Diamond Data 7th Cut: Triumphs & Challenges for TV’s Workforce

The seventh edition of the Creative Diversity Network’s (CDN) Diamond Data report gives us glimpses of what has been achieved, though many of the issues detailed in previous years still persist.

Seven years ago, the Diamond project was launched as an invaluable way for the UK TV sector to track the make-up of its on and off-screen workforce. Diamond is not to be under-estimated in its value as the largest long-term data set we have, that captures how the industry represents the viewers who watch and pay for content.  

The TV industry has seen a huge amount of rapid change over the past few years. We survived the pandemic and even had a post-covid boom as production levels peaked. There have been innovative changes to the way we work; hybrid working, flexible working and remote editing are all now part of our language, which has to be a positive factor in creating a better workplace and promoting inclusivity. 

But to say we are living in turbulent and unsettling times is an understatement - the post-covid bubble burst with the economic downturn hitting the UK Creative sector hard. We won’t really know the full impact of the commissioning slump on Diversity within the industry till next year’s report as this year’s figures were collected between August 2022 and July 2023.

The data set is incredibly important to the work we do at Gritty through the Inclusion Accelerator - helping businesses and senior leaders understand Diversity within their own workforces, and developing truly inclusive work cultures and environments. 

Let’s start with something to celebrate! 

This year’s report broke records as over 1.27 million contributions were made. That’s an improvement on the figure of 1.17 million the previous year. But, overall the number of contributions made by the broadcasters who have a commitment to provide data (BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Paramount and UKTV), is disappointingly low, ranging from 3.2% up to 37.3%. 

We don’t know why this is, but we do need the broadcasters to be actively driving a higher response rate from the production companies who supply data, for us to get a more holistic picture of representation across the industry. 

So here are some headlines:

• Broadly speaking, contributions by Global Ethnic Majority groups (GEM); women; Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual (LGB); and people who are Transgender are either at or above comparable national figures.

• In terms of Gender identity, the proportion of off-screen contributions in non-senior roles by people who identify as transgender has more than tripled over the past four years. Off-screen contributions by people who identify as transgender exceed population estimates in Drama, and on-screen contributions exceed population estimates in three genres: Factual Entertainment, Entertainment and Drama.

• Representation of Disabled people across all off-screen role types remains well below workforce estimates (17%), with representation higher in non-senior (8.7%) than senior (6.7%) roles — a gap that has increased (by 1.1%) since 2019/20. Those that are Blind/Visually impaired and/or D/deaf/hard of hearing are least represented.

• Representation of Over-50s is showing some improvement year on year but they’re still below workforce estimates in all genres apart from Comedy and Drama. In certain areas we are seeing a decline since 2019/20, for example in the roles of Producers and Producer Director. Over-50s are most strongly represented in Costume and Wardrobe roles (51.6%), followed by Lighting (49.1%). Conversely over-50s representation in Camera, Commissioning, Production, and Post-Production roles fall below the workforce estimate.

• While on-screen representation of GEM groups is above the Census figure, we can’t say the same for GEM representation behind the camera. For example, off-screen representation amongst people from Asian backgrounds is less than half the national workforce figures. 

• When it comes to senior roles, representation across all groups is far from proportional and there’s only role, Commissioning Editor, in which GEM contributions exceed workforce estimates. Despite making up over half the total workforce (52.4%) women only make up 46.7% of senior roles (falling 0.4% over four years). Lesbians represent only 2.5% of senior roles whilst gay men make up 13.8%. Individuals from the Global Ethnic Majority are also poorly represented in at least six senior roles, including Directors, Heads of Production and Series Producers.

We know there’s a lot to fix and it’s an evolving process, but we do see that where there’s concerted effort there are some real wins. When it comes to screen-writing we’ve seen a doubling of contributions from Disabled and GEM writers over the past four years. We know there have been some targeted industry initiatives that have led to this, so maybe there’s a great model here that can be replicated in other production roles… the key will be the sharing of knowledge and good practice. That’s something we are acutely aware of through our work at Gritty. 

Take for example representation of Disabled people. We’re seeing a slow improvement year on year in the numbers of Disabled people in off-screen roles, but it’s way lower than census and national workforce estimates. There are great networks and sources of funding out there such as the TV Access Project and the Access to work schemes, driving change and supporting production companies to be more inclusive, but we also need a cultural shift to drive Disabled representation upwards. 

Gender is another area where we have a mixed bag of results. Women’s off-screen contributions have stayed broadly the same over the past four years but women’s representation has been falling in some senior roles and genres. The biggest drop was as Series Producer, with women making only 41.2% of contributions in 2022/23 compared to 55.4% in 2019/20. In senior roles, women are most strongly represented in the Head of Production, where they made 87.8% of contributions in 2022/23 — up from 84.4% in 2019/20.

So how does this all compare to last year’s results?

Progress is slow, particularly Disabled representation but we’ve seen growth in some senior roles in the last four years. The TV crisis has done damage to the pipeline and talent pool. We know that good, talented people are leaving the industry. That coupled with evolving viewer habits and falls in revenue for all broadcasters makes for challenging times, but we must keep EDI at the heart of our talent strategy - it’s not a separate issue, it’s intrinsically linked in an increasingly globalised, inclusive and integrated world.

This year’s report doesn’t provide any data on socio-economic diversity within the TV Industry workforce. It’s something we at Gritty are really keen to see, so we’re encouraged to hear that CDN are planning to capture socio-economic data in future reports.  

We also don’t have data on the geographical spread of talent across the Nations and Regions. Perhaps we now have more impetus to put that higher up on the agenda if we are to pay heed to Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy’s recent RTS Speech calling out a London-centric power base.

Nandy said “For all of the efforts made by many of you in this room, it should shame us all that television is one of the most centralised and exclusive industries in the UK. Because who tells the story determines the story that is told.” 

We know there’s a lot of work to be done and that progress in terms of representation can feel frustratingly slow, but what we at Gritty notice in the work we do with production companies, is that there is a will; there is a desire to do better. 

Will we see better results in the 8th cut of Diamond next year? Watch this space…