Diversity is not going to be fixed with another training course

A few years ago I attended a disability diversity training course for television execs on how to manage disabled staff better.

This is an incredibly important issue as disabled people are possibly the most under-represented group when it comes to working in film and television. Only 0.3% of the total film workforce are disabled, according to the UK film industry body Creative Skillset, despite the fact that 19% of the working age population are disabled.

During the session we were made to sit in our office chairs and see how difficult it is to reach things placed on a high shelf - to illustrate some of the challenges facing wheelchair users.

We were told to think of Gorden Brown as the UK’s “first disabled prime minister”, due to his lack of vision in one eye, and he was an example of how the “skies are the limit” for disabled people.

I was also told other facts about disabled people such as the difficulty of navigating street furniture (lamp posts, benches, etc) and why we should not schedule meetings in inaccessible offices.

The session was portrayed as a “judgement free space” and we were encouraged to raise any issues we had as managers when working with disabled staff.

Midway through the session I brought up the very practical difficulty of how career structures seem to work against many disabled people in production.

In a nutshell the problem is this: Most people in factual productions get their big break from researcher to director by first self-shooting stuff themselves on small cameras. Self-shooting is a hard physical activity which works against the interests of many disabled people and can mean many disabled people find themselves hitting a glass-ceiling at researcher level.

I told the organisers of the session that I wanted to know how we could solve this problem as opposed to worrying about street furniture of putting books on shelves which are too high.

My concerns were not answered and the session continued by discussing which words are most offensive when talking about disability.

It would be churlish of me to say that I did not learn anything from the session. There is no doubt that spending a day discussing disability issues in a session being led by a professional moderator gave all of us a deeper understanding of what life is like for many people with disabilities.

However what the session did not give us was any clear guidance on what practical steps we could take to employ more disabled people and overcome some of the structural problems when it comes to promotion and retention.

A new study published in April of this year found that my experience of diversity training sessions was very typical. Concentrating on gender diversity training a group of professors from Wharton business school in the US conducted an experiment with over 3,000 participants in one global organization. They gave the participants a gender based diversity course based on the best practices available in the market.

They then followed up the course five months later to see what, if anything, had changed.

What they discovered is diversity training often led to a change in the way people viewed the under-represented group. But it did not lead to any change in behaviours that could have helped the under-represented group.

Awareness did not translate into action.

So what does this mean? Should we simply junk diversity courses?

My view is that a company’s culture is essential when it comes to diversity, and that culture is shaped by people’s awareness at all levels. In that respect diversity courses are very important.

However, if my experience and the Wharton professors are right, all courses do is create an environment where staff might be more favourable to diversity. It is then the role of management to identify structural issues hindering diversity and implement new policies to actually overcome those issues.

Or to put it another way: Diversity courses are no substitute for good diversity policies.

The Windrush is why we fight for media diversity

 

The Windrush is one of the most important events in modern British history, nearly everyone agrees on that. 

But here is the point that few people realise. One of the reasons its importance has been passed down from generation to generation is because a nameless TV news editor decided to send a camera crew down to the docks and film it.

Imagine if it hadn’t been filmed, photographed or written about by journalists at the time. In all likelihood its significance would have been lost forever.

We would be poorer as a nation - not just black people but everyone.

That in a nutshell sums up why I fight for media diversity.

Without media diversity who knows what important stories we are missing? 

Who knows what future historical events are being lost forever?

The fact is less than 5% of people who work in the British film industry are people of colour and only 1% of TV directors making prime-time programmes ( the very type of people who would have filmed the Windrush arrival) are black.

The stories we tell each other and about each other define who we are. Who tells those stories shape our narratives and our shared identity.

I also wonder how different the iconic archive, interviews and and photographs would be if there had been black people behind the cameras and microphones.

We owe it to the Windrush generation that their stories are not lost and the history made by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren is recorded. It is important to remember the Windrush and for me one of the best ways to honour the people who arrived on 22nd June 1948 is to fight for as many of their descendants as possible to tell their stories in their own voices.

I will also be raising a glass today to the nameless news editor who made sure the moment was captured forever.

