UCLA report reveals viewers prefer TV content that reflects reality of a diverse America

Netflix's "Awkwafins is Nora from Queens" has a laregly Asian cast.

The changing demographic trends in the U.S. is slowly beginning to show up in movies houses and home screens even as Hollywood decision makers continue to cater to an audience that continues to shrink.

The latest UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, Part 2 published Tuesday, reveals that U.S. television viewers during the COVID-19 pandemic look for and prefer content that reflects the diversity of the real America and addresses concerns or situations faced by people of color. Surprisingly, and perhaps a ray of hope, White audiences shared the same preferences.

“We have seen this appetite for diverse content repeated over the history of our analyses,” said Darnell Hunt, co-author of the report and UCLA’s dean of social sciences. “The fact that shows with diverse writers rooms did well last year also illustrates that audiences are looking for authentic portrayals.”

The report comes a month after the Emmys featured all White nominees in the acting categories demonstrating Hollywood studio's apparent ingrained racial bias in casting prominent roles and producing entertainment catering to an audience from the 1950s made up primarily of Blacks and Whites.

Click here to download the complete UCLA report.

Asian, Latino and Indigenous talent in front of and behind the camera continue to get under represented.

The UCLA report, which covers statistics for the 2019–20 TV season, tracks racial and gender diversity among key job categories, as well as ratings and social media engagement for 461 scripted shows across 50 broadcast, cable and streaming providers.

Part 1 of the report released  by UCLA earlier this year, focused on the diversity efforts of the movie industry.

The new study found a continued correlation between the racial makeup of shows’ writers and TV ratings. For example, among households of all races in 2019–20, the scripted broadcast shows that earned the highest ratings were those in which people of color made up between 31% and 40% of the credited writers. 

Overall, racial diversity improved in almost every job category tracked by the report, and representation among women improved in about half of the job titles. Despite the better numbers of POC employment in the industry, Asians, Latinos and Indigenous talent continue to be underrepresented.

And for the first time in the report’s history, people of color had a higher percentage of scripted broadcast TV acting roles, 43.4%, than their overall percentage of the U.S. population.

Across all three platform types -- broadcast, streaming, digital -- there were more people of color credited as writers than in the previous report. Overall, people of color made up 26.4% of the credited writers for broadcast series last season (up from 23.4%), 28.6% of credited writers for cable (up from 25.8%) and 24.2% of credited writers for streaming (up from 22.8%). Most of those modest gains were recorded by women, according to the study.

But people of color are still largely underrepresented among TV writers, given that 42.7% of Americans are nonwhite.

More actors of color

Over the decade since the Hollywood Diversity Report began, diversity has improved the most among acting jobs, especially in TV, compared with all other TV and movie job types. In 2019–20, television shows with majority-nonwhite casts were more prevalent than ever.

Bolstered by Asian American shows such as Never Have I Ever and Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, for the first time since the researchers began tracking data, a plurality of shows on cable (28.1%) and streaming platforms (26.8%) featured casts in which the majority of actors were nonwhite. And 32.1% of broadcast shows had majority-nonwhite casts, up from just 2.0% in the first report 10 years ago.

The new report provides further support for the fact that audiences favor shows with diverse casts. During 2019–20, among white households, ratings for scripted broadcast shows were highest for shows whose actors were 31% to 40% nonwhite. Among Black households, scripted broadcast shows with the highest ratings where those in which cats were more than 50% nonwhite.

For streaming programming, which is dominated by Netflix, ratings among white, Black and Asian households were highest for shows with casts that were from 31% to 40% nonwhite.

TOP: Mindy Kaling's "Never Have I Ever" features a diverse cast and, bottom, the 2021 version
 of  "Kung Fu" centers on an Chinese American family.

The report’s authors also analyze audiences’ interaction with TV programs on social media, and how those trends correspond with cast diversity. For scripted cable shows during 2019–20, for example, they found that programs with majority nonwhite casts had the highest engagement on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And for streaming shows, audience engagement on Twitter specifically was highest for programs with majority nonwhite casts.

Diverse show creators equals mixed casts 

Another area in which diversity improved was among show creators such as Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina and Dean Devlin. That’s an important datapoint because show creators have influence over which stories are developed, whose stories they represent and how they’re told, said Ana-Christina Ramón, co-author of the report and the director of research and civic engagement in the UCLA Division of Social Sciences.

