The career ladder for black and Asian people in TV is broken - let's fix it

I am the last of a generation of black and Asian TV execs.

Before me was a generation of black and Asian senior television execs which includes the likes of Pat Younge (MD of Sugar Films), Tommy Nagra (senior exec at the BBC), Maxine Watson (Director of Programmes at Twenty Twenty) and Angela Ferriera (MD of Douglas Road Productions).

After me has come a generation of young extremely talented TV professionals who I think have had it a lot harder than my generation, and have struggled to make it to the same heights.

I was having coffee the other day with a senior HR figure at the BBC and she said ruefully “Twenty years we got it right. Now it feels as if we are almost going backwards”

She told me how she had recently been to a party where there had been a large number of senior Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) TV figures in their forties and fifties.

Working in HR she has an encyclopedic knowledge of the careers of BAME people throughout the media industry. And her assessment was that despite some extremely talented individuals there was not a new cohort coming up to replace these older execs.

And her analysis of why not struck a chord.

This older generation had all effectively been the beneficiaries of "ring-fenced diversity money".

(Ring-fenced money is the idea of broadcasters putting money aside specifically for a certain type of programme or production - for example there is ring-fenced funds for news and current affairs programmes, children's programmes and programmes made outside of London)

The older generation of BAME execs who benefited from “ring-fenced diversity money” didn't call it that back then, but that is what it was - let me explain.

Every one of the black and Asian senior execs I mentioned at the start of the piece, and others who had been present at the same party as the HR friend, had all worked on series or in departments with specific funds to employ and develop BAME talent.

Pat Younge and Maxine Watson for example both worked on the BBC current affairs series “Black Britain” gaining valuable series producer, and later executive producer, experience which they were able to build on throughout their careers. Tommy Nagra and Angela Ferriera were heads of the Asian Programme Unit and African/Caribbean Programme Unit respectively, which gave them invaluable managerial experience. Angela is now managing director of Douglas Road productions which just produced the award winning series “Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle. Tommy is one of the most senior BAME people in an editorial role at the BBC.

In fact it is almost impossible to find any black or Asian person working in TV over the age of 45 who did not in some capacity, directly or indirectly, benefit from these ring-fenced series and departments.

I used to naively look at my own career and think these ring-fenced funds hadn’t helped me. The truth is I just didn’t examine my own career hard enough.

I briefly passed through “Black Britain” directing one documentary with the reporter Clive Myrie. That one current affairs programme was an essential element to me securing the series producer job at “Whistleblower”, a BBC1 undercover investigations series. And “Whistleblower was key to when I successfully applied for the BBC Scotland head of current affairs programmes position.

I also cut my directing teeth at the BBC’s Community Programme Unit which produced ground-breaking series such as Video Diaries in the 80s and 90s. The unit’s remit was to represent under-represented voices on-screen. Under the enlightened thinking of two execs, Debbie Christie and Bob Long, they realised that the best way to fulfill that on-screen remit they should employ under-represented people behind the camera. They actively sought out people like me and made award winning series in the process.

(Side note: the Community Programme Unit used to share office space with the Disability Programme Unit which similarly nurtured disabled talent).

Now these series and departments, which effectively ring-fenced funds for diverse programme makers, were not perfect.

Many people felt ghettoised only able to work on certain types of programmes and I think a lot of that criticism is valid. And it was due to much of this kind of criticism that most of these series and departments were disbanded in the late 90s and early 00s.

But the problem is nothing was set up to replace them. The dedicated funds for Asian, black and disabled programmes and programme makers just vanished. And with them so did a clear career path to nurture and promote under-represented talent.

Now my answer is not to bring back these series and departments but to ring-fence the funds that were behind them for diverse progamme makers and productions. BUT - and this is key - the on-screen subject matter does not necessarily have to be “diverse”, that way the programme makers do not feel ghettoised.

As I had coffee with my friend in BBC HR we both agreed that without ring-fenced funds we are simply not getting the next generation of senior BAME execs coming through.

However it was another conversation I had a few days later with a retired TV exec that really gave me food for thought. I talked through the need for ring-fenced funds and he replied:

“Of course, of course it’s obvious! But you know what else is obvious Marcus? You’ll never get broadcasters to agree to it calling it ‘ring-fenced funds’ - after all we didn’t call it that in the 80s - your job is to sell it better.”