What the racist murder of a young black teenager can teach us about newsroom diversity (and no I am not talking about Stephen Lawrence)

As a news editor can you be objective? Or do your life experiences, culture and identity make you biased? 

I have worked in and around newsrooms for over twenty years and have come to the conclusion that no single person can escape the subjectivity of their own lived experience irrespective of their ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class or disability.

But I also believe that newsrooms should strive to produce the most impartial objective news possible.

So how do we achieve that?

In a single word: “diversity”

Let me explain with a simple story. 

Most people in the UK have heard of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager who was killed in a racist attack in 1993.

Fewer people have heard of Rolan Adams.

Rolan was killed in a similar racist attack just twenty months previously. He was stabbed to death by a gang of racist thugs in South East London close to where Stephen would later be killed.

In May 1992 to mark the anniversary of Rolan Adams death the BNP (British National Party) decided to hold a march through Woolwich.

I was at university at the time and so I took a train to London and then got in a car with a group of friends to join a counter demonstration. 

As far as I know the two groups never met as the police kept us apart. I briefly saw some Union Jack flags in the distance but that was all I saw of the BNP.

At the end of the day my friends and I then got back in our car and started to drive home. 

It was then that we saw a police van on the other side of a dual carriageway also leaving the area. The police van saw the car full of young black men and did a U-turn and pulled us over.

They ordered us out of the car and we were all separately questioned. I was questioned by the open doors of the police van.

In the middle of them questioning me they decided to take one of my friends down to the police station and bundled him towards the police van. In the confusion they bumped him into me, we all landed on a pile on the ground, and we both ended up going down to the police station.

To cut a very long story short I narrowly escaped the incident having long-term consequences and if things had turned out just slightly differently I could have got a criminal record which would have derailed any future career at the BBC. 

In all honesty the story is not a dramatic miscarriage of justice story. 

The end result is I did not even get a criminal record. 

I believe the police were racist and I saw just how easily my life could have taken a completely different direction through no fault of my own.

Most black British men I talk to have similar stories.

But truth be told it has influenced how I view the criminal justice system, the police and people with criminal records (who might not have been as lucky as me). 

And yet for over twenty years I have never talked about the episode - I have kept it a secret.

It is not something I actively lie about but it is an aspect of my life that I do not talk about for fear that people will look at me differently and stereotype me.

Years later at the BBC I directed programmes about Stephen Lawrence. 

As an executive producer I oversaw three Panorama investigations into police racism. And never once did I tell my production team about the racism I had suffered and my experience with the police. 

I realise now that there were several reasons I kept quiet about it.

First, I was worried my journalism would not be viewed as objective. I had implicitly bought into the idea that the only way I could be objective is if I had not experienced something that disproportionately affects young black men. 

It didn’t occur to me to challenge the idea that my white colleagues’ experience of NOT experiencing police racism was no less objective.

Another reason I did not talk about it was because I was worried about being stereotyped. 

I was concerned that once people knew I had experienced this brush with the law that is all they would see of me. I would not be seen as a journalist who could cover a myriad of different subjects but the “black journalist who covers police racism”. Social researchers have a term for this “social categorization”. 

The truth is our values and the way we see the world are shaped by our experiences.

A newsroom full of black people who had negative experiences with the police would not be a balanced newsroom and I worry about its impartiality.

Conversely a newsroom that was full of white people who never had negative experiences with the police would also be unbalanced and I equally worry about its values and the impartiality of the news it would produce.

If we want truly balanced and impartial journalism we should strive to create diverse newsrooms full of people with a range of experiences. It is the balancing of these different experiences that bring objectivity.

To put it simply - diversity is objectivity. 

But my experience, and my fear of sharing my story, would suggest this alone is not enough. 

We also need to create a culture where people are not worried of being pigeonholed, stereotyped or judged when they do bring their full lived experiences into work. 

Or to put it another way - the best newsroom should be diverse and inclusive.

When three guys went to the House of Lords and spoke truth to power....

On Tuesday 11th June Sir Lenny Henry, Simon Albury MBE and I went to the House of Lords and gave oral evidence about diversity in the UK media. 

