'The Bachelor' franchise needs to make changes and increase diversity, says ABC president

The Bachelor franchise may further address its diversity issue in the near future.


After 14 years on the air, Bachelor Nation has seen very few non-white contestants and no black male or female leads.

"I would very much like to see some changes there," ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey told reporters during the network's Television Critics Association presentation on Thursday, according to People.

"I think one of the biggest changes that we need to do is we need to increase the pool of diverse candidates in the beginning [of a season]."

Dungey, who replaced Paul Lee as ABC president earlier this year, elaborated on why diversity has been lacking for so long.


"Because part of what ends up happening as we go along is that there just aren't as many candidates to ultimately end up in the role of the next Bachelor or Bachelorette," Dungey explained.

"So that is something we really want to put some effort and energy towards."

The franchise has seen one Latino Bachelor in Juan Pablo Galavis a couple of seasons ago in Season 18, and on the latest 20th season of The Bachelor starring Ben Higgins, only three non-white women competed.

Galavis' casting occurred after ABC was sued in 2012 for alleged racial discrimination.

In January of this year, Lee had insisted at a similar TCA presentation that the network was "doing a whole lot of tweaks."


When asked whether producers and executives could just pick someone fresh for the next Bachelor or Bachelorette lead, 47-year-old Dungey told reporters, "We could."

However, Dungey noted -- incorrectly, actually, as most leads haven't been the first runner-up on their original seasons but have been eliminated in a prior late-season Rose Ceremony -- that "the show has been very much in a cycle where the first runner-up in one cycle becomes the person who leads the next cycle."

And according to the executive, the success of the current system of selecting a lead who originally made it to the final rounds of a prior edition of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette makes it risky to implement major changes.

"It's worked very well for us because the audience feels really engaged in helping to choose that candidate," Dungey said, according to People.

"So I think what we would like to try to do is just widen the pool choices."






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski