Hollywood's Diversity Problem: Few Changes Made Behind The Camera Despite Nation’s Racial Reckoning, Study Finds

The brutal killings of Black Americans including George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless others this year have sparked a national reckoning on race and racism not seen in America since the urban uprisings of the 1960s. Hollywood was quick to join the chorus of institutional voices across the nation pledging support for the protesters and their calls for social justice. What was less clear, however, was the degree to which key industry players would put their money where their mouths were, stand on the right side of history, and take actions that might actually move Hollywood in a direction that advances movements for progressive change.  

In a “Dear Hollywood” letter, the Committee of Black Writers of the Writers Guild of America West called the industry’s bluff:

Hollywood, what you do next is paramount. As the most powerful entertainment industry in the world, we challenge you, the powers that be, those individuals with unmistakable privilege, the elite executives who gave the ok on those statements, to begin instituting real systemic change. Basically, either you commit to a new, institutionalized system of accountability with and to Black writers, or you prove that you’re putting on just another strategic, virtue-signaling performance deemed necessary to survive the times. But you won’t be able to survive without the radical inclusion of Black writers and artists on your sets and in your studios.¹

The Committee of Black Writers’ claim about the necessary connection between the “radical inclusion” of diverse talent and Hollywood’s survival isn’t hyperbole. Not only is opening up the structures of Hollywood to more inclusive storytelling the right thing to do, it is also essential to the bottom line in an increasingly diverse America. As the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report series, which we write, has documented, people of color — 40.2 percent of the U.S. population in 2019 and growing — express a clear preference for storytelling that centers people like themselves, as well as narratives with which they can relate, in television shows. 

The most recent report in the series, which was released today, drives this point home by revealing critical differences in the top 10 shows by household race and ethnicity. For example:

• Each of the top 10 broadcast scripted shows for Black households in 2018-19 featured casts that were at least 21 percent minority.
• Nine of the top 10 broadcast scripted shows for viewers 18-19 and for Asian and Latino households in 2018-19 featured casts that were at least 21 percent minority.
• Each of the top 10 cable scripted shows for Black households in 2018-19 had casts that were at least 21 percent minority; the same was true for four of the top 10 shows for Latino households.
• Seven of the top 10 digital scripted shows for Latino households in 2018-19 featured casts that were at least 21 percent minority; the same was true for six of the top 10 digital scripted shows for viewers 18-49 and for Asian and Black households.

The report also shows that conventional and social media ratings, for most groups and on most platforms, peak for television series whose main casts look most like America’s diversity.

Surviving the Times

Despite these market realities (or perhaps because of them), Hollywood seems to have opted for “putting on just another strategic, virtue-signaling performance deemed necessary to survive the times,” as the Black Writer Committee puts it. To be sure, the meaningful progress the latest Hollywood Diversity Report documents in the television sector has largely occurred in front of the camera, thereby insulating the white males who continue to dominate the executive suites from having to share their power to make industry-defining decisions. Indeed, the report found that television network heads were 92 percent white and 68 percent male as late as September 2020.  (The demographics of the nearly 700 network senior executives and unit heads considered in the report aren’t much better.)  Meanwhile, the report found that people of color were underrepresented by factors of 3 or 4 among broadcast, cable and digital platform show creators in 2018-19. That same season, only 24 percent of credited writers were people of color and only 22 percent of all episodes airing or streaming were directed by people of color, on average, across all platforms. These statistics are emblematic of Hollywood’s diversity and inclusion problem. 

In the midst of recent social, cultural, and market challenges to Hollywood business as usual, the white males in charge have apparently decided to try and “survive the times” by doubling down on the least transformative responses — making strategic adjustments to the racial mix of featured characters on a given show, or less often, the types of shows they greenlight for the small screen. There is little evidence that the structures that form the industry’s creative ecosystem (e.g. the executive suites, production units, marketing units, talent agencies, or writers’ rooms) have been reshaped in any meaningful way.

This is a missed opportunity. 

Hollywood’s survival, in the final analysis, will rest on its ability to catch up with and better serve a diversifying America in which people of color increasingly define the new mainstream. In 2019, Latino viewers were overrepresented among everyday viewers in the distribution channels of physical discs (27 percent), video on demand (25 percent), and online subscriptions (22 percent), relative to their share of the U.S. population (18 percent).² Similarly, Latino (27 percent) and Black (19 percent) viewers were also overrepresented in terms of everyday television viewers via a mobile device. Meanwhile, Black, Latino, and Asian adults all increased their total media consumption across all platforms in 2019 compared to the year before. And Black adults continued to consume more media than any other group — 14 hours and 26 minutes per day — which included more time than any other group with live television (5 hours and 4 minutes) and with smartphones (4 hours and 46 minutes per day).³ 

The Hollywood of on-screen appeasement is ill-equipped to meet the needs of these market realities. Only the Hollywood of meaningful inclusion, that empowers diverse voices in every room and at every level, can make the most of the opportunity presented by this moment.

The new UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report 2020: A Tale of Two Hollywoods, Part 2: Television is available for download HERE.