A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD
41% of non-white audiences and a mere
32% of black audiences are happy with how
the BBC represents them. 304 Just consider
the implications for the BBC that less than
one-third of black audiences report that
they are satisfied with Britain’s main public
service broadcaster. In fact while public
service television channels (including their
portfolio channels) account for some 73%
of the viewing of white audiences, the figure
drops to a mere 53% for black, Asian and
minority ethnic (BAME) audiences. 305 Overall
satisfaction levels may look impressive but
there are serious fissures behind the glossy
headline figures.
This unevenness in satisfaction levels spills
over into Ofcom’s figures for audience
perceptions of both visibility and portrayal
of a range of social and geographical
communities across all public service
television channels. For example, while 42%
of viewers in Northern Ireland think that
there are too few people from Northern
Ireland on TV, a mere 4% of Londoners think
there are too few Londoners on TV; while
only 6% of Londoners think they are shown
in a bad light, some 20% of those from the
North of England think they are represented
negatively; similarly, while a mere 8% of men
aged 55 and above think there are too few
of them on TV, the number rises to 27% of
women who think that there should be more
older women on our screens. Finally, while
there is a broad consensus among both
the general viewing population and those
viewers with disabilities that there are too
few disabled people on TV there is no such
agreement about the representation of black
ethnic groups where 16% of all PSB viewers
feel they are portrayed negatively in contrast
“PUBLIC SERVICE
TELEVISION, WE
BELIEVE, HAS A CRUCIAL
ROLE IN DELIVERING
BOTH SURPRISES AND
CERTAINTIES TO A
CURIOUS (AND DIVERSE)
POPULATION.”
with the 51% of black respondents who felt
they were shown either “fairly” or “very”
negatively. 306
It is true that all minority groups are
naturally more likely to want both to
increase their visibility and to draw attention
to the frequency and scale of negative
representations. Who, after all, wants to feel
either marginalised or caricatured? The more
important point, however, is that if sections
of a viewing public that is meant to be at the
heart of public service broadcasting do not
see themselves on screen or do not recognise
the representations that do exist as valid,
then broadcasters have a credibility problem
they need to address. As the equality
campaign Creative Access put it to us, the
media “cannot reflect society if society is not
reflected in the media” and they warned of
the consequences for broadcasting if it does
not “represent visually the society that pays
its bills”. 307 The slogan ‘No Taxation without
Representation’ may have originated in the
run-up to the American Revolution in the 18th
century but 21st century broadcasters have
304
Ibid., pp. 31, 33.
305
Channel 4, Annual Report 2015, p. 36.
306
Ofcom, PSB Diversity Research Summary, June 2015, pp. 7,9, 15, 20, 34.
307
Creative Access, submission to the Inquiry.
105