‘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
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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)
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Viacom (Channel 5, MTV etc) - 73% White, 20% Minority Ethnic Group
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Channel 4 - 79% White, 19% Minority Ethnic Group
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Sky (owns NowTV) - 69% White, 16% Minority Ethnic Group
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BBC - 83% White, 13% Minority Ethnic Group
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ITV - 72% White, 10% Minority Ethnic Group
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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.
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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.pic.twitter.com/zjKnbiK42X
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Ofcom also collects data on management in the industry. It’s pretty bleak.pic.twitter.com/F7acKCfw2N
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Here’s an overall chart for diversity in the UK TV industrypic.twitter.com/hreGufM5MJ
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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
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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)pic.twitter.com/7HMlqEk2gu
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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.https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/regional-ethnic-diversity/latest …
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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
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The full report is here https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/166807/Diversity-in-TV-2019.pdf …
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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 reasonpic.twitter.com/jzYIoXTwsK
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Here’s the makeup of Netflix US - not Netflix UK (Ofcom can’t regulate them as they’re based in the Netherlands)pic.twitter.com/gZddFI3WJj
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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 …http://www.mamayouth.org.uk.php56-30.ord1-1.websitetestlink.com/training/whats-up-tv-training …Show this thread -
Do you care about diversity in the UK TV industry?

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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


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