Historian David Olusoga has warned that the television industry “deludes” young working-class people if it doesn’t tell them that having money and parents who live in London will help them succeed in it.
Speaking as part of an Edinburgh TV Festival panel on class in the television industry, the writer and broadcaster said despite having seen itself as a progressive industry, television was actually the “worst” sector for inclusion and diversity.
Chairwoman Sam McAlister kicked off the discussion by talking about how few people from working-class backgrounds currently worked in the television industry.
She pointed to a recent stat showing that working class people now make up just 8% of people working in television, which, she said, was “the lowest it’s been for 10 years now.”
Professor Olusoga, who fronted the programmes A House Through Time and Our NHS during his more than 20 years in the industry, said that “deep down, we’ve normalised things which are abnormal” when compared with wider society.
He continued: “We’ve created a culture that has normalised people from a small cohort of the population. That is what a TV producer, executive, or researcher looks like and sounds like; it has a stereotype.”
He said the industry’s silence around the issue risked deluding young working-class people who are looking to work in it.
“I do think we need to be honest, because at the moment, when we’re asked what attributes people need to succeed in this industry, we talk about personal character: you need to be resilient, you need to be creative, you need to be able to work in teams,” he said.
“We never say it’s good if your parents live in London, or it’s great if you’ve got some money from a trust fund in the bank.
“And those things are just as true as the character attributes that we like to do.
“And the real danger is that we delude working-class young people into thinking that those attributes matter and everything else doesn’t. And I think a lot of young people get trapped.”
Other panellists commented on the barriers faced by working-class people trying to get into the industry, with comedian Lucy Beaumont triggering laughter when she asked: “Why aren’t TV jobs advertised on TV? Why is it so secretive?”
Professor Olusoga also pointed out the dangers of having a TV industry that wasn’t representative of the country it was broadcasting to.
“I think the industry is dangerously susceptible to stereotypes because of the lack of integration and socioeconomic diversity in the industry,” he said.
He gave the example of the way working-class people were stereotyped as intolerant, or as having particular views on immigration and Brexit.
Fellow panellist Tom McDonald of National Geographic echoed this, describing being in meetings during his career where people talked about working-class people “as though they were sort of aliens from outer space”.
He said: “I did sit in meetings at the BBC where we talked about the ‘C2D’ audience, which is the working class audience.
“And often I heard people talking about that audience as though they were sort of aliens from outer space. It was literally ‘what do CTD people watch?’
“And as somebody, obviously, was originally from the north, I would also hear funny conversations where people would go ‘what do northern people do?’”
Mr McDonald also pointed out that a number of television professionals he had worked with took pride in the fact they didn’t actually own a television, which he said was “deranged”.
Professor Olusoga concluded that the problem stemmed from bias, whether conscious or unconscious, on the part of people in positions of power in the industry, and said this had to be challenged.
“I think the fundamental problem is there were a great many people in positions of power in this industry who, subconsciously or consciously, don’t believe that people who aren’t like them can actually make progress,” he said.
“And when they talk about ‘a safe pair of hands’, when they use the phrase ‘a London producer’, what they really are expressing, even without knowing it, is a belief that its only people like them that can do it.”
