Diversity - A Super Nanny Special?

Praising good practice isn’t enough often you need to define what bad looks like too.

As a TV executive you often watch TV programmes and, whether you mean to or not, deconstruct their structures. You can see the patterns that repeat themselves in factual formats, you can see where the narrative jeopardy has been inserted and where the tidy resolutions are created to tie up the end of a programme. Whether you are more used to making “Strictly Come Dancing” or “Dispatches” any exec worth their salt has spent enough time in an edit to recognise the tricks of the trade.

One of the formats I particularly used to admire for its sheer simplicity is "Super Nanny". Every programme is the same:

1.  Watch children behaving badly having tantrums.

2. The parents are at breaking point with their misbehaving children

3. Bring in Super Nanny.

4. Super Nanny tells parents to ignore the bad behaviour but reward the good behaviour.

5. Lesson learnt  - children learn it is in their interest to behave well, everyone lives happily ever after.

6. Roll Credits

Earlier this year in May Diversity was written into the White Paper outlining the BBC's Charter. And much of the television industry seems to be approaching the problem of diversity as if it was an episode of Super Nanny.

In the Diversity Special Super Nanny episode the broadcasters' bosses seem to be the parents who despite their best efforts have been unable to increase diversity.

The different productions are the misbehaving children who keep misbehaving and not employing enough people from diverse backgrounds.

And Ofcom seems to be Super Nanny who is watching the whole thing.

Like Super Nanny Ofcom likes to praise good behaviour/best practice.

So can the Super Nanny approach work for increasing diversity?

The problem is the broadcasters are doing exactly what Super Nanny tells parents not to do.

When the production companies act badly and "throw tantrums" by not employing people of colour or disabled people the broadcasters do not do step 4: ignore the bad behaviour but reward the good behaviour. Instead the broadcasters all too often reward the bad behaviour by still giving them commissions.

The BBC has taken the Super Nanny approach to panel shows and women - they simply ignore panel shows, refusing to commission them, if they do not have at least one woman on the panel.

I was talking to an American drama exec a few years ago and for a lot of their programmes they seem to take a Super Nanny approach when it comes to on-screen diversity. Programmes that do not show diversity in front of the camera are not chastised - they are simply ignored and not commissioned. The result, according to the exec, is that productions all come with black, Asian and Latino characters written into their programme pitches.

The problem is when it comes to diversity behind the camera no one wants to really take the Super Nanny approach and ignore bad behaviour.

If productions really were badly behaving children - broadcasters are buying them the equivalent of a bag a sweets (giving them commissions) whether they throw a tantrum in the middle of the shopping aisle (do not employ a single black person) or are the best behaved children in the world (are fully diverse).

And as we know from Super Nanny that is not how you get to the "happily ever after" and "roll credits"