'What’s On?' New research on class in UK television launches at Edinburgh TV Festival
The research has been conducted in partnership with the BBC, Channel 4 and Candour Productions.
A researcher from the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures has launched new research into class inequality in the UK television industry at the Edinburgh TV Festival, bringing together researchers and leading industry figures to discuss what needs to change.
The new industry report, Making Television, Making Class: What’s On?, is the culmination of the three-year AHRC-funded research project What’s On? Rethinking Class in the Television Industry, led by Professor Beth Johnson at the University of Leeds with Dr Laura Minor (Salford), Professor Dave O’Brien (Manchester) and post-doctoral researcher Dr Anna Viola Sborgi.
The research has been conducted in partnership with the BBC, Channel 4 and Candour Productions, exploring how class shapes who gets to make television drama and build a sustainable career, what we see on screen, and how audiences respond to it.
Class is understood intersectionally throughout the research, including how it intersects with race, gender, disability and geography.
The report draws on rare access to two television drama productions, combining two anonymised drama case studies, 52 interviews plus 14 supplementary interviews, case-study analysis and four audience focus groups.
Key findings
- Getting into television is only part of the problem – being able to stay is crucial. Freelance precarity, short-term contracts and gaps between jobs mean that financial security can become a hidden requirement for sustaining a television career.
- Informal recruitment remains widespread. Among participants for whom recruitment-route information was available, 61% had secured their current role through personal networks, compared with just 8% through open advertisements.
- Regional production has grown, but creative power remains London-centred. The research identifies the risk of 'regional production without regional power', with fewer sustainable pathways to senior roles outside London.
- Class inequality is intersectional. Class interacts with race, gender, disability and geography, meaning some workers experience multiple and compounded barriers to retention and progression.
- What happens behind the camera matters on screen. The research identifies a shift in representations of class from 'kitchen sink' to 'kitchen island', with class increasingly communicated through homes, lifestyle, taste and aesthetics. Audience research also shows that viewers are highly alert to whether representations of class feel authentic.
Professor Beth Johnson, University of Leeds
“One of the clearest messages from our research is that we need to stop thinking about class inequality in television simply as an access problem. Getting through the door matters, but so does who can afford to stay, who gets to progress and, ultimately, who has creative authority.
“What makes What’s On? distinctive is that we have been able to follow class through the whole process of television drama – from production and working lives, through what appears on screen, to how audiences respond to it. What happens behind the camera doesn't stay behind the camera.
“The report shows that these inequalities aren't inevitable. There are practical changes the industry can make, from more transparent recruitment and better progression routes to reducing financial barriers and creating genuinely sustainable careers in the nations and regions.”
Edinburgh TV Festival
The report launched at the Edinburgh TV Festival on 27 August in a session chaired by Nana Hughes, Head of Scripted Comedy at ITV, with Professor Beth Johnson joined by Sally Lindsay, Jimmy Mulville, Chloe English and Miranda Wayland.
The discussion focused on how the industry can move from evidence to action, and create a television sector in which talented people from all backgrounds can not only enter the industry, but build sustainable and fulfilling careers.
