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Creativity Diversity Inclusion Diversity Equal Opportunities Same Different Authenticity Culture Values. ITV has an important social responsibility to accurately reflect the lives and concerns of people living in the UK. Television affects the way we think about ourselves and society.
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CreativityDiversity InclusionDiversity Equal Opportunities SameDifferentAuthenticity Culture Values
ITV has an important social responsibility to accurately reflect the lives and concerns of people living in the UK. • Television affects the way we think about ourselves and society. • Delivered responsibly, it can be a uniting force, bringing together people of every age, religion, class and culture. • Television can help erode social barriers, giving people from different walks of life an understanding of how others live, and helping to develop a culture of tolerance.
Being inclusive means employing and portraying ethnic and cultural minorities, of both genders, people with disabilities and people who are gay, lesbian and bisexual. It helps us stay authentic and relevant to a 21st century United Kingdom, and supports our business goal to attract as wide an audience as possible. To achieve accurate representation of social diversity it is important that our workforce is diverse, and that we havean appropriately wide range of perspectives to draw on. Authenticity is a more accurate definition and does not carry any political connotation with regard to political correctness. Our production units have diversity champions within each genre who monitor portrayal patterns and provide diversity statistics to senior managers. They also use the feedback to influence their colleagues to improve diversity. Our approach
Diversity monitoring • Our automated portrayal system enables us to track the diversity of people appearing on ITV. • We collect and monitor diversity data through content analysis including representation of race, gender, disabled characters and those aged over 55 years from every programme. The data is then collated in quarterly portrayal reports. This system measures the diversity of both national and regional programmes on ITV1
Workplace profile 2005 2006 2007 Number of female employees(%) 47.6% 47.6% 49% Number of ethnic minority employees 6.4% 9.9% 8.4% Number of employees declaring a disability 2% 2% 2% Number of employees over 50 17% 15.1% 14%
Training & Awareness • Developing Senior Managers: Diversity and Inclusion • Appreciating Difference • Disability Awareness • Parents matter seminar • Deaf awareness/BSL training • Campaigns • Bespoke awareness • One to one • Team briefings • Scheme briefings • Breakfast/lunch sessions • Conferences
Developing Talent Enabling Talent 3 tier disability initiative including 6 month placements Foundation Placement Scheme 1 year pre-entry placement scheme for ethnic minorities Education & industry initiatives Employability Studio Taster days & talks
Portraying ethnic minorities • In 2001 the black and ethnic minority totals figure broadly matched the census figure of 7.9% • In 2007, black and ethnic minorities made up 13.6% of people on screen on ITV channels. This is a good overall level of representation and reflects the regional variations. On screen diversity 2005 2006 2007 BME 13.6 11.5 13.6 Disability 0.5 0.6 0.6 Gender women 39 43.1 41.4 Age over 55 13.7 9.6 11.4
Portraying people with disabilities • According to our portrayal monitoring 0.6%of people in ITV programmes have a disability evident to the viewer, compared to a UK population average of 15%. ITV’s figure is very low, but this is partly due to the challenges around capturing on-screen disability information – some disabilities such as diabetes, heart problems and other long term illnesses are not visible and people are reluctant to self declare. We recognise we need to improve the representation of disabled people as a priority and is an important focus for 2008. • We ran a Disability Awareness Road Show in November 2007, for people working in drama production. These were also attended by key influencers with disabilities from outside ITV. From this, teams were asked to come up with 2 initiatives for 2008. These workshops will be held for the other production genres in 2008.
Regional Strategies • Every news room has a Diversity Champion who sits on the Group Diversity Panel. The regional panels meet regularly and help come up with new ideas to improve diversity • The news rooms monitor the diversity of their output and review the results at monthly ‘information and ideas’ meetings. The portrayal figures reflect coverage in quantitative and qualitative terms to ascertain any negative and stereo typical representation. Now there is a greater emphasis on neutral or positive portrayal using case studies, contributors and vox pops to ensure a fair approach. • Each region has it’s own forums for members of the public from diverse communities to review the regional news output. They also use the forums to give feedback on ITV’s output more generally. • In 2007, 40 representatives from across the ITV regions attended the Enabling Talent conference in Birmingham, to update their knowledge and awareness, share best practice and to help them identify opportunities to be more inclusive both on and off screen.
Access services • As well as representing disability issues, it is important that people with disabilities have access to our programmes. We are required by Ofcom to provide specified levels of access services to deaf and blind people across our channels, and ITV is committed to providing sensory-impaired audiences with access to our programmes. We provide substantial levels of subtitling, signing and audio description. Our signed programme slots include a range of factual and daytime titles. In 2007 soaps, dramas and feature films were among the programmes that were broadcast with audio description.