“We also see that when women and people of color hold high-level creative positions, there is greater diversity down the line in casting and likely for crew hiring,” Ramón said. “Women and people of color are still very underrepresented in these and other behind-the-camera jobs, which is why this report continues to exist.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, view and news with an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd

Report: Hollywood's future is reflected in today's Academy Awards nominees and a changing America

 

The success of movies of Oscar nominees Minari and Judas and the Black Messiah with their diverse casts are making money and should make Hollywood decision-makers to rethink old beliefs in casting and subject matter that historically favored white actors and white perspectives, according to the annual diversity report from UCLA.

Looking at the relative plethora nominations for the Academy Awards that airs Sunday, one might get the impression that the movie industry had solved its diversity problem with the inclusion of so many actors and directors of color and films with themes outside of the usual white perspective. But like much of Hollywood, that's an illusion, says UCLA’s latest Hollywood Diversity Report, published Thursday, April 22, by the UCLA College Division of Social Sciences.

If the UCLA report and the diversity of the Oscar nominations is any indication, Hollywood may be experiencing what the rest of the country is grappling with the changing demographic trends that predict Whites will no longer be in the majority by mid-century.

"People of color and women made tremendous strides among film leads since the last report, cementing 2020 as a watershed moment for diversity in this important employment arena," the report said.

Films featuring actors of POC or projects with POC directors and producers may be reaping more of the industry plaudits, but a closer look shows those productions also getting smaller budgets and less studio backing than films with the big-name actors, directors and production companies.

The Hollywood Diversity Report tracks how well women and minorities are represented in four key industry employment categories: lead actors, total cast, writers and directors.

All four job categories showed progress in 2020, but women and people of color are still underrepresented in critical behind-the-camera jobs. Women made up just 26% of film writers and just 20.5% of directors. Combined, minority groups were slightly better represented as directors at 25.4%. Just 25.9% of film writers in 2020 were people of color.

“We’ve been systematically looking at these key job categories and comparing the representation of women and people of color to the all-important bottom line for eight years, and it’s encouraging to see skyrocketing numbers this year in front of the camera,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of the UCLA College Division of Social Sciences and the report’s co-author. 

UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report is the only study of its kind to incorporate analysis of how top films perform among different racial groups, comparing the diversity of casts, directors and writers with the diversity of American audiences.

For streaming platforms, films featuring casts that were 21% to 30% minority had the highest ratings among white, Black, Latino and Asian households and viewers 18–49.

Among the top 10 streaming films ranked by Asian and Black households, seven had casts that were more than 30% minority. Among the top 10 films ranked by Latino and white households, six had casts that were more than 30% minority.

UCLA’s report shows great progress in actor categories over its decade of data. In 2011, the first year tracked, more than half of the films fell into the lowest level of cast diversity — less than 11%. In 2020, however, 28.8% of films had the highest level of cast diversity — 50% or higher. Just under 10% of films in 2020 fell into the lowest level of cast diversity.

For the first time since the report launched in 2014, people of color were represented in the lead actor and total cast categories at levels proportionate to their presence in the American populace — 39.7% and 42%, respectively. People of color make up 40.3% of the U.S. population.

The analysis of 2020 films also looked at the correlation between directors’ and casts’ racial and gender diversity.

In 2020, nearly all of the films with a female director also featured a female lead (94.7%). Films directed by minorities had the highest level of cast diversity. And 78.3% of films directed by people of color featured minority leads.

However, the report notes, there are still relatively few examples of women and people of color running the show on big-budget films, those marketed to the broadest audience.

“Our report finds that women directors and directors of color have overwhelmingly diverse productions,” said Ana-Christina Ramon, the report’s co-author and the director of research and civic engagement for the division of social sciences. 

“However, these films often have smaller budgets than those helmed by male directors and white directors. So, in a year where more diverse productions were made more accessible to larger audiences through streaming services, the contrast is stark as to what types of films have the big budgets. There is a clear underinvestment of films made by, written by, and led by women and people of color.”

White film directors were more than twice as likely as minority directors to helm a film with a budget of $100 million or more — 6.4% versus 2.8%. Men and women were equally likely to direct a big-budget film in 2020 — 5.7% and 5.6%, respectively.

Women and people of color were more likely to direct films that fell into the lowest budget category of less than $20 million. For films directed by people of color, 72.3% had budgets less than $20 million, compared to 60% for white directors. It was about the same for films directed by women. Of those, 74.3% had budgets that were less than $20 million, compared to 59.2% for directors who were men.

Along those same lines, films with minority leads and writers of color also trended toward lower budgets, the report found.

Every industry felt the weight of the pandemic in 2020, and Hollywood was no exception. Business shutdowns and physical distancing efforts around the world wreaked havoc on box-office revenue and upended long-held film release strategies.

