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BBC Diversity: will Ofcom deliver?

After eighteen years, the promise of broadcasting diversity is a cheque returned marked ‘insufficient funds’.

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“Sharon We Need You”. An image of Ofcom CEO, Sharon White, dressed as a superhero, is projected onto the Sainsbury Wing of London’s National Gallery to launch the Make The Air Fair campaign, November, 2016. Jeff Spicer/Press Association. All rights reserved.

BAME employment in BBC Studios stands at 9.6%, an increase of 0.1% on the previous year. At this rate, it will take BBC Studios more than 40 years to match the UK population at 14% BAME.

You can’t find this year on year comparison in the BBC Annual Report. Although Sir David Clementi’s BBC Board is packed with business expertise – people to whom YOY and ROI (return on investment) are routine measures – none of them appears to have asked for a YOY analysis of the detailed BBC diversity data. If they did, it wasn’t published.