EXCLUSIVE: The BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Paramount and major UK production groups have signed up to be the Edinburgh TV Foundation’s first tranche of Class Confident organizations.
The idea emerged from James Graham‘s 2024 MacTaggart address and crystallized last year when a series of Class Confident Actions were drawn up by the TV Foundation.
Banijay, All3Media, Fremantle and BBC Studios have signed up to show they are meeting the series of prompts to remove barriers for people from working class backgrounds to work in TV. The actions include putting class on the agenda of a company’s culture and leadership; bringing back job interviews in recruitment; levelling the playing field by paying the real living wage for entry level roles at the least; and supporting the next moves of staff with potentially longer contracts.
Another nine key players have pledged to be Class Confident including Hat Trick Productions, The Traitors indie Studio Lambert and Squid Game: The Challenge co-producer The Garden.
The aim of the actions is to improve the woefully poor landscape for working class people in the British TV industry. Recent research has found that nearly one in four people in senior TV roles have the cultural and economic advantages of a private school education, which is more than three times higher than the 7.5% of the general population who are privately educated.
Dear England creator Graham argued passionately for greater working class representation during his MacTaggart, claiming the industry was “squeamish about defining it, and as a result, we quite often still exclude it from industry measurements around diversity.”
“Taboo topic”
TV Foundation Impact Director Gemma Bradshaw said: “When we first started talking about working class voices in the industry it was a taboo topic. Now some of the biggest players in the industry are putting their hands up, ready to do more.”
She added: “We’re thrilled to see so many organisations already taking action to improve class representation and we’re keen to hear from more TV companies that want to join us. This is not a checklist or the end point; it’s the start of a movement to make the industry accessible to all.”
