Why TV Needs Black People

TV is in big trouble.

Here are two facts that every television executive should have sleepless nights over:

1.       According to the last 2011 census Britain is becoming a more ethnically diverse country. London is 40% Non-white. Leicester, Luton and Slough are now “minority majority cities” (over 50% of the population are from a black, Asian or ethnic minority) and Birmingham is predicted to join them soon.

2.       Black, Asians and other ethnic minorities watch less television than their white counterparts. On average BAME people watch five hours less television per week (22hours vs. 27hours). The really worrying fact for people at the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five is BAME people watch only half the amount of Terrestrial TV than the rest of the population (8hours vs 16hours).

So there you have it TV execs; a segment of the audience that is growing that clearly doesn’t want to consume your product. If this were a business presentation I’d be thinking how do I sell my shares now?

But before I hand in my notice and open the ice cream shop in Brixton Village that I’ve been dreaming about for the last two years a small academic study by the University of California might hold the answer as to what TV execs can do.

During 2011-2012 the University of California’s analysed more than 1,000 “scripted television shows” – that’s drama and comedy to you and me – for how many people of colour appeared in them and the results were striking. The study found that programmes with more actors of colour had above average ratings.

The amount of actors of colour a TV programme had really mattered. The study found that average ratings were highest when the casts were 31 – 40% from an ethnically diverse background. At the other end of the spectrum, ratings were the lowest among shows with casts that were 10 percent ethnic minority or less.

And it wasn’t just “in front of the camera” stats that influenced the ratings, the colour of the staff behind the camera also mattered. The broadcast shows with the highest ratings all had writing staff where at least a fifth of the staff were BAME.

In a recent conversation with Keli Lee the Head of Casting at Disney ABC she told me that the diversity of cast is vital in attracting minority audiences. 15 years ago on screen ethnic diversity on the American network ABC stood at roughly 6%, today it is 27% with shows such as Modern Family, Greys Anatomy and Scandal.

The answer is simple for British TV executives worried about their falling ratings and a growing audience that is switching off:

Employ more black people behind the camera and put more of us in-front of the camera. And if you really want to save TV you might even want to make a few more .of us executives too

The Flight Of The Black Actor

Last week, as Chair of the Royal Television Society Diversity Committee, I organised a panel discussion on whether black British actors need to leave the UK in order to further their careers.

You can read the RTS report on the event here http://www.rts.org.uk/flight-black-actor-%E2%80%93-report-diversify-14-november-2013 (and it was filmed so that is to follow soon)

I thought people might like to read the briefing document I produced ahead of the panel with facts and figures about BAME actors BAME audiences.

Read, enjoy, weep and please feel free to use them randomly in your next discussion about BAME people in the media over a drink, a coffee, at work or a dinner party...

Briefing Document for Royal Television Society Panel on “The Flight Of The Black Actor”

Do black British actors need to leave the UK in order to have successful careers?

It’s a common enough idea with even the Shadow Business Secretary Chukka Umunna MP talking about it in a recent speech. Morgan Freeman has talked about how British actors need to go to America and even the new Director of the National Theatre Rufus Norris has spoken about it.

1. EXAMPLES OF BLACK FLIGHT:

Idris Elba

David Harewood

Troy Titus Adams

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

David Oyelowo

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Notable examples of black actors who have not gone to America:

Naomi Harris

Ashley Walters

And Lenny Henry

2. BRITAIN VERSUS AMERICA

i. Awards

Only three black British actors have won RTS best acting awards: 2009/10 David Oyelowo and Naomi Harris in Small Island and Diane Parish best female actor in Babyfather (interestingly that they were all examples of black subject matter – definitely not colour-blind casting.

BAFTA - No black actor has so far won a BAFTA for best actor (male or female)

EMMYs In last 30 years six BME actors have won best actor awards at the EMMYS

ii. Salary

No BME British actors make any top ten lists for most paid.

