order to maintain your livelihood.
Did I expect him to spend the rest of his life atoning for the comments that got him booted off The Bachelor? Not necessarily. But I do think this serves as the perfect opportunity to look at how easy it is for some people to rebrand, to make their triumphant return to television, when for others, it can be impossible.
