So here's an optimistic prediction for 2014: After a year that saw a lot of rightful objections to the types of characters depicted on television, the coming year could bring some corrective signs of progress.

If ever there were an auspicious sign to kick off a new, yearlong campaign to improve minority visibility on TV, Saturday Night Live would be it. In the past few weeks, its hired a number of black female comedians: Sasheer Zamata joins the cast, while LaKendra Tookes and Leslie Jones are coming to the writers' room.

It was just last October that longtime cast member Kenan Thompson told TV Guide SNL didn't have any new black women on its cast because the show "never find[s] ones that are ready." (The last black female castmember, Maya Rudolph, left the show in 2007.) Thompson was quickly criticized as suggestions rolled in. SNL proved it was paying attention when Scandal's Kerry Washington came to host. The episode’s cold open, which featured Washington running off and on stage scrambling to play the likes of Michelle Obama and Oprah, included this humorous but welcome apology:

The producers at Saturday Night Live would like to apologize to Kerry Washington for the number of black women she will be asked to play. We make these requests because Ms. Washington is an actress of considerable range and talent—and also because SNL does not currently have a black woman on the cast. Mostly the latter. We agree this is not an ideal situation and look forward to rectifying it in the near future, unless, of course, we fall in love with another white guy first.

A few weeks later, SNL held a special audition for a number of black female comedians, and not long after, it announced Upright Citizens Brigade alumna Zamata would be joining the cast in early 2014. Zamata's Internet presence suggests she's a bona fide talent—but the timing and spectacle surrounding the hiring process suggested to some that SNL was more eager to get out of critics' glare than to actually shake things up. Weeks before that audition, comedian Kerry Coddett—who was later invited to try out herself—wrote here at The Atlantic that the real problem with the show wasn't the cast itself, but the roles black women were given by a predominantly white writing staff.

"The Kerry Washington episode, and the show’s long history, suggests that Saturday Night Live just doesn't know what to do with black women," Coddett wrote. "The roles it offers to them fall in line with much of the rest of popular media: stereotypical, demeaning, and scarce.

But SNL seemed to be aware of this, too, when it was later revealed that the show had also hired Tookes and Jones—who also participated in the same audition process as Zamata—to join the writing staff. A few new hires won't undo SNL’s race problem, but their additions suggest SNL is taking some necessary steps to fix where its record falls short.