In America Sandra Oh of Korean decent makes the top ten paid actors list for her role in Greys Anatomy

iii. “Colour-blind” casting

When the BBC announced a present-day version of Sherlock Holmes they cast Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. When the Americans announced the US version, Elementary, Lucy Liu was cast as Dr Joan Watson – an Asian woman.

iv. ABC Disney has increased its BME on-screen representation form 6% fifteen years ago to 27% now. It’s stable of programmes include Modern Family, Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy. Head of casting is Korean American Keli Lee.

3. STATISITICS

i. Audiences:

BME population is approximately 14% of the UK population

BME population of London is 40.3% (Particularly pertinent when thinking about about London based dramas)

ii. TV Audiences:

BME’s watch 5 hours less television a week than their white counterparts 22hours –vs- 27hours:

BME’s watch 8 hours less mainstream terrestrial TV a week than their white counterparts. 8 hours vs 16hours.

BME’s are deserting mainstream TV for digital TV. They watch 3 hours more Digital TV a week than their white counterparts. 14hours vs 11hours.

BME audiences watch less mainstream TV of every genre than their population percentages but in drama and comedy the difference is most marked.

For BBC1 Drama only 9.3% of their audience is made up of BME’s vs population percentage of 14%

For BBC1 Comedy only 5.8% of their audience is made up of BME’s vs population percentage of 14%

  

BIG STAT ALERT!! BME onscreen representation for EastEnders has the most racially diverse on-screen representation of any soap. Over a third (38%) of the white population watch EastEnders at some point in the year. But 50% of the BME population watch EastEnders!

Anecdotally ITV have increased their on-screen representation in both Corrie and Emmerdale over the last year. In January 2013 Corrie’s new producer Stuart Blackburn said increased on screen diversity was a top priority.  Last year 2012 introduced its first black family. And it has had no effect on their audiences. That can be seen as both positive and negative. It did not “scare-away” white viewers but so far it hasn’t grown the BME audience either.

The Price Of Diversity

There’s a cheap trick journalists can pull when they want to criticise a government policy. You simply divide the amount of money spent on a policy by the change it has made. Let me give you an example:

Take the amount of money the government has spent on a regeneration project that is meant to improve employment in an area and divide by the number of new jobs created in the area.

You can normally come up with a statistic that “shows” each job cost several hundreds of thousands of pounds!

I say it’s cheap journalism but it also plays an important function. It is vital for us to be able to assess if money is being spent wisely and whether government policies are actually achieving anything.

I was reminded of this just the other day when I was sitting on a panel discussion hosted by Thomson Reuters discussing the issue of how to increase the number of black, Asian and other ethnic minorities working in television specifically and the media generally. Before the event started all the panelists were sitting in the ”green room” and the chair person was picking our brains so he would know what to ask us when we were sitting in front of the audience. Two seemingly innocent questions of his struck me:

Question number 1: “Does mentoring actually work in helping black people get promotions?”

Question number 2: “Do the diversity schemes of different broadcasters schemes actually work?”

The questions were not confrontational - he was just trying to get some background information. But they were not properly answered and the conversation continued to flow, I doubt my fellow panelists would even remember them in the general discussion. When it actually came to the actual talk in front of the audience the two questions did not even come up.

But I left the event asking myself; What if a journalist performed that “cheap journalistic trick” on media diversity schemes?

What if a journalist looked at the different initiatives and money dedicated to increasing diversity in the media and divided it by the number of extra black people employed in the media?

A recent Creative SkillSet survey showed that while the number of people employed in the media industry has increased in the last three years the number of BAME employees (black, Asian and minority ethnic) has actually decreased.

With figures like those I  fear that if you did my cheap journalistic trick you could find every penny spent on diversity schemes actually cost jobs!

I can see the headline now: “For every £XXthousand spent on diversity the TV industry loses another black person”

Any intelligent person will realise that this is not a fair headline as we have no idea what the employment figures would be if there were no diversity initiatives - in all likelihood the figures would be even worse.

But it still leaves the important question of which initiatives actually work and are worth spending money on? Answering this type of question is now common practice when government’s assess their policies and is often called an “impact assessment”. For anyone interested in increasing diversity in the media finding an answer to this question should be our number one priority.

If mentoring works let’s role out mentoring everywhere, if mentoring doesn’t work let’s stop spending money on it and move on, the same goes for all the different initiatives we invariably role out. This is not an argument for not spending money on diversity programmes but let’s find out what is effective and focus our energies and money on that.

