Al Roker and his production banner have been sued by Bill Schultz, a former executive producer on an animated kids TV series in development. Schultz (The Simpsons, King of The Hill, Garfield) claims he was fired for objecting to the company’s failure to follow a diversity initiative intended to bring minority writers onto PBS television productions.
The lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, alleges executives at Al Roker Entertainment “callously disregarded” a diversity, equity and inclusion program, commonly called DEI, mandated by PBS, which covered the bulk of the production expenses for animated series Weather Hunters, by attempting to have Black writers touch up scripts written by white scribes to give the appearance of a diverse writers room.
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In Hollywood, DEI is seen by some as especially significant in efforts to boost diversity, on and behind the screen. The programs, however, have attracted legal scrutiny by plaintiffs who say companies aren’t properly implementing the initiatives, and, more recently, by others who claim that they discriminate against nonpreferred groups, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court’s opinion knocking down affirmative action. In March, CBS Studios was sued for allegedly carrying diversity quotas that discriminate against straight white men. Some companies have turned away from explicitly naming racial groups in DEI, instead preferring to say “underrepresented groups.”
According to Tuesday’s complaint, Weather Hunters has a unique ownership structure in which the majority of the show’s production costs are covered by PBS, while Al Roker Entertainment retains complete ownership of the series. PBS provided 70 percent of the project’s financing for 40 half-hour episodes with the stipulation that it adhered to a DEI plan.
The lawsuit says efforts to boost diversity were particularly vital to PBS given that Weather Hunters‘ target demographic was Black families. But Schultz claims that Al Roker Entertainment executives, who were allegedly given “totally authority” to manage the series by Roker, “treated the DEI Policy as discretionary and an obstacle to be circumvented.”
Schultz was served a notice that he was in breach of his contract for failures related to staffing, among other things, shortly after an August 2023 meeting in which the show’s story editor stated that he “could not meet the production schedule if BIPOC writers were used to write the stories” and that “he would need to hire experienced non-BIPOC writers,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Instead of giving the chances to BIPOC writers as had been the plan, the story editor, repeating a strategy previously advocated and backed by Al Roker Entertainment management in writing, wanted to have ‘non-BIPOC’ writers write the stories, and then bring on a ‘BIPOC’ writer and after the stories/episodes [were] shaped, they could be ‘hand[ed] off to BIPOC writers,'” states the complaint.
A month after the meeting, a Black producer critical of the implementation of the DEI policy was reprimanded, the lawsuit claims. Schultz was suspended and then terminated around the same time. He faults management at Al Roker Entertainment for refusing to see DEI as a requirement but rather a “box to be checked in the most expedient manner possible” and as an “impediment to business as usual.”
Schultz, a former Carton Networks and Marvel Studios executive who worked on the series since 2014 and was paid $544,000 for the initial 40-episode order along with a piece of net revenue (25 percent with certain deductions and reductions), says that he informed Roker of his production banner’s refusal to properly follow PBS’ DEI policy but that he didn’t address the issue by reprimanding allegedly problematic executives.
The complaint brings claims for violations of New York’ human rights law, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, as well as breach of contract and negligence, among several others.
Roker and Al Roker Entertainment didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
“I put nine years of my career into Weather Hunters, a project I strongly believe in, with the goal of making a wonderfully crafted show for children to enjoy and learn from,” Schultz, who’s represented by attorneys at Frost LLP, said in a statement. “I also believed, and still believe, that the project benefited by creating opportunities for the ‘new voices’ crucial in storytelling and that the Weather Hunters production needed to live up to the ideals it was supposed to represent.”
