BBC Vows to Make Diversity ‘Absolute Priority’ — Else Television Industry Faces Collapse

People walk outside the BBC headquarters in Portland Place, London on July 2, 2020. - The
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Virginia Hale

The BBC must make so-called diversity its “absolute priority” or else the UK television industry will collapse, the broadcaster has claimed.

BBC Director of Content Charlotte Moore told the Edinburgh TV Festival that “diversity – both on-screen and off-screen – I don’t think has ever been more important to the BBC.”

“If we do not reflect the nation that we are making our programmes for, and I really do think that’s within the industry as well as on-screen, then I think we will have failed,” she said

Unless the corporation makes “diversity an absolute priority”, it will not be able “to meet the challenges of the next few years”, Moore claimed, adding: “To be honest, if we don’t do it, I literally don’t think the television industry in this country will survive.”

Illustrating the BBC’s efforts to push more so-called diversity, Moore listed a number of recent dramas in which white people are heavily underrepresented including I May Destroy You, Noughts + Crosses, A Suitable Boy, and Small Axe, according to the Radio Times.

“These shows have taken a long time to reach the screen but I hope they show the real commitment and direction of travel,” she said, before pointing to the BBC’s new quota promise to ensure people from “diverse” communities comprise at least 20 per cent of off-screen employees.

Moore continued: “Really the big change there isn’t just the money that we have committed because we probably have spent that sort of money on shows that are about diverse issues. It’s that target behind the camera, the 20 per cent behind the camera, that I hope really will set a seismic change.”

While Moore, who has worked at the BBC since 2006, insists that diversity means reflecting the demographics of the nation, LGBT people and ethnic minorities are already hugely overrepresented in the UK television industry, as Breitbart London has previously reported.

A major survey published earlier this year revealed that 23 per cent of people who appear on-screen are BAME (black and minority ethnic) compared to their estimated 14 per cent share of the general population.

A confidential staff survey in 2018, meanwhile, found that LGBT workers were overrepresented by about five times at the BBC.

While it praised the “very, very high” proportion of LGBT staff, which included 417 transgender people, the corporation claimed that there was more to be done, vowing to work to combat “heteronormative culture” at the BBC workplace.

There were calls to boycott and defund the BBC earlier this week after the broadcaster revealed it would be airing orchestral versions of Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory at Last Night of the Proms.

The move came after Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists and campaigners alleged that the lyrics to the popular, patriotic songs were “racist”.

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