The Reuters event was a great success and I met some incredibly interesting people from the world of finance. But it was the two simple questions no one could answer that left the greatest impression on me.

How Do I Find A Husband? (And Other Important TV Diversity Questions)

“How on earth am I going to find a husband now Marcus?!”

I had been talking to a fellow BBC colleague for about an hour. We had talked around the subject, we had avoided the issue and cracked jokes to lessen the brutal reality. But after an hour there was no avoiding it and it finally came out as a question, a plea for help and resigned desperation - all in equal measure. She repeated it; “Seriously how am I going to find a husband?”

The black colleague had been relocated out of London, along with thousands of other BBC people in the last five years, as the Corporation has tried to more accurately reflect the UK it broadcasts to and the license payers who support it.  

First of all I completely support the BBC’s moves to be less London-centric and think the recent regional developments have strengthened the BBC’s connection to the wider population north of Watford no end, as well as improving its output. It would be perverse if I supported diversity in the media on one hand and didn’t support increasing regional diversity and representation on the other.

However that does not mean that I don’t think there are very real challenges that the BBC and every broadcaster face who wants to be less London-centric.

According to the 2011 census a staggering 70% of black British people live in Greater London. If the borough of Barnet were a city it would have the fourth largest number of black people after London, Birmingham and Manchester. Yes you read that right Barnet! I’m not even going to discuss the usual suspects of Lambeth, Lewisham and Brent.

The wider issue my black colleague’s lament - about a potential husband - points to is the fact that she was moving to a part of the UK where she felt she could not relate to the community in the same way nor are the same community support structures in place for her to deal with problems outside work and achieve a proper work / life balance. All of these are essential if she is going to reach her full potential in her career. (This is without even going into whether she should be limiting her search for a potential partner to black suitors).

The challenge to broadcasters is to make sure that they do not champion one diversity goal (in this case regional diversity) at the potential expense of other diversity targets (BAME representation).

And so with this in mind I would offer the following advice to any broadcaster or media company who is quite rightly trying to make their output and staffing practices less London-centric. I call it the “The Three R’s”

1.  Recognise that you are moving from a part of the country with a large concentration of black people to one that is less concentrated. Acknowledging the issue is the first step in addressing it.

2.  Redouble your efforts to increase BAME diversity in front of and behind the camera. If you continue with the same policies all things being equal BAME diversity will decrease.

3.  Remedy the problems that existing BAME staff will experience when relocating that might be different from their white colleagues. This can be the most difficult one to solve but simple measures such as making them aware of organisations such as the TVCollective so they can find virtual support from black colleagues at the other end of the country can go a long way.

I was part of the first wave of relocations out of London over five years ago moving to Scotland to be Editor of the BBC’s Current Affairs Programmes. It was a promotion for me and career-wise it was one I embraced with open arms. I’ve been very lucky finding a great team to work with and a supportive wife who moved up with me. But if we want to increase the number of BAME people working in television and ensure the careers of those already working in television really flourish we need to rely on more than just luck.

My fear is eventually if the choice is between a career and finding a husband (or being connected to a supportive community) most BAME people will make the “right choice” and leave the media industry - after all “it is only television.”

Last (Black) Man Standing

Two weeks ago I received an email from a black friend that affected me more than I would have expected.

The email was a group email from a fellow colleague telling us all that after a long time she was finally leaving the BBC and seeking pastures new. Over the years I have received various incarnations of this type of circular from numerous colleagues. So I was surprised that it upset me so.

The fact is that when I started working at the BBC there were a number of fellow black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) colleagues that joined at around the same time as me. I always consider these people to be my peers - a kind of cohort “class of 90’ish”, if you like. The email marked the last one of these BAME peers leaving the BBC. Reading the email, I suddenly felt very lonely.

Then, a week later, I heard the news that Pat Younge, the most senior black person at the BBC, was also leaving. It felt like a body blow.

I recognise that the BBC is not the only media organisation in the UK (or the world) and just because all these BAME people have left the BBC does not mean they won’t have great careers with other companies and broadcasters. They may also return to the BBC later on. But my friend's email points to a more worrying trend.

