Study: TV lags on inclusivity

Execs, behind-the-camera staff still likely to be white, male

LOS ANGELES — When Zendaya won last month’s Emmy Award for top drama series actress, her triumph seemed to underscore the TV industry’s progress toward inclusivity.

The “Euphoria” star became the second Black winner in the category in five years, following Viola Davis’ drought-ending win for “How to Get Away with Murder” in 2015.

But such success contrasts with the lag in diversity in behind-the-camera jobs and among TV executives as measured by the yardsticks of race and sex, according to a University of California, Los Angeles, study released Thursday.

“There has been a lot of progress for women and people of color in front of the camera,” Darnell Hunt, dean of the school’s social sciences division and the study’s co-author, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, there has not been the same level of progress behind the camera.”

As of September, the study found that whites held 92% of chairman and CEO positions at TV networks and studios, with men filling 68% of those posts. Among senior executives, 84% were white and 60% were male. In 2015, the executive suites were 96% white and 71% male, which represents what Hunt calls “minimal change.”

That’s especially telling given the racial reckoning fanned by the police-connected deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans, Hunt said. While media corporations have voiced support for the Black Lives Matter movement, their actions have failed to match their words, Hunt said in an interview.

This is despite the growing market share represented by Black, Hispanic and other minority consumers as together they edge toward replacing whites as America’s majority, Hunt said Wednesday. According to the U.S. Census, the country in 2019 was 60% white and 40% Black and other minorities, with the latter figure projected to reach 53% by 2050.

“Hollywood has been trying to figure out how to acknowledge the relationship between diversity and the bottom line without fundamentally changing the way they do business,” he said. “If they were serious about reading the way the wind is blowing and where the market is going,” more executives reflecting that would be hired.

“But they haven’t done that,” he said, acknowledging a notable exception in the Black executive Channing Dungey, who at ABC became the president of a major broadcast network, jumped to Netflix and this week was named chairman of the Warner Bros. Television Group.

Inclusivity also lags for those in offices outside the C-suite. In the 2018-19 season, nonwhites were, on average, 24% of credited writers and 22% of directors for all broadcast, cable and streaming episodes.