BAFTA announces rules to increase diversity of nominees and introduces ‘unconscious bias training’

The Bafta TV awards will introduce a raft of measures inlcuding ‘unconscious bias training’ to address a lack of diversity in the television awards. 

Other measures include increasing the number of nominees in current performance categories and launching a new award category for daytime television.

The changes are part of a slew of new rules and guidelines to be introduced following a review.

The Bafta announcement come as new research found ethnic minorities are overrepresented as actors and presenters on British television but continue to be sidelined off screen. 

Bafta hope the measures, which include increasing nominees in the performance categories to six, up from four, will better represent the industry. 

The new daytime award will also recognise the important role that daytime programming plays in the lives of viewers and in providing a pipeline for new and underrepresented talent.

Hannah Wyatt, chair of Bafta’s television committee, said: ‘We are expanding the number of nominees for the performance categories and that is largely a reflection of the huge volume of fantastic drama that is being made by British creatives at the moment.

‘We have had year-on-year increases in the number of entries and so it seemed to make sense to reflect that by allowing more nominees, which also hopefully will reflect more diversity and a wider range of people who are coming through the industry.’

She added: ‘We had a really good year this year, I think if you look at what happened in the last lot of awards we were up by about 22% in our diversity in the performance categories and that’s fantastic.

‘I think we want to ensure we keep that going, this is one of the measures.

‘We are bringing in other things as well, in terms of unconscious bias training, asking broadcasters to consider diverse entries in the categories where they are entering a performance, it’s part of a range of things we want to do.

‘It’s not targeting anything specifically, a lot of it is about reflecting the fact that we just had lots of entrants, but of course it would be fantastic if that is also part of what we managed to achieve.’

The new criteria follows the Bafta 2020 Review, which was introduced to address a lack of diversity across Bafta’s different awards.

The 2020 television awards took place behind closed doors, with winners accepting their awards virtually.

The film ceremony has also announced a raft of changes including expanding the nominations for director, actor and actress from five to six, while the outstanding British film category will be expanded from six to 10 nominations to increase the focus on British work.

The TV awards will also formally introduce the BFI Diversity Standards, following a pilot in 2020, using a phased approach to implementation.

The total number of nominees in all non-performance categories will remain as four, however the number of named nominees or production company representatives for each entry will increase from four to six.

The eligibility window for the soap and continuing drama category has been extended to the end of January 2021 for next year’s ceremony, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, while the sport and live events categories will be merged for the 2021 awards, and the minimum percentage of live reduced from 70% to 51%.

It has already been announced that Bafta will introduce mandatory conscious voting training for all members.

The British Academy Television Craft Awards will take place on May 24 2021, while the Television Awards will be on June 6.

BAME people ‘are over-represented on TV’: Ethnic minorities make up 22% of actors and presenters while only representing 12% of British population, research shows

By Jack Wright for MailOnline

Ethnic minorities are overrepresented as actors and presenters on British television but continue to be sidelined off screen, new research suggests.

People from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds accounted for more than 22 per cent of all on-screen TV contributions last year, while representing just 12.8 per cent of the UK population.

But over the past three years, on-screen contributions by South Asian ethnic groups have fallen from 7.1 per cent to 5.6 per cent.

Off-screen, the overall proportion of contributions made by all BAME groups to UK programmes has also increased over the last three years from 9.7 per cent to 12.3 per cent.

However, this remains slightly below the UK BAME population (12.8 per cent) and well below the BAME population of London (40.2 per cent), where a high proportion of TV programmes are made.

The figures are culled from a deep-dive into BAME data collected by the Creative Diversity Network’s diversity monitoring and reporting system, used by all of the UK’s main broadcasters.

It is based on 30,000 survey responses from workers in the UK television industry, and comes after demands for TV representation intensified in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

In its report, the CDN, whose members include BBC, Sky, ITV and Channel 4, said the figures show ‘there is still a lack of racial and ethnic diversity in our industry’.

It said that ‘inclusion and equality are not yet ‘baked’ into the industry’s ways of working’ and ‘need to be in order for diversity to flourish’. 

According to the CDN’s Race and Ethnic Diversity report, people from mixed ethnic groups are most strongly represented in Diamond TV programmes across all genres, making over a third of all BAME contributions both on and off-screen.

Though people who identify with Asian ethnic groups make around 30 per cent of BAME programme contributions, this is comparatively low given that Asian ethnic groups account for more than half of the country’s BAME population.

Off-screen, people who identify with Asian ethnic groups are particularly under-represented across all genres, and those from Black and Other ethnic groups are under-represented across the majority of genres.

On-screen, people who identify as Black and Mixed are comparatively well represented. However, people from Asian groups are under-represented across most genres, with the exception of Children’s and Drama programmes.

The report found that people from BAME groups are making fewer contributions in a senior production role across most genres. 

Overall, people who identify with Black and Mixed ethnic groups are less well represented in senior production roles compared to their representation in other roles, particularly junior and entry level roles.

Although people who identify as South Asian are under-represented off-screen, they are more likely to be contributing in a senior role (4.3 per cent of senior role contributions, and 2.2 per cent of non-senior contributions).

The report also found there is a lack of ethnic diversity across the majority of senior production roles: BAME contributions account for less than 10 per cent of the contributions made in the role of Production Executive (2.4 per cent), Series Producer (4.4 per cent), Head of Production (8.3 per cent) and Production Manager (9.3 per cent). 

The exception is Commissioning, where some progress appears to have been made with regards to ethnic diversity: 16.5 per cent of Commissioning Editor contributions were made by someone who identified with a BAME group. 

Meanwhile, there is a ‘considerable lack of diversity’ in technical and craft roles across UK TV production, with fewer than 5 per cent of programme contributions in Costume and Wardrobe, Hair and Make-Up and Set Design are by those from a BAME group.

Fewer than 10 per cent of programme contributions in Sound and Post Production are made by people who identify with a BAME group.

Camera is the only craft and technical area where BAME contributions (12.5 per cent) are close to the UK BAME population (12.8 per cent). There are so few BAME contributions being made in Lighting and Set Crafts, that the CDN is unable to publish the data on these departments.

In its report, the CDN recommended: ‘As policies, processes and technologies evolve in broadcasting and production, a diversity lens needs to be brought to every table in order to ensure all our activity and future ambitions are proactively supporting a more inclusive workforce, rather than maintaining the status quo or actively widening the diversity gap further.’

CDN boss Deborah Williams said: ‘If we are to end 2020 with a collective wisdom gained from our various experiences, then I hope that this report can make a significant contribution.

‘In some respects, the findings of our analysis are startling, even shocking; but at the same time, its findings are not entirely new – they are now just evidenced. Through Diamond’s long-term monitoring we will continue to provide the industry with the evidence it needs to improve and ensure diversity.

‘It is clear that there is so much more work to be done, and it is vital that we now find ways to bring together all of the conversations, debates, data and evidence to build on our foundation stones.

‘Covid-19, Brexit and a rapidly evolving industry have forced change and mean we have to adapt to future proof our industry.

‘In so doing we will find ourselves much better placed to maintain our position as world leaders in content creation, content creators and intellectual property.’