While the oral evidence is important a large part of it is about spectacle and and performance in many ways what is more important is the written evidence that is submitted before the meeting that many people never get to read. 

Please read the written evidence that Sir Lenny and I submitted to the House of Lords Communications Committee on media diversity. It is a long read but one of the most important things I have ever written and I hope it will help shape the debate on media diversity. 

Submission to “Public service broadcasting in the age of video on demand inquiry”

By Marcus Ryder (Chief International Editor CGTN Digital) and Sir Lenny Henry CBE (Actor, Producer and CEO of Douglas Road Productions)

SYNOPSIS

Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) services are both an example of diversity best practice which the rest of the UK broadcasting industry can learn from and at the same time present an existential threat to homegrown British diversity in broadcasting. 

This is a key issue, because diversity in the UK television industry is at a worryingly low level. For BAME Black Asian and Minority Ethnic) diversity there is evidence that progress is not only extremely slow, it might even be going backwards.

We believe that the British broadcasting industry can learn important lessons by examining SVoDs economic model of targeting distinct audience groups to maximise subscriptions, as opposed to aiming for large audiences which might often not be to the benefit of minority groups.

At the same time, we also believe that the attraction of diverse groups to predominantly US controlled SVoDs could pose a threat to homegrown UK broadcasting - similar to the threat they have posed to homegrown UK Children’s programming. Specific actions must be taken urgently to protect traditional broadcasters, and doing so by increasing their diversity is a no-brainer. 

Therefore, we strongly recommend three broad models to increase and protect UK broadcasting through raising diversity both in front of and behind the camera:

DEDICATED CONTESTABLE GOVERNMENT FUNDS. The government should protect and promote diverse productions in exactly the same way it protects and promotes Children’s programmes with a contestable fund as announced in December 2017. 

BROADCASTERS RING-FENCE PROGRAMME HOURS AND SPEND. Broadcasters should duplicate the “out-of-London” model for increasing regional diversity and ring-fence a set number of programme hours and spend for diverse productions. 

DIVERSITY TAX BREAKS. The total size of the UK film and high-end television industry has grown through carefully targeted tax breaks. We believe tax breaks targeting film and TV productions that meet certain diversity criteria would similarly grow media diversity. 

SVoDs GROWS DIVERSITY BUT ALSO THREATENS HOMEGROWN UK DIVERSITY

The economic model of SVoDs is subscription based. Thus, the economic model - by its very nature - is built around maximizing the number of programmes which are highly valued by as broad a range of people as possible to encourage them to sign up. This is far more important to SVoDs, for example, than focusing on marketing series’ that might get a high audience rating, but from an audience group that is are already subscribing.

This is why Netfllix is actively targeting diverse groups to get them to sign up. 

That is why Netflix does not reveal its audience ratings. The CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, told the BBC that ratings “are mostly for advertising sales”, and not much else. Talking to the New York Times, Sarandos explained why publishing audience ratings can be harmful to this strategy; “Once we give a number for a show, then every show will be benchmarked off of that show even though they were built sometimes for very specific audiences.”

The focus on specific diverse audiences as an economic and business model is crucial. It explains why SoVDs have seemed so successful in delivering diverse programmes, on and off camera. Both LGBTQ and BAME viewers have cited better representation of their lives in US shows broadcast by American SVoDs than in British produced shows. The benefit of the SVoDs strategy is backed up by research by Kantar Media for Ofcom that both LGBTQ and BAME audiences favour SVoDs over BBC.

This strategy and economic model has two implications for UK broadcasters. 

First, Netflix’s strategy should be used as an example of what data traditional UK broadcasters publish and do not publish as they move into SVoD services such as BritBox. For example publishing traditional audience ratings – measuring the success of a series by the size of its audience irrespective of its make-up – will inadvertently discourage diversity, while publishing which programmes encourage new people to subscribe to a service will encourage diversity.

This will not only help them succeed in the SVoD market, but it will imbed diversity into their business models. 

Second, we believe Netflix’s, and other US SVoDs, success at the same time present an existential threat to British society.

