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

A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION
as “Flash-in-the-Pan initiatives which are
announced with a great flourish but which
fail to deliver structural change.” 332 Let us
be clear: additional money for diversity is a
positive sign but the BBC’s £3.5 million spend
in 2014 that was dedicated to increasing
diverse employment constituted less than
0.1% of the BBC’s overall budget. Similarly,
targets are entirely welcome and a very
useful focus for organisations seeking to
highlight the need for change but they are
rarely successful by themselves, can be easily
manipulated and are painfully slow in their
realisation. The fact that there have been,
according to Lenny Henry, some 29 target-led
diversity initiatives adopted by the BBC in the
last 15 years, bears witness to this. 333
The BBC has now launched its 30th such
initiative promising to ensure that, by
2020, half of its workforce and its screen
time will be composed of women, 8% of
disabled and LGBT people and 15% of BAME
individuals. 334 Channel 4 have announced
similar targets (actually more ambitious in
terms of BAME figures) and have announced
‘commissioning diversity guidelines’ which
require independent production companies
to demonstrate their commitment to diversity
both on- and off-screen. 335
It is not clear to us, however, how these
targets, no matter how necessary they are,
will overcome the structural barriers that have
undermined diverse employment in television
up to this point (and which we discuss further
in Chapter 11): the employment networks
that favour friends and contacts, the reliance
on unpaid interns and the reluctance of
commissioners to take risks. Small steps in
the right direction will do little to counter the
pressures pushing in an opposite direction.
So, for example, while there are a number
of training schemes aimed at entry level
positions, this can simply reinforce the notion
that it’s the talent that is the problem and not
the institutions themselves. “Training schemes
and initiatives”, argues Simone Pennant of
diversity campaigners the TV Collective,
“inadvertently create the perception that
the reason why Black, Asian and ethnic
minority talent are leaving the industry or
not striving in their careers is because they
are ‘not good enough’ for existing roles.” 336
According to Lenny Henry: “When there
aren’t enough programmes from Scotland we
don’t give the Scots more training. We place
more commissioners up there to find good
Scottish programme makers to make decent
programmes. Let’s do the same to ensure
BAME representation.” 337
We believe that Lenny Henry is right to argue
that “systemic failures” have led to a lack
of diversity in the industry and we believe,
therefore, that “systemic” solutions are
required alongside the provision of targets
and training schemes.
This takes us back to the importance of
the principle of quality that we discussed
in Chapter 2: that high quality minority
representations require conditions that
support innovation, experiment, risk-taking
and the right to fail, conditions that arguably
undersupplied in the current PSM ecology.
332
Campaign for Broadcasting Equality, submission to the Inquiry.
333
BBC News, ‘Lenny Henry criticises BBC chief’s diversity plans’, June 24, 2014.
334
BBC, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, April 2016, p. 22
335
Channel 4, 360° Diversity Charter –One Year On, 2016.
336
Simone Pennant, TV Collective, submission to the Inquiry.
337
Lenny Henry, comments at ‘Are you being heard?’ Inquiry event, Goldsmiths, University of London, March 22, 2016.
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