British TV's Working-Class Problem: Nearly A Quarter Of Top Execs Went To Private School, Report Finds
Nearly a quarter (22%) of top execs in the UK TV industry went to private school, according to research sparked by Sherwood creator James Graham's MacTaggart lecture.
The figure is triple that of the roughly 7.5% of people in the country who went to a fee-paying school and is a stark reminder of the inequalities in British TV, a traditionally middle-class field.
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The report titled Let's Talk About Class: Appealing to the UK's largest TV audience was commissioned after Graham's Edinburgh TV Festival MacTaggart lecture during which he argued passionately for greater working-class representation in the British TV industry. At the time, research had found just 8% of people working in television were from a working-class background, which was a 12-year low despite multiple recent interventions to try and improve the situation. The Let's Talk About Class report was less damning with its overall numbers, finding that 29% of those in TV come from a working-class background compared to the 39% across the UK. A person's class background was defined by the occupation of their main household earner when they were a teenager.
Today's report from a class and social equality working group including broadcaster Carol Vorderman, presenter David Olusoga and Banijay UK Boss Patrick Holland, analyzed people in leadership roles across 21 of the UK's major broadcasters, streamers and large production companies. The report's compilers asked for data about the education background of senior level staff while speaking with experts and academics for anecdotal and evidence-based insight.
The report argues that working class audiences are TV's largest potential audience, yet they feel underserved and their lives either represented by outdated tropes or are barely represented at all. However, with the current crisis facing the TV industry as commissioning slows down, broader diversity commitments are being thrown into chaos, it says, adding that there is a 'growing concern that the current crisis will make the industry less diverse and only accessible to a small group with economic and cultural advantage.'
The report gave best in class examples of recent shows such as ITV's Coronation Street and new BBC comedy-drama Just Act Normal. It said the next step is to 'provide guidance on what being a Class Confident organisation in the TV industry looks like.'
Gemma Bradshaw, Impact Director of the Edinburgh Festival TV Foundation, said: 'Since starting the class and social equality working group, we have heard many difficult and painful stories about the hurdles in people's TV careers that were all the bigger because of their class background. The aim of the report is to move the conversation about class up the agenda, making it business critical and provide companies with the inspiration to move away from talking about people in terms of their 'cultural fit' or 'risk' and start talking about what they bring.'
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