A few years ago, broadcasters, the government and other stakeholders expressed a real concern that young British people would grow up on a diet of foreign imports on Netflix and Youtube. As a result, the government ring-fenced £60million to boost British made Children’s programmes. We believe there is now an equally important concern that BAME viewers could increasingly turn away from UK television and look to the US for better representation. Should they turn away, this would mean losing a huge number of British citizens as British media consumers, and would jeopardize the justification for other aspects of the British media structure such as the TV licence.

Therefore it is paramount the UK takes immediate action to boost diversity in British broadcasting, to match and even surpass the achievements of the SVoDs, to keep this audience. 

Before we propose specific actions – we provide a background on the current challenges the British broadcasters face in achieving diversity. They fall into two camps.

Challenge 1: WOMEN, ETHNIC MINORITIES AND DISABLED PEOPLE ARE NOT BEING EMPLOYED ENOUGH IN BRITISH BROADCASTING

According to the BFI, BAME employment in the film industry is just 3%.

At the current rate, it will take BBC Studios (the part of the BBC that makes programmes) more than 40 years to reach its target of 14% BAME. 

For EastEnders set in multicultural London only 1% of directors are BAME.

Women make up only 13.6 percent of working film directors in the UK.

Only 0.3% of the total UK film workforce are disabled.

The BBC has restructured its departmental structures since its first diversity report in 2012 but it appears that BAME diversity in the key departments which make radio and television programmes has gone down over the last six years. In 2012 BBC Vision (the department responsible for making TV programmes) was 9.7% BAME, in 2018 its closest departmental equivalent BBC Studios was 9.6% BAME.

Challenge 2: INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION COMPANIES ARE NOT DIVERSE ENOUGH

The vast majority of UK programmes are made by independent production companies. 

As per the challenge above, it is imperative of course that these independent production companies themselves increase and set achievable targets for the employment at all levels of women, BAME people, disabled people and other underrepresented groups in their companies.

However, we also need to encourage the development of production companies that are actually run and overseen by people from diverse backgrounds, not just have people being employed at less senior levels. 

Broadcast magazine has just published the first ever survey of BAME-led indies – commissioned together with us – to find out their views on the future of the British broadcasting industry and their prospects for influence and survival.

The survey found:

1. Broadcasters are commissioning more diverse work but from “predominantly white, privileged companies” who then cherry pick talent from BAME-led indies.

2. BAME led indies ask for but do not get the face time they need with commissioners, and therefore suffer in comparison to their white counterparts.

3. The BAME stories that are commissioned often lack authenticity or conform to clichéd story lines. 

4. BAME-led indies said they receive a better hearing and see more opportunities talking to Netflix and other streaming services than traditional broadcasters. This is despite the fact that Netflix and SVoDs make up only 7% of UK production spend.

Separate to the survey our research has found that of the “100 top indies”, a list Televisual Magazine publishes every year, only one of them, Voltage TV whose CEO and Managing Director are both Asian, could be described as a BAME-led indie. Of the other 99 the magazine listed people in important positions CEO, Managing Director CFOs etc. In over 300 names only 4 were people of colour.

In the discussions we have had, but based on anecdotal rather than structured evidence, we expect similar reports from women or disabled-led companies.

Having set out the current diversity challenges the industry is facing, we turn to how the UK broadcasting industry can address the challenges directly, and, as a co-benefit, compete effectively against SVoDs, in order to ensure the entire industry’s continued viability for years to come.

THREE SOLUTIONS

CONTESTABLE FUNDS 

We believe that the principle taken by the government to create a contestable fund of £60 million to boost production of new children’s television content and halt the decline of U.K.-produced children’s content should be used to boost diverse productions. 

The contestable Children’s fund already recognizes the importance of diversity and has said “Programmes from new and diverse backgrounds… will be of particular focus”. The fact that the principle of diversity is already acknowledged in the context of contestable funds means that it is only a small step to expand this beyond Children’s programmes and apply it to diversity more broadly.

All the concerns of children and young people turning away from domestically produced television in favour of US television apply for diverse audiences as evidenced by the report by Kantar Media for Ofcom which says that BAME and LGBTQ audiences are already turning towards SVoDs. 