The report also looked at today's audiences. The global home and mobile entertainment market increased to a record $68 billion over the course of 2020, up 23% from the $55.9 billion in 2019. The U.S. share of this global market stood at nearly 44% in 2020. Latino and Black adults, in particular, consumed online content at higher levels than other groups.

The report found films with casts that were from 41-50% minority communities enjoyed the highest box office success around the world. Movies with less than 11% minority representation were among the poorest performers.

People of color also drove sales at the box office, accounting “for the majority of opening weekend, domestic ticket sales for six of the top 10 films released in theaters.”

Similarly, because the pandemic forced an inordinate amount of online streaming, the report found, “Households of color accounted for a disproportionate share of the households viewing eight of the top 10 films released via streaming platforms in 2020.”

The findings suggest that Hollywood studio executives can no longer rely on "gut" instincts based on embedded racial biases and should rely more on metrics that show that movies with diverse casts and subject matter can successfully cross over to an audience that is growing more diverse and want films that reflect the world around them.

Among other findings in the report:

• Women made up 47.8% of lead actors and 41.3% of overall casts in the top films of 2020. Women make up about half the U.S. population.

• Among white, Black and Middle Eastern or Northern African actors, women were significantly underrepresented in the top films of 2020, compared to men from those groups.

• Among Latino, Asian, multiracial and Native actors, women either approached parity with their male counterparts or exceeded it in films of 2020.

• The most underrepresented groups in all job categories, relative to their presence in the U.S., are Latino, Asian and Native actors, directors and writers.

The current report includes 10 years of data, making UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report the longest-running, consistent analysis of gender and racial diversity in the film industry. TV industry data, part two of the now biannual report, will be released in September 2021.

Hollywood inches towards diversity, says UCLA report

The movie-going audience is more diverse than the movies that are being made in Hollywood.

It's telling that in the last few years, we've seen what appears to be a blossoming of Asian representation in movies and television to the point where some have called this a "golden age" for Asian American actors.

Sparked by movie successes The Big Sick, Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, Hollywood, notorious for jumping on trends and copying successful formulas, we are seeing more Asians in leading roles, but a closer look at the actual numbers of the top 200 films of the year, what appears to be golden era may only be an illusion.

The actual numbers as shown in the 2020 "Hollywood Diversity Report 2020: A Tale of Two Hollywoods"  covering the years of 2018-2019, the US movie and television industry still has a long way ago to reflect the real racial and gender diversity of America.

The study 'Hollywood Diversity Report 2020: A Tale of Two Hollywoods', released Thursday, Feb. 6, suggests that people of color and women are underrepresented in films. For behind-the-camera positions such as directors, writers or other executives, the gap is even greater.

One only has to watch the Oscars telecast (Sunday 2 p.m. EST) to see that despite efforts by the Academy and the industry, most nominees in the four acting categories are overwhelmingly white.

“As of 2019, both women and minorities are within striking distance of proportionate representation when it comes to lead roles and total cast,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of the UCLA College division of social sciences and the report’s co-author.

“Behind the scenes, it’s a very different story," says Hunt. "That begs the question: Are we actually seeing systematic change, or is Hollywood just appealing to diverse audiences through casting, but without fundamentally altering the way studios do business behind the camera?”

There has been progress, and we don't want to belittle that, but the growth rate for actors of color in lead roles is slower than the growth of the minority population of the US. A majority of the nation’s population will be minorities by 2050, according to U.S. Census estimates.

According to the study, the representation of people of colour in theatrical films was 12.2 per cent in 2011. By 2017, that number has increased to 21. 5%. Meanwhile, minorities make up about 40% of the general population.

The numbers are even grimmer for people of color as directors, writers and producers.

Perhaps the biggest reason Hollywood is moving towards more diversity in its casting is that the report found that the majority of the movie-going audience are people of color. And the report found that movies with diverse casts, make more money for its investors.

People of color bought at least 50% of domestic tickets for six of the top 10 films in 2018. In 2019, minorities bought at least 50% of tickets for nine of the top 10 films.

In 2018, films with casts made up of 21% to 30% minority actors had the highest median global ticket receipts. In 2019, the films that tended to perform the best at the box office were even more diverse, with casts in the 41% to 50% minority range.

Despite that buying power, the analysis suggests, fundamental systemic change in Hollywood has not occurred, especially in the upper echelons of the filmmaking industry.

Perhaps the reason for the snail's pace of diversifying the movie industry is that the big decisions -- what movies get greenlit -- are being overwhelmingly made by white studio execs.

