At any moment, entertainment programming may reflect the culture or it may lead the culture. Sometimes it does both simultaneously to advance the industry’s ultimate goal: making money.

The 1998 premiere of NBC’s “Will & Grace,” a show with two lead gay characters, broke new ground in the broadcast prime-time schedule, a clear example of a TV show that was ahead of the culture, arriving five years after the implementation of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for LGBTQ people in the U.S. military.

With a second Trump administration, there’s some evidence of entertainment companies’ desire to reflect the outcome of the November 2024 election. A&E will revive its Red State hit “Duck Dynasty” for new episodes this summer (the show originally aired 2012 to 2017). A counterargument, of course, is that Hollywood is rebooting everything that was once successful, so who’s to say if A&E’s motivation was the return of Trump as president or simply an opportunity to revive a show that was successful.

“There are all sorts of reasons why things do and don’t get made in the art that we see on television, which is never divorced from outside influences,” said David Bianculli, TV critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air” and professor of television studies at New Jersey’s Rowan University.

Some suggest ABC’s Tim Allen-starring “Shifting Gears” also falls into the made-for-Red-States bucket — in the show Allen is conservative, and his daughter, played by Kat Dennings, is liberal. But Allen is a known TV star so of course a network will go back to him for another series. Also, ABC ordered “Shifting Gears” to series eight months before November’s election.

Creating TV programs that appeal to the heartland is not a new turn. Throughout the history of TV, networks routinely zig while others zag, trying to meet a perceived need the marketplace ignores, like in 1996 when The WB debuted the warm family drama “7th Heaven,” which went on to become a hit.

The more obvious current calculations come from media companies trying to curry favor with the new administration. Amazon Prime Video paid $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary that she will executive produce, meaning she gets a big chunk of that fee. For comparison, Apple TV+ paid $25 million for a Billie Eilish documentary in 2019 — surely musician Eilish has moved more product than Melania Trump — during the free-spending early streaming wars era, which ended in 2022. Amazon overpaid for its Melania doc given the current, more austere environment where many media companies have reined in spending on their streaming platforms.

Prime Video’s decision to unearth and stream seasons of Donald Trump-starring “The Apprentice” is another indicator of a company striving to get in the new administration’s good graces.

Similarly, Disney’s decision to cut the storyline of a trans character from Disney+’s recent animated Pixar series “Win or Lose,” while retaining an openly Christian character in the same show, demonstrates a willingness to self-censor in an effort to avoid getting in the crosshairs of an administration that crusades to end anything that smacks of tolerance for diversity, equity and inclusion.

“What’s happening so far is less actual censorship. It’s self-imposed correctives,” Bianculli said of so-called anticipatory obedience. “Why do something now? Why stick your head up above the weeds at this moment?”

Bianculli, who wrote a book about the 1969 cancellation of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” at the start of the Nixon administration, pointed to NBC’s “SNL50” special that was devoid of political commentary, usually a mainstay of “SNL.”

As Hollywood companies delete their DEI programs to avoid the administration’s wrath, independent industry executives express fear about their ability to tell stories of marginalized communities.

“There is a lot of uncertainty,” independent producer Avril Speaks (“Jinn,” “Dotty Soul”) told Indiewire.com. “I have been having conversations with other producers who are trying to get their projects out, and everybody has that question: Who is going to be bold enough to help us tell our stories? When I read in the trades that companies are looking for projects that are ‘more commercial,’ ‘Middle America,’ or ‘non-coastal,’ or something along those lines, we can see the writing on the walls.”

Bianculli notes the Hollywood production pipeline is long, so whatever effects there are from the November election might not be evident on screens for a year or more. Some early evidence suggests commercial media companies won’t return to the 1950s.

Just this week, NBC ordered a comedy pilot set at a Native American community center. CBS has two potential spinoffs in the works from its African-American-led sitcom “The Neighborhood.” And, on March 28, Hulu debuts “Mid-Century Modern,” a sitcom from the creators of “Will & Grace” about three gay men in Palm Springs that contains sexual innuendos that would make Will and Grace blush.

While Hollywood might bend a little in the direction of red-state Republicans when the elephant party is in power and toward blue-state Democrats when the donkey party takes the helm, in the end, it’s the green of the almighty dollar that matters most.

“There’s never been a better line of advice than Deep Throat in ‘All the President’s Men,’ ” Bianculli said. “If you ‘follow the money’ — what’s being made, what’s being canceled, what’s being supported, what’s being avoided — you’ll be able to find evidence of both.”

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