LEARNING FROM REGIONAL DIVERSITY

Ofcom and UK broadcasters have been able to dramatically increase the number of programmes produced, programme spend and the health of regional indies out of London by ring-fencing production spend and programme hours produced by indies outside of London. 

In 2003 only 3.7% of the BBC’s core programming spend was spent in Scotland 

In 2003 less than 9% of BBC’s network programmes were made outside of the M25 

Now over 50% of BBC’s network programmes are made outside and programming spend in Scotland alone has increased by over 300% 

This is not only important for the BBC but by growing the industry outside of London, Channel 4 can now move productions outside of London. It has a multiplier effect. 

To effectively ring-fence diverse productions and diverse-led indies Ofcom would need to define what a “diverse production” is, similar to how it currently defines an “out of London” production. Both the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, have written to Ofcom to request them to provide such a definition for UK broadcasters to use as a guide.

The lack of ring-fenced funds for diverse indies causes indies such as Sugar Films, a BAME-led indie, to recently open offices in Wales so it could be eligible for ring-fenced Welsh money…. Where we have a situation that black people have to move from London, (the city with the highest number of black residents), to Wales because regional diversity seems to trump BAME diversity we have a system which is broken.

DIVERSITY TAX BREAKS (INDUSTRY WIDE SOLUTION)

Tax breaks in the film and television industry in the UK are proven to work.

Since tax breaks started in 2007 employment in the film and creative industries has grown 5% on average every year and is nearly 2 million. Compared to just 1.2% overall employment growth in the rest of the UK

We see no reason why tax breaks specifically favouring productions which meet certain diverse criteria would not equally grow diversity by 5% every year.

HOW WOULD A PRODUCTION QUALIFY FOR A TAX BREAK?

A production would have to meet 3 of the 4 criteria:

1. The Director is a woman and/or disabled and/or from a BAME background. 

2. The Writer is a woman and/or disabled and/or from a BAME background. 

3. The Director of Photography is a woman and/or disabled and/or from a BAME background. 

4. 50% of staff spend behind the camera is on women staff, or 14% on BAME staff or 18% percent disabled staff.

This is our suggested criteria although we think this would need to be subject to public consultation in much the same way Ofcom conducts public consultation to define “out-of-London” productions. 

However, we also believe diversity tax breaks should be additional to the existing film and television tax breaks - as opposed to making the existing tax breaks conditional on productions meeting certain diversity criteria. This is because the existing tax breaks are working extremely well and we do not want to put new hurdles in place that might stop them from working or deter productions for the US and elsewhere coming to the UK.

If the tax breaks are additional this will attract new productions (with new money) that otherwise would not be made, creating effective competition to the diverse content being produced by SVoDs. Disabled and female directors from all over the world will then want to bring their movies to the UK to take advantage of the tax cuts.

It is also worth noting there is precedent for diversity tax breaks in other countries:

1. Four states in America have already brought in tax relief for diversity or are looking at legislation; California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York state. 

2. And in 2018 France approved a 15% bonus for projects its film council supports in which women perform key roles such as director or director of photography or head of production. 

CONCLUSION

SVoDs – especially from the US - are succeeding. There is no doubt about it. And part (if not the major) key to their success has been because of their diversity. Why are they diverse? It is because they have a different economic model to the traditional broadcasters. While SVoDs should be and are now being introduced in the UK, the fact is that the traditional UK broadcasters and their traditional products are, and should be, here to stay as well. 

But if British broadcasters are going to compete effectively against SVoDs from abroad with their own SVoDs and other products, we believe there is only one tool available. Increase diversity. Any other methods to compete will be temporary and eventually ineffective.

How to use this tool? We believe diversity in the UK media should not be viewed as a simple HR problem relying on solutions such as increased training programmes or better hiring practices. Instead the lack of diversity in British and television today is an example of a persistent and deep market failure in just the same way the lack of regional productions, Children’s programmes and overall size of the UK film industry was twelve years ago. These market failures can only be addressed with financial solutions and/or government/regulatory interventions. In this submission, we have presented practical results of such interventions, and suggested three practical solutions to increase diversity that can be put into place today. We urge the committee to adopt these proposals and recommend Government makes appropriate legislative and regulatory changes.

