Black, Asian and minority ethnic voices are on the verge of being “shut out” of the TV industry due to a “shocking and concerning” lack of BAME directors in UK television.
New research has found that BAME people directed just 1.5% of mainstream TV shows broadcast between 2011 and 2013, despite accounting for 3.5% of all directors and BAME 14% of the UK population.
The lack of representation has also worsened in recent years, with the number of shows made by BAME directors falling 20% from the beginning of 2011 to 2013, according to a report by Directors UK.
The Adjusting the Colour Balance report looked at a sample of more than 55,000 episodes across 546 programmes made by the UK’s top nine production companies, as well as the in-house production arms of the BBC and ITV, which were broadcast during 2011, 2012 or 2013.
There was a large disparity between genres, with almost 2.5% of factual and drama programmes being made by BAME directors, compared to 0.18% of comedy and 0.06% of entertainment and multi-camera shows. However, the drama figures were inflated by the more than 12% of single drama productions made by BAME directors, which was almost entirely down to Channel 4’s emerging talent strand Coming Up.
The report also found that within those genres, there were some categories with not a single BAME director, including period dramas, chat shows, reality TV, and children’s comedy and entertainment.
The findings come amid mounting pressure on the TV industry to improve diversity, with prominent figures such as Lenny Henry calling for initiatives that include quotas to help increase the opportunities on offer to BAME people in TV.
The report suggests a number of steps that could be taken to improve diversity among directors, including clear diversity targets, better recruitment transparency, and promoting role models to provide encouragement for aspiring BAME directors.
Directors UK diversity chair Menhaj Huda said: “Our report findings are both shocking and concerning. It reveals what many of us in the industry have been aware of for some time, but now we have hard evidence to show just how serious the lack of diversity in television really is for directors.
“Sustaining a career for any director is difficult enough as it is, but when the perception of BAME directors is that they are less able, less experienced and less competent, then it becomes virtually impossible, regardless of talent. Our report shows that getting work in television is inaccessible for far too many and there is a failure to provide any kind of support for BAME talent.”
