User blog comment:Avery FireFlame/Fire Rants: Disney Channel Stereotypes/@comment-1874924-20131008203423

Frankly, I think that you are overthinking this, and perhaps putting the cart before the horse as well.

As Reddy noted, people tend to prefer attractive protagonists, and the preference for attractiveness is a primal one. Standards of attractiveness are cultural, though, so the traits of protagonists can reasonably be expected to reflect whatever preferences are in vogue. As I've noted elsewhere, there was a period in the art world known as "the fat century" where popular tastes tended toward, shall we say, "ample" women. During that period (around mid-16th to mid-17th Century, if memory serves) Sadie and Staci would have been considered the hottest girls in the Total Drama franchise.

As for minorities such as Jews or homosexuals, whose minority status is only visible through behaviours, their exclusion is partly the Law of Conservation of Detail at work. Simply put, if your dealing with a minority that can't be identified as such just by looking at them, then they're not going to appear unless their minority status is important to the story. Furthermore, if the minority is one that's known for pushy activism (as homosexuals are) then including them even with a good dramatic reason leaves the creative team open to charges that they are trying to turn the show into a soapbox and make political points in an inappropriate forum.

The cookie-cutter nature of the shows that you complain about is probably due as much to risk aversion as to anything else. A successful show will tend to inspire copycats. The logical principle of Occam's Razor is applicable here: the simplest explanation that fits the available facts is the preferable one.

Finally, I hear you on the matter of no longer being able to stomach these shows. There are any number of shows that I liked when I was growing up but now find unwatchable.