Diamond Data 6th Cut: why have we not made better progress?

The results are in… and frankly they could be better.

Six years on, the sad fact is that we’ve made slow progress as a sector when it comes to diversity and representation - especially in off-screen jobs.

Despite a raft of schemes, initiatives and pledges from broadcasters and indies over the past decade to try to create a much more inclusive and representative workforce, we’ve not shifted the dial much when it comes to ethnicity, disability and women in senior roles.

So what’s going on?

There’s a range of reasons why progress might have stalled - we just lived through a pandemic - for example. The fact that it can sometimes take 3-5 years to see the impact of interventions and for new workplace cultures to embed might be another.

But before we dig deeper, it’s worth revisiting what Diamond was set up to do.

Diamond is the UK TV industry’s official data monitoring initiative to track the make-up of our workforce. We’re one of the first sectors to do this type of monitoring and analysis in depth and at scale, so in many ways this is a pioneering, brilliant initiative that we should be proud of, even if the data we get back isn’t as positive as we would hope.

Contributions to Diamond represent roughly a third of all TV programmes commissioned by the main UK broadcasters (Diamond doesn’t cover film or digital). So the data doesn’t capture every piece of content made in the UK, but it is the largest data set that we have to work with.

The Diamond 6th Cut report tracks the levels of representation for various protected characteristics and social groups from 2021 to 2022. These include ethnicity, people who identify as LGB; gender (including transgender); people over 50 and disabled people.

Though gradually becoming more of an area of focus for broadcasters, data on socio-economic background is not being collected at present. We’re keen to see this change as we know supporting talent from less advantaged socio-economic groups is a priority for so many of the indies we work with, who operate in cities and regions where there is huge socioeconomic inequality. This is particularly important during the cost of living crisis and downturn in commissioning that we are currently operating under.

The good news from Diamond is there are some areas of improvement. The proportion of contributions made by disabled people and those over-50 has been increasing (albeit slowly) year on year, off-screen.

The proportion of contributions made by people who identify as transgender has also slightly increased in each of the last three years.

Overall, the representation of people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual is strong, compared to population figures, as is the representation of Global Ethnic Majority (GEM) groups on-screen; especially Black and Mixed Ethnicity groups.

However as we look deeper at the data - we see some trends which paint a picture of where progression and retention of great talent is stalling.

Contributions from GEM groups are disproportionately low in senior, decision making roles, but over-represented, proportionately speaking, where people can obviously see them on-screen.

Representation within these groups is also not spread evenly.

For example, representation of South Asian people is not only considerably lower than other ethnicities in all areas of production, but is in fact in decline compared to previous years.

Over half of LGB contributions both on and off screen are from gay men - with far smaller numbers from lesbian and bisexual people. In senior roles, where people who identify as LGB make-up 19.6% of all roles, gay men make up almost three quarters of that at 14.6% of the total.

Disability is still on red alert. Yes, there have been some small gains the last four years, but if you consider that almost a quarter of the UK working age population is disabled, representation on-screen (8.2%) and off screen (6.5%) is still woefully low.

The growth in off-screen roles held by disabled people relates mostly to non-senior roles, so on a positive note, this may mean we start to see the dial shift over the next 3-5 years, with this talent being nurtured through the pipeline to hold more senior roles in the future.

One of the most alarming findings from the 6th Cut was that females are actually making fewer contributions off-screen than they were four years ago. There’s a decline in the contributions made by females in senior roles – from 50.4% in 2018-19 to 45.4% in 2021-22.

The sharpest decline in contributions coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic and the first UK lockdown which occurred during the 2019-20 reporting period.

Speaking at Be You festival in July, TV Executive and Executive Chair of the Edinburgh TV Festival Fatima Salaria said that 95% of applications to their ‘ReConnect’ initiative (a new scheme for people who have been away from the TV industry) were from women over 40. The vast majority of those left the industry to start families or take up primary carer duties.

In an industry that’s facing a skills shortage, why isn’t there a more joined up approach to supporting experienced and skilled talent back into the fold?

The lack of progress in senior roles for people from Global Ethnic Majority and Disabled groups also forces us to ask difficult questions about the efficacy and impact of our diversity initiatives to date.

Angela Ferreria, MD at Douglas Road Productions also speaking at Be You Festival made the point that entry level schemes are only of any use if there's a chance for progression and development during and after.

It's a broken system if we pour all our money and effort into bringing fresh talent in, but we haven’t thought about the onward steps and opportunities available to them once the scheme is over.

Broadcasters and production companies have begun to introduce mid-level and senior-level development schemes - so there is some movement here. But who gets to access these schemes, and be contacted about the top jobs - needs to evolve too if we’re to have true representation at senior level.

As an industry, we have to get over our ‘little black book’ hiring. The best person for the job might not be the same person you’ve worked with a million times. Of course, there comes a degree of reliability and a sort of guarantee when you categorically know someone can do the job - but very few people are truly a ‘risk’ once their name is up for consideration. Budget lines for mentoring and training are not a nice to have but a must have if we are to bring up the next generation of TV leaders who reflect all of our audiences. There has to come a point where efficiency meets the necessity to conserve TV’s future.

Commissioners and Execs need to be as clued up and engaged in this work as the talent managers and creative diversity teams that support their programmes. If it doesn’t come from the top down - our ability to move the dial with Diamond will always be capped.

Ground up is also critical. There are some great initiatives out there from organisations really focusing on finding solutions to under-representation. ScreenSkills for one, who run countless schemes, initiatives and online training courses - including the development-focused ‘Leaders of Tomorrow’ programme.

And at Gritty Talent we are working tirelessly to address under-representation in the TV industry. Our Producer Pathways initiative (delivered for ScreenSkills last year) took 75 AP’s and early stage producers from under-represented groups, and helped them hone their skills, particularly in people management and soft skills, in order to take on promotions and heavier weight gigs.

We know as much as anyone that there is no overnight, one-trick-fix for under-representation, but the groundwork is and has been laid.

Now we need to unite as one industrial force and push the machine forward; led specifically by those with the power to create change - not with them tailing behind, hoping for the best while reading the next data cut.