ITV is proud to have its own award-winning in-house signing facility, SignPost (www.signpostbsl.com). In 2007 SignPost developed and produced content for a portfolio of new websites which we will launch in 2008. • SignPost TV (www.britishsignlanguage.tv) will deliver a range of news, information, entertainment and education in and about sign language. • We plan to launch www.itvbabysign.com, a website where parents can learn how to bond and communicate with their baby in sign. We are also launching an online storytelling website for children in British Sign Language. • In 2007, ITV1 exceeded the access service targets for subtitling and audio description. We provided subtitling on almost all the ITV1 schedule, at peak-time. Audio description was provided for many of ITV’s dramas where there is the greatest value to viewers. We met our access service targets for all the ITV digital channels. We had a regular dialogue with relevant charities and interest groups about our access services provision in 2007, including the Royal National Institute for Blind People and the Royal National Institute for Deaf People.
Why is ITV focussing on Disability? • We will continue to focus and invest in on and off-screen representation for all strands of Diversity (Age, Ethnicity, Sexual orientation, Religion and Belief, Disability, Gender etc). • Ethnic minority representation has made good progress over the last 5 years through interventions such as the Foundation Placement Scheme, ITV’s role in the Cultural Diversity Network and Diversity road-shows on Ethnicity. • Focussing specifically on Ethnicity has proved and effective strategy and why we believe the ITV Diversity strategy should now concentrate on Gender and Disability.
Disability - Key Things to Know • Disabled means having a 'physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his/her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities' (The Disability Discrimination Act) • A huge variety of people are embraced by the term – people who are hard of hearing, people who suffer from Epilepsy and Diabetes, cancer patients, those with mental health problems, people who are Dyslexic or who have Arthritis and those who become Disabled either through illness or due to an accident. • Nearly half of those who are legally defined as disabled do not think of themselves as disabled(audience group 7research) • More than a quarter of disabled people think they are portrayed negatively in the media • Younger disabled people are early adopters of new technology
Interactive TV is more popular with disabled people than non-disabled people. They are more likely to have used it and to regularly use it. • Disabled adults are more likely to watch television every day (92% of 15 - 34s and 94% of 65+ watch every day), and are also more likely to watch more of it than their non-disabled peers (over an hour more per day). • 26% of the daytime television audiences is disabled (BBC market research) • The ITV genre with the highest portion of disabled contributors are Current Affairs at 1.4%, Daytime at 2% and the lowest is Sport, Drama and Entertainment all at 0.2% (2006 data) • The annual spending power of disabled adults is around £50 billion
ITV Diversity Talent initiatives overview • Foundation Placement Scheme – A ‘positive action’ one year traineeship for ethnic minorities in any business area of ITV. Currently running 20 places in both Leeds and Manchester and launching in London in 2008. 79% retention rate in the media industry • ING News Traineeship – A general recruitment one year Traineeship for anyone looking to get into; News Journalism, News Technical and Graphics roles. 2007 intake starts in September with 21 people selected from journalism and non-journalism backgrounds. Recruiting every May and June • ING News Journalism Bursary – ITV’s annual bursary scheme is open to students studying broadcast journalism at post-graduate level. The award offers payment of course fees and maintenance, a placement in a newsroom and a designated mentor. The recipient will also be entered into the News Trainee Scheme 2007/8. Recruiting every May and June • Enabling Talent – A positive action Placement scheme for people with Disabilities to join any area of ITV. Launched in 2007 each placement is preceded with a work-experience segment and then a 3-6 month placement. So far we have a 50% retention within jobs at ITV.
Work Experience – Spending time with teams in all areas of the Business continues to be a great way to get into any business area at ITV. We offer over 1,000 placements a year to people over 18 years old. Each is an opportunity for someone in full time education to come and work with us. • Workshops for disabled actors – July 2008, workshops for those being auditioned but not currently selected for roles • Careers Academies – • David Fraser Bursary Award - A Director Development Scheme offered by ITV. Candidates were offered seven weeks shadowing a soap director with the opportunity to direct their own episode at the end of the training. Competition for places was fierce, and trainees have gone on to direct on our soaps and become regular drama directors. • Regional Production Fund - We have created a fund for production in the regions worth £9 million over three years. The money can only be awarded to new-to-network producers and can be used to commission programmes and provide development funding or long-term investment in independent production companies. The Regional Production Fund is intended to nurture emerging talent and contribute to meeting our quotas.
Champions, Infrastructure & communication External partners Diversity Talent Champions • Memberships & forums • Community & interest groups • Key consultants/facilitators • Representing ITV externally • Representing Diversity strand • Driving change & awareness Internal communication Operational activity • Communications plan • Microsite/webpage for information • Diversity Talent Council • Members of diversity team • Senior management meetings • Accessibility groups • ITVjobs.com • PEEP/New starter process • HR Directors & colleagues • Staff consultation
Conclusions • ITV Network and Regional productions are committed to equal representation on screen • An intention to provide the best service for our audience, taking into account the needs of all potential viewers. • Total ITV output displays strong representations of non-white characters, against population profile. • Male/female split reasonably well balanced for all genres, bar News. • Representation of characters with disabilities needs to be improved across the range of programmes. A strategy is in place to achieve this.