BBC failing to hit diversity targets
The BBC has failed to meet most of its own targets for increasing the diversity of its workplace, according to the UK pubcaster’s annual report.
Women made up 48.6% of all staff as of March 31, which fell short of the BBC’s aim set out in its diversity and inclusion strategy 2016-2020 to have women fill 50% of available positions.
Leadership roles were also overrepresented by men, with women holding 46.1% of senior jobs, rather than the broadcaster’s target of 50%.
Similarly, the BBC did not hit its quota for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff in leadership roles. BAME representation in senior positions was 13% in December, compared with 15% outlined in the strategy.
However, the broadcaster did reach its target for a 15% BAME workforce by the end of last year, with BAME people in 15.9% of jobs.
Since then, the BBC has published a new diversity and inclusion plan for 2021-2023, which has revised targets.
Under this new strategy, BAME people should make up 20% of all staff and of leadership, but as of March 31, they were only 15.9% and 12.6% respectively.
BAME people also counted for just 10.4% of off-screen talent between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, while the on-screen talent figure was 26.5%.
“The Creative Diversity Network’s Diamond system obtains consistent diversity data on programmes commissioned across the UK broadcasting industry. In 2020, this data showed that the BBC was the best broadcaster for on-screen representation – but still had work to do to be representative off-screen,” the annual report said.
It added that the BBC has a £2m (US$2.76m) diverse talent development fund which supported a BAME crew for Steven McQueen’s film series Small Axe.
Meanwhile, transgender representation stood at 0.3% and 0.5% off- and on- screen respectively, and people with disabilities made up 7% of off-screen talent and 8.2% of on-screen roles.
Elsewhere, the BBC reported that it lost 700,000 licence fee payers in the past year, with the number falling from 25.5 million to 24.8 million by March 31.
But despite the falling numbers of licence fee payers, the pubcaster did report an increase in licence fee income from £3.52bn in 2020 to £3.75bn this year.
In more positive news for the BBC, its VoD service, iPlayer, reported record viewing figures, attracting 6.1 billion streams this year, up 28% from last year’s 4.8 billion.
In addition, iPlayer broke its own record for the most weekly and daily streams, recording 163 million between January 4 and 10 and 24.1 million on May 10 last year.
More young people, aged under 35, have also signed in to the platform over the past year, rising from 2.9 million last year to 3.2 million.
The iPlayer accounts for 37% of BBC TV viewing among people aged 16-34, further indicating that the service is engaging younger people, which is one of the BBC’s missions.
This year the service has continued to break records, with January to March seeing iPlayer’s best quarter, with more than 1.7 billion programmes streamed. The most viewed show in 2021 on the platform was crime drama Line of Duty’s sixth season, which saw 8.4 million streams.
Joining iPlayer’s success is BBC Studios, the pubcaster’s commercial arm. According to the report, it is “on track” to meet its £1.2bn revenue target by 2021/22 and the BBC has set a further target of £1.5bn in revenue over the five years from 2022/23.
Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, said: “I have been clear that the goal of a successful BBC is not to see off the big global players. Too often in the past we have tried to cope with increasing competition by making more and spreading ourselves too thinly. Instead, our role is to offer exceptional value to all audiences by producing more differentiated, ‘must-have’ content they feel is for them.”
