The UK TV industry and diversity, a thread 🇬🇧📺 #BlackLivesMatterUK
‘The television industry is a hugely exciting and culturally rich place to work. But the evidence shows that too many people are still excluded from that opportunity’ - Sharon White Chief Executive, Ofcom, September 2019
It’s the weekend ie TV binge watch time. Let’s take a look at how the UK’s TV industry is doing in terms of employing people from a mix of backgrounds (spoiler alert - not great)
Viacom (Channel 5, MTV etc) - 73% White, 20% Minority Ethnic Group
Channel 4 - 79% White, 19% Minority Ethnic Group
Sky (owns NowTV) - 69% White, 16% Minority Ethnic Group
BBC - 83% White, 13% Minority Ethnic Group
ITV - 72% White, 10% Minority Ethnic Group
Unfortunately, Netflix, Amazon, Disney & other streaming services aren’t included in Ofcom’s 2018/19 report but Ofcom says they plan to address this in future. I think it would also be interesting to see data on the most popular UK YouTube content creators.
Here’s a chart by Ofcom about diversity in the UK TV industry in 2018/19, and how it’s changed (or hasn’t) since the previous year. The light purple represents minority ethnic people, dark purple represents white people. 
Ofcom also collects data on management in the industry. It’s pretty bleak.
Here’s an overall chart for diversity in the UK TV industry
NB reason the percentages don’t add up to 100 in my initial tweets is because some employees choose not to disclose their ethnicity, plus some data is missing
Here’s Ofcom’s main chart about diversity in the UK TV industry as a whole. Interesting to also see how well it’s doing in terms of employing people with disabilities (ie not great)
According to government stats, England and Wales is 80.5% white British. However, most media companies are still based in London. In the capital, 44.9% of people are white British. ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-…
Some of Ofcom’s recommendations:
-Mend the ‘middle of career’ pipeline for BAME employees
-Aspire to reflect the working population of the region that the broadcasters’ workforce is based in.
-Ensure measures are in place to represent employees from BAME backgrounds
-Mend the ‘middle of career’ pipeline for BAME employees
-Aspire to reflect the working population of the region that the broadcasters’ workforce is based in.
-Ensure measures are in place to represent employees from BAME backgrounds
The full report is here ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/…
I’d like to see data from @NetflixUK @PrimeVideo @Disney_UK on the diversity of their UK workforce. I’ve found stats on Netflix’s site but only for the US for some reason
Here’s the makeup of Netflix US - not Netflix UK (Ofcom can’t regulate them as they’re based in the Netherlands)
If you’re 18-25 & interested in working in TV look up @MAMAYouth They recruit & train young people from under-represented groups / with limited educational/employment opportunities. Applications for Autumn intake open soon …k.php56-30.ord1-1.websitetestlink.com/training/whats…
Do you care about diversity in the UK TV industry? 📺🇬🇧
Hope you’ve found this thread interesting. I was going to add the makeup of the boards of these but honestly it’s too depressing. I think a lot of UK companies think that having a few (white) women on their boards = diversity. Happy weekend viewing 🍿📺🍿