The future success of UK broadcasting lies not in SvODs. It lies in its diversity. Truly addressing and turning around the lack of diversity in the UK broadcasting industry is the only way to provide a viable future for UK broadcasting, here in Britain and beyond.

Why Traditional Audience Ratings Hurt Diversity

There’s a reason Netflix do not publish audience ratings, and as someone who wants to increase diversity in the television industry I’m grateful.

Netflix notoriously do not publish their ratings, much to the annoyance of many in the industry. It has drawn criticism from the likes of FX Networks chief executive John Landgraf and, more recently, senior BBC figures such as  BBC’s head of TV strategy Becky Marvell.

I have sympathy with a lot of the traditional broadcasters’ criticisms of how Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) services like Netflix publish their data and how their lack of transparency can mean it can feel that broadcasters are not competing on a level playing field with SVoDs.

However when it comes to diversity I am firmly on the side of Netflix in this argument.

HOW SUCCESS IS MEASURED BY TRADITIONAL BROADCASTERS

When I worked for the BBC a large measure of whether a  programme was a success or not, was linked to its audience ratings.

I would come into the office the next day and wait for the “overnights” to see how many people had watched it.

A few days later I would get the number of people who had watched it on catch-up services such as iPlayer.

Then I would also receive the Audience Appreciation Index figures, (known as the AI’s). The AI’s are a qualitative measure of what a representative sample survey thought of your programme.

The higher the ratings and the higher your AIs the more successful a programme was deemed to be and overtime the success of one’s career depended in no small part to these figures.

Traditional broadcasters have been slaves to these figures but there’s now growing evidence that it has been to the detriment of diversity.

HOW SUCCESS IS MEASURED BY NETFLIX

In an interview with Amol Rajan on the BBC Radio4 Media Show the CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, said that he had no intention of publishing traditional television ratings.

However what he was interested in publishing was which programmes people watch when they first subscribe.  “What people watch in the first month does give us some indication – the first month which they join – why they joined.”

That is because the business model of subscription television services means that a series that gets a small audience but gets 10,000 new people to subscribe is more important to them than a series that millions of people watch but fails to attract a single new subscriber.

Ratings are not important - new subscribers are.

In the same way a series that gets a high average AI is not as important, as a series that gets a low average AI but a few people absolutely love . Because it is the "extreme love" that will get people to continue their subscription. Conversly even if the majority of people hate the show (bringing down the AI average) it won't stop them subscribing if they can find other shows targeted to them which they love. 

IMPLICATIONS FOR DIVERSITY

While traditional broadcasters try to maximise audience numbers and AI figures, subscription services like Netflix are looking to maximise the emotional connection the range of their content has with different types of groups to get them to subscribe.

For example imagine a programme that is only popular among the traveller community in the UK. The audience figures would mean this would be seen as a failure by traditional broadcasters, but for Netflix if the programme got every traveller family to take out a subscription it would be seen as a massive success.

Netflix’s business model is all about seeking out different audience groups and producing content they love enough to subscribe. By definition this is how you grow a diverse audience.

As a television producer with twenty five years at the BBC I know it is almost impossible to avoid the “tyranny” of audience ratings. In another interview with the New York Times Sarandos said: “Once we give a number [audience rating] for a show, then every show will be benchmarked off of that show even though they were built sometimes for very specific audiences.”

He then went on to say; “There is a very natural inclination to say, ‘Relative to this show, this show is a failure.' That puts a lot of creative pressure on the talent.”

And Netflix wants producers to continue to produce shows that capture (or retain) diverse audiences. Not to loosely appeal to a mass audience just for the sake of it.

WHY THIS MATTERS NOW

The BBC and ITV are about launch BritBox - a new SVoD service.

If they want BritBox to be a success they need to concentrate on increasing the range, breadth and emotional connection of their audience. Not the size of the audience for any one specific series.

For Britbox’s sake and for the sake of diversity I hope they take a leaf out of Netflix’s book and do not publish audience ratings or AI figures - not even internally - putting pressure on producers. Please just publish which programmes attract new people to subscribe to the service.

There is an old saying “what gets measured gets done”. Netflix’s measurements help increase diversity. Standard audience ratings do not.