Smith worked through the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism at USC to develop a comprehensive report on the diversity in all levels of the industry, from film to streaming and from actors and directors to company executives.
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The USC report examined films, television shows and digital series released in 1994, and of the 11,306 speaking roles evaluated, 66.5 percent were male and 33.5 percent were female. And just 28.9 percent of screenwriters are women, and only 22.6 percent of digital and television series creators are women. The broadcast networks include 17.1% female directors, 15.1% in the cable realm and 11.8% in streaming, while the film industry features a paltry female representation at 3.4%. Nice to know we’re worth something to those Hollywood execs, am I right, ladies?
Smith added that the best way to help end the exclusionary practices is to help get more people of color involved in film production.
In 109 films released in 2014, only 3.9 percent of directors were women.
The study covered 305 television series that aired between September 2014 and August 2015.
The study highlights that people from ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community and women are vastly under represented when it comes to speaking roles in films or television, and also in the role of director or writer.
Behind the camera, the report showed that 87 percent of the 407 directors included in the study were White and 13 percent were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.
“That’s a severe problem and it’s a chain reaction”, said Deggans. “When you have all these films and TV shows that focus on these White environments, then of course you’re not going to create the kind of roles that can be nominated for Emmys or nominated for Oscars, and that’s the canary in the coal mine”, he said.
Hollywood is suffering from an “epidemic” of minority invisibility that excludes women, gay actors and ethnic minorities, according to a wide-ranging new study into diversity within the industry. In broadcast TV specifically, 90.4% of directors were white men.
The study calls major companies to the carpet, measuring their record of inclusion across the programming and films they produce, as well as the behind-the-camera talent they employ. USC’s Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative, which commissioned the study, has been releasing data on race and gender inclusion in film for over a decade.
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“As prestige or power of the title increases, we see fewer women at the top”, said Katherine Pieper, who co-authored the study with Smith and Marc Choueiti. But despite some bright spots in TV, including ABC’s “Black-ish” and “Fresh Off the Boat”, diversity remains a problem across the TV landscape, the report said. Also, majority of older characters were male, with only 25.7% of those being females. Of the 50 tests conducted, seven Fully Inclusive and nine Largely Inclusive scores were awarded across the 10 companies evaluated on TV/digital content. The Walt Disney Company and The CW Network were the strongest performers in television, while for streaming content, Hulu and Amazon tied. A study of the Fortune 250 in 2013 found that in top companies across the economy, only 18.5% of board-of-director members were female – compared with 19% found in the USC Hollywood study.
