Laying out data, Netflix touts its record on inclusivity
NEW YORK — Netflix on Friday released a study it commissioned from top academic researchers that shows the streaming giant is outpacing much of the film industry in the inclusivity of its original films and television series.
For years, academic studies have sought to capture inequalities in Hollywood and to hold studios accountable for making film and television that doesn't reflect American demographics. Those studies have generally relied on box-office or ratings data, often leaving out streaming platforms.
Netflix is trying a different route with both more transparency and more company control. The streamer commissioned the USC Ann en berg Inclusion Initiative to analyze its 2018 and 2019 original, live-action films and series, and presented the results to members of the press Thursday in a video present ati on. The results were, as Annenberg Inclusion Initiative founder and director Stacy L. Smith noted, far more positive than most Ann en berg reports, which have typically found only slow, sporadic improvement in the most popular films.
Netflix achieved roughly gender parity among lead characters in both film (48.4% of leads were female) and TV (54.5%) in 2018 and 2019. The study covers a total of 126 movies and 180 series. It does not include documentary or unscripted series or films, animation, international productions or content hosted on Netflix that it did not itself produce.
Netflix films were more likely to have women directing ( 23.1%), writing (25.2%) or producing (29%) than the top- grossing movies of 2018 and 2019. The correlation isn't a perfect one since Netflix releases both large and small budget films whereas the majority of top movies at the box office come from higherpriced productions.
In Net fl ix films and series, 31.9% of leads were f rom underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. That trails demographics( about 40% of the U.S. population according to census data) but Netflix showed marked improvement between 2018 ( 26.4%) and 2019 (37.3%).
“The point of this benchmark is to const ant ly be held accountable,” said Scott Stuber, vice president of global film. He said 2020 films like“Ma Rainey's Black Bottom ,”“Da 5 Bloods” and “Old Guard” show Netflix is still progressing. “But the whole auspice here is not to pat ourselves on the back. It's to say publicly here's what we're trying to accomplish and we're going to be held accountable,” he said.
The study will continue for the next six years. It's a level of transparency that traditional studios, and other streaming companies, haven' t before embraced. In a blog post Friday, Netflix chief executive Ted Sarandos said he hoped the move would spur wider change.
“By better understanding how we are doing, we hope to stimulate change not just at Net fl ix but across our industry more broadly,” wrote Sarandos.
Smith didn't respond to questions about Netflix's conditions for the study, or how much the company paid for it.
Last month, Net fl ix released its first inclusion report, showing that 47% of its global workforce is female and 46% of its U.S. employees are from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.
Not all of the findings were positive. Speaking characters in Net fl ix movies were disproportionately male( about 64%). Only 16.9% of film directors were from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, and the figures on film producers and screenwriters weren't any better.