According to the latest Creative Skillset 2012 Employment Census, employment in the creative media industries grew by more than 4,000 between 2009 and 2012. However, despite this increase, the number of BAME people in the industry actually fell by 2,000.

Let’s dig a little deeper into those figures:

In 2009, across the UK, 6.7% of people working in the media were from BAME backgrounds. Back then this was already under the 9% national figure of BAME people of working age in the UK, but by 2012 that figure had dropped to just 5.4%.

In London specifically, BAME representation in the media industries is 8.9% - the highest in the country. That might seem like good news at first until you consider that the capital’s overall BAME working population is 28.8%. That’s right – BAME people are under-represented in the media industry by a magnitude of over 300%! And it seems as if it’s getting worse.

On reflection, there was a good reason I was upset by my friend’s email. It was just a human face being put on these very depressing but impersonal figures.

However what prompted me to write this blog post was not my friend’s email, Pat Younge's departure, or even the Skillset survey. What prompted it was another email I received inviting me to attend a conference encouraging more young BAME people to enter the media and thereby address lack of diversity.

At least once a month I receive information about various initiatives encouraging more diversity at entry level positions. I even sit on the National Council for the Training of Journalists bursary body which awards grants to young would-be journalists from diverse backgrounds. But if the Skillset survey tells us anything it is that the problem of diversity is not at the entry level positions, but retaining the diverse talent that enters the industry.

To put it crudely if there is a hole in your bucket you need to fix the hole. You don’t keep pouring more water into it hoping that will increase the amount of water in it.

While entry level initiatives are good I think the time has come for those of us interested in increasing diversity in the media to acknowledge that we need to fix the hole.

That hole might be caused by a number of reasons, for example: short term contracts that are renewed for our non-diverse colleagues but are not renewed for BAME people; redundancy processes that seem to disproportionately affect people from diverse backgrounds; or a lack of career progression that causes BAME people to leave in frustration.  There will be other reasons.

Stemming the BAME talent drain will not be easy. But unless we want to lose another 2,000 people from the creative media industries, this must be where we now focus our energies, to begin fixing that hole.

 

Money Will Not Solve Racism In TV

I have recently been to a number of meetings to discuss the best way to try and convince broadcasters and production companies to combat hidden prejudice and increase “on-screen” diversity.

How can we make companies change their practices and be more receptive to putting more black people, women and disabled people in front of the camera or even on our radio airwaves?

At these types of meetings eventually someone always says something along the lines of:

“All the broadcasters and production companies care about is money, it’s called the entertainment business for a reason. It’s not a black and white issue  - it’s a green issue! We have to show them how it’s in their business interest to employ more black people, women and disabled people”.

The argument is normally that if you increase onscreen diversity you can attract larger audiences and generate more money (I paraphrase for brevity).

While I agree that we should use every instrument and every possible argument available to us to increase diversity I am incredibly uneasy about the economic argument. The reason I am uneasy is that the economic argument can cut both ways.

In 1995 American economists Robert W. Brown and R. Todd Jewell published a seminal paper on racism and spectator attendance in college basketball. What they discovered is that white people are willing to pay more money to see white players than black players. In fact a highly skilled white college player generated over $100,000 in per game revenue as compared to around $30,000 for black players of equal talent. This provided a massive incentive for colleges to discriminate against recruiting black student athletes. College basketball teams also generate extra money by winning - both through prize money and due to the fact that people prefer to pay to see a winning team. This meant that college teams had to do a bizarre balancing act. They may well generate more profits if they lost a few of their games but had more white players than if they won all their games with an exclusively black team.

Now I am not aware of anyone doing a similar study when it comes to television but that is my concern. What if we discover that audiences are happy to have one or two black fronted drama series but more than that and they start to turn over? I have no idea where the profit maximizing line is for on-screen diversity and more importantly neither do the people who argue this case.

Economics is funny like that. Once profits become your main argument it can produce perverse results.

