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“THETIMETOACTIS
“THETIMETOACTIS
The Cultural Diversity Network, launched at Westminster recently, is an industry-wide, industry-led body which is committed to changing the face of British Television. Membership includes BBC, ITV Network, Carlton Group, Granada Media, GM TV, Channel 4, Channel 5, BSkyB and ITN. Adding their weight to the initiative were a number of industry bodies and regulators including BAFTA, ITC, BSC, PACT and RTS.
ADAPT AND CHANGE
One of the interesting things about working in television is that it’s one of the few industries where cultural diversity is gener-
ally accepted to be a good thing. In fact in my 20 years in the industry, I’ve never heard anyone in the industry argue against it. Given this, isn’t it incredible we’ve not made greater progress towards achieving real multi- culturalism on-air and in the produc- tion community?
It’s not that we haven’t made ANY progress. British television is much more culturally diverse than it was ten years ago, even five years ago. But we know we’ve not gone anywhere near far enough or fast enough. However, British society faces a demographic revolution, which means the industry as a whole, has to get its act in order.
Currently ethnic minorities account for 5.5% of the UK popula- tion as a whole, but they account for 10% of the under 30’s and 12% of the under 5’s. Conservative projections predict 40% of the under 25’s in London will be black, Asian and/or mixed race within 10 years.
At the same time we know Black and Asian viewers are moving away from terrestrial television faster than any other sub-demographic in our audience. They are the early adopters of cable and satellite, with around 12 dedicated channels now providing Asian language news, film and music programming and a great deal of activity underway to establish a black/urban channel.
So, the fastest growing section of the audience is also switching away from terrestrial television in record numbers. Whether you’re a commercial broadcaster or funded by the licence fee we’re faced with a stark choice - either we adapt what we do, or we will become increasingly irrelevant.
Just to show you that we do mean business these are five of the key objectives we’ve all now signed up to as a group:
• Set targets for ethnic minority employment, including senior exec- utive levels.
• Establish a database of ethnic minority talent.
• Modernise the portrayal of ethnic minorities in mainstream program- ming.
• Share non-commercially sensitive research on cultural diversity.
• Allow the DCMS to audit and mon- itor progress of key objectives of the CDN.
We realise we need to achieve a step change in our approach to this issue. We know these action plans, pulled together to form our Manifesto 2000, represent the most concerted push for racial equality in the history of British television – on screen, off screen, in the edit suite and the board room. We believe we now have an agenda, shared across the industry that will change the face of British television.
CLIVE JONES, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF CARLTON TV AND CHAIRMAN OF CDN NETWORK