NBA was the latest and most high-profile company to pull its ads from the reality series on Tuesday, but the network told BuzzFeed News “there are no changes planned.”
Priyanka Banks in VH1's Sorority Sisters
VH1
In the first five minutes of Sorority Sisters, yet another reality series on VH1, we see Priyanka Banks sexily stepping up on a stage, dropping it low, rolling around on the stage, tossing her hair back and forth underneath a disco ball.
Technically, she's a burlesque dancer — a point she made clear in her confessional. But the image (though commonplace on other reality TV shows on this particular network) didn't sit well with many on Twitter.
The difference with this particular scene — and Sorority Sisters at large — is that Banks is a member of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., one of the distinguished black Greek letter organizations. A growing group of petitioners want the show — which many believe is produced by Mona Scott-Young (the woman behind the Love & Hip Hop franchise), who is actually a consultant, according to VH1 — off the air.
About 1.3 million people tuned in for the premiere episode on Dec. 15, making it an early success for VH1. But the online boycott of the 10-episode series started immediately, with viewers tweeting at advertisers to not sponsor the show. So far, 51 companies have pulled their sponsorship dollars, the most recent being the NBA.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, VH1 said, "We are definitely hearing the conversation around Sorority Sisters and are taking the concerns of our viewers into account. Currently there are no changes planned for the series. The show seems to be connecting with an audience." They also noted that the show's most recent airing was the No. 1 non-sports cable program in its time slot with women between the ages of 18-34.
"Advertisers do not like angry consumers; they loathe negativity," Lawrence Ross, author of The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities, told BuzzFeed News. "There's a misnomer that advertisers don't care about bad publicity or that it's just about eyeballs. The NBA knows that its brand is very strong among African Americans. There's no way you're going to risk your brand over a show that's aired twice."
Ross, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., was the person who created the current strategy to get advertisers to boycott Sorority Sisters. "This is doing real damage. The production is so cheap for all of these shows. It doesn't cost them any more than maybe $3 million to produce a full 10-episode run. So as a result, they can run these things ad nauseam. That's fine when it's an individual. But when someone stands up and says, 'I'm a burlesque dancer' — and she has a right to make whatever choice she wants — but she's doing it while saying she's a Delta Sigma Theta member. That's the big issue," he said.
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