LOS ANGELES — The team of executive producers from ABC’s “The Bachelor” had a lot to celebrate when they appeared at a panel during the Television Critics Association winter press tour in February. They were eager to highlight the veteran franchise’s winning streak over the last few years.

“The Golden Bachelor,” the spinoff focused on older adults looking for love that starred 72-year-old widower Gerry Turner, was a solid hit. The network had just announced pickup of “ The Golden Bachelorette.” Charity Lawson, the most recent “Bachelorette,” got engaged. Season 28 of “The Bachelor,” with hunky tennis instructor Joey Graziadei, was also performing well.

With its gorgeous exotic locations, charismatic leads and rose-colored romance, the franchise was firing on all cylinders. “It’s just about telling true, authentic love stories and hoping that the journey to get there is engaging, entertaining and compelling for the audience,” executive producer Claire Freeland said.

But one question punctured the upbeat vibe.

“Why does it seem that ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette’ have such a hard time dealing with racial issues in-depth?” asked National Public Radio‘s television critic Eric Deggans, referencing the fiery controversies surrounding the first two Black leads — Rachel Lindsay and Matt James— that culminated with both personalities bolting from the franchise.

Attempting to shift the focus from the past, Freeland responded, “I can speak to where we are now.” But Deggans continued to press: “That doesn’t really answer the question. Why has ‘The Bachelor’ struggled to deal with race, particularly when Black people are the stars of the show?”

Freeland and her colleagues, Bennett Graebner and Jason Ehrlich, froze. After about eight seconds of silence, Deggans quipped, “I guess we have our answer.”

The “frozen moment” became one of the buzziest stories out of the press tour, casting another harsh spotlight on the stormy history of racism and cultural insensitivity that has clouded “The Bachelor” franchise — one of TV’s most enduring and popular brands — since its 2002 premiere.

It was “the silence that seemed to speak volumes,” Deggans later wrote. “... The show’s producers have never found a way to grapple with how white-centered the show is, how difficult that centering makes it for people of color who appear on the program and how that failure leaves them unable to respond well when problems involving racial issues arise.”

The turbulent track record of the franchise includes the bullying of contestants of color, a lack of Black male leads — James remains the only Black Bachelor to be cast — and spotty vetting that allowed contestants who had posted racially offensive content on social media to appear on the show. In addition to James and Lindsay, Michelle Young, who starred in Season 18 of “The Bachelorette,” was unhappy with a series of diversity-related issues, and she said during a podcast interview that she had threatened to quit at one point because of her frustration with producers.

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