10/22/2023 0 Comments Download kathleen switzer![]() Paul was listening to other voices he ordered the series on the strength of the characters– not the color of their skin. In this case, ABC Family had a visionary new president, Paul Lee, who stepped outside the Hollywood comfort zone and made the choice that prognosticators said would surely fail. So what made it work? In the process of getting a show on the air, no matter how brilliant the script, (and the pilot script was a great one, authored by Seth Freeman,) it matters not at all unless the network connects with the vision. Even if we had one good season, people could point to “Lincoln Heights” to indicate that shows like ours could succeed. We felt that we owed that to our audience and we owed it to ourselves to make an outstanding show, if in fact, there was ever to be another one like it. So we hunkered down to create a show worthy of the eager, hungry, broad, specific and mainstream audience waiting for the uniqueness of “Lincoln Heights” to happen. The fact that it was happening at all was a bit of a miracle, with a touch of serendipity and the generous amounts of luck that go with the green lighting of any TV series at all. But what we did have going for us was that thing that poet, Robert Frost, said, “…has made all of the difference.”Īs a predominately black family drama, “Lincoln Heights”, was in fact, the “road less traveled,” and nearly everyone involved in making the show shared in the wildly optimistic belief that we had to be a success. And to make matters worse, we were on a fledgling new cable network that didn’t bring to mind fresh, exciting TV fare. ![]() Add to that, one-week before the first episode of “Lincoln Heights” was scheduled to shoot, there wasn’t one script ready. ![]() Hollywood naysayers said shows like ours were guaranteed to fail–saying that they lacked broad audience appeal. ![]() There wasn’t a single dramatic television series on the air with a predominately black cast. (Lincoln Heights Season One DVD liner notes) ![]() Lincoln Heights ABC Family Wins Gabriel Award “It is rare for such a finely made TV show to come along this early in the new year.” ![]()
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