Let me give you one more example:

If we rely on economics for the basis of why we should increase diversity we may find that diversity is increased in some areas but reduced in others. For example gay men are perceived to have far larger disposable incomes than disabled people (I do realise the two groups are not mutually exclusive but bear with me please). This would mean that for advertisers (the life blood of most commercial television) it would make sense to increase sexual diversity and decrease disability diversity.

Now I suspect that there are several good economic reasons to increase diversity in businesses generally – the media being one of them. Prof. Lucy Marcus of the IE Business School has done some great work to show that more diverse management boards are usually (not always I hasten to add) more profitable than none diverse board. The reasons are several but include; drawing on a broader talent pool and avoiding “group think” amongst other things.

Increasing diversity in media is important. It is important as it is one of the largest industries in the UK. It is important because you cannot have a functioning democracy if the media does not represent the needs and concerns of everyone. It is important if you want a society that is at ease with itself. And if we are lucky increased diversity will also generate more profits for the companies working in the media.

But please let’s put people before profits.

Why TV Should Listen To Black People

Do people listen to you? I mean really listen to you. 

Do people hear what you are saying? Respect your point? And finally after weighing up what you have said do they act on it?

A few weeks ago I attended an EU conference on diversity in the media. There were delegates from all over Europe and numerous issues came up from; what is the right way to describe immigrants to whether the fast pace of news works against diversity?

But one issue that ran through many of the discussions was who do we actually listen to and whose opinions do we respect? This is most obvious when it comes to on-screen representation. For example why are there not more female experts on TV and radio (in a 2011 study only 28% of guests on BBC’s Question Time  were women and the figure fell to 16% of reporters and guests on the BBC’s flagship radio news programme Today). I do not have the statistics for the number of Black and Minority Ethnic and Disabled experts on our screens but a report conducted in 2009 highlighted that of the 104 regular presenters on Radio4 none were black and only two were Asian. There is undoubtedly a problem of on-screen and on-mic under-representation. I believe this is an indication of whose voices matter and who is really listened to.

But it is not just on-screen and on-mic that we have to worry about this issue. Let me give you a scenario that I think most of us have experienced at one time or another:

You are in a meeting and come up with a great idea. You offer your amazing idea to the group and are duly ignored. Five minutes later and the person next to you voices the same idea and everyone listens to them and takes up “their” great idea! They are a star and you are left fuming into your Americano.

According to feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker you have just experienced a “Testimonial Injustice” or to put it another way you are suffering from a “credibility deficit”. Although everyone at different times in their lives can suffer a “credibility deficit” you are more likely to experience this problem if you are not part of the “in-group”. Nine times out of ten that usually means the victim is from a diverse group: the only woman at a meeting, the only black person at the news debrief or the single disabled member of the production team.

I believe that credibility deficits are one of the largest factors behind the lack of diversity in the media.     

Credibility deficits go to the very core of how much someone in valued by their colleagues and peers. The media is an industry where ideas and creativity are all important and good editorial judgement is often valued more than any technical abilities. Having your opinion valued is possibility the most important factor in being employed or your career progressing.

There are numerous reasons why there might be fewer female, BME and disabled experts on TV and radio. It might just reflect wider prejudices in society generally. For example all the major political party leaders (with the exception of the Greens) are men, it is not the media’s fault if this skews the gender ratio of the political experts they use. However my fear is the explanation the media merely reflects inequalities in wider society is only part of the story. The concern is the lack of on-screen representation of diverse expert opinions is the physical manifestation of how much opinions from diverse backgrounds are valued in general. If that is the case then it does not bode well for the employment and career progression of large swathes of the population.

However I don’t believe all is lost and we should not just give up hope. Nan Winton was the first woman to read the BBC news on 19 June 1960, but BBC Audience research concluded that viewers thought a woman reading the late news was "not acceptable” in other words she suffered from a “credibility deficit” and was removed from the role in less than a year later. The view that women lacked the credibility to read the news persisted until 1975 when Angela Rippon was appointed to read the news. Nowadays I don’t think anyone would question the credibility of the news because a woman was reading it.

The experience of newsreaders proves “credibility deficits” can and often do shift. I just hope we are at the Angela Rippon stage and not the Nan Winton stage when it comes to all diversity representation in the media.