The UCLA report also includes a workplace analysis of 11 major and mid-major studios, which found that 91% of C-level positions are held by white people and 82% are held by men. Among all senior executive positions, 93% percent are held by white people and 80% by men.

Those top executives largely determine what stories get told and who gets the all-important jobs in front of and behind the camera, said the report’s co-author, Ana-Christina Ramon, director of research and civic engagement for the UCLA College division of social sciences.

“What’s being green-lit matters,” said the report’s co-author, Ramon continued. “And although the industry is changing in front of the camera, white men are still doing the overwhelming majority of the green-lighting and making the major decisions behind the scenes at the studios.”

UCLA Diversity Report: Hollywood representation improving but still have a long way to go

Despite slight gains, especially among women, Hollywood is still falling short in representing what America looks like, circa 2019, according to UCLA's annual report card on the entertainment industry's progress on inclusion.

Wonder Woman took moviegoers by storm in 2017, taking in more than $820 million in ticket sales worldwide. And Patty Jenkins’ role as director of the blockbuster was part of a positive — if possibly short-lived — trend for women directors that year.

Counting each year’s 200 top-grossing films, the number of women directors nearly doubled from 2016 to 2017, according to the newest UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, The report by the UCLA College Division of Social Science. was published the same day as the Academy Award telecast.

Even with the doubing of the representation of women directors, the annual record was still poor: There were just 21 women directors among the 167 English-language films from 2017’s top 200, or just 12.6 percent of the total. 

Surprisingly, early analysis of 2018’s top movies indicates the increase was just a one-year blip despite the box office success and social impact of hits Crazy Rich Asians and Black Panther.

The 2016-2017 report examined 12 different job titles among the creators, directors and top-billed cast of the top movies for 2017 as well as 1,316 broadcast television, cable and digital shows from the 2016–17 programming season. It found that behind the scenes and in front of the camera, advances for people of color and women remain fairly incremental, if not stubbornly static — and found that minorities and women remain mostly underrepresented compared with their share of the population overall.

“For six years the Hollywood Diversity Report has objectively taken stock of where the entertainment industry stands on racial and gender diversity, knowing that there can be no reform without a reckoning,” said Darnell Hunt, the report’s co-lead author and dean of the UCLA College Division of Social Sciences.

2018's box office results reaffirm that audiences do demand diverse content. For example, Crazy Rich Asians has earned more than $285 million globally, and Black Panther has earned more than $1.3 billion in addition to seven Academy Award nominations, including the first-ever best picture nod for a superhero film.

“Every year the data have shown that film and television content that feature diverse casts typically make more money and enjoy higher ratings and audience engagement,” Hunt said. “We feel confident our partners in Hollywood today see the value of diversity in ways that they did not before we began sharing our report.”

According to the report, women’s representation among actors in three types of TV content — scripted broadcast, cable and digital programming — is inching closer to women’s 50 percent share of the population overall.

“We’ve seen modest advances when it comes to movies and films,” said Ana-Christina Ramon, director of research and civic engagement for the Division of Social Sciences, and the report’s other lead author. “But deep-seated power systems — dominated by white male decision-makers at the highest levels — are hard to break. The kind of structural change necessary for a new order of business in the film industry has yet to happen, and pushing for it will require sustained vigilance and awareness.”

The report found, those whose casts were 31 to 40 percent minority actors earned the most at the box office. And films with at least 51 percent minority actors earned the greatest return on investment, because they generally cost less to make than other top films but still performed well at the box office.

Among the top 200 films of 2017 were blockbuster hits Wonder Woman (which was a boundary-breaking movie for women in front and behind the camera), Star Wars: The Last Jedi (which centered around Star Wars' first Asian American hero played by Kelly Marie Tran), and The Big Sick, (the romantic comedy that preceded Crazy Rich Asians and which starred Kumail Nanjiani). 

'The Big Sick' helped improve with an Indian American lead romantic interest helped boost representation in 2017.

Perhaps what opened the eyes of Hollywood's studio heads, the report also found that minority ticket buyers accounted for the majority of ticket sales for five of the top 10 grossing films.

Among white, black and Asian American TV viewers, ratings for broadcast scripted programs were highest when the shows’ casts were made up of between 31 and 40 percent minority actors. Among Latino households and viewers ages 18 to 49, the broadcast scripted shows that had the highest ratings were those with casts that had between 11 and 20 percent minority actors.

The report noted that the ever-broadening landscape for TV-related programming created by Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and other streaming services has created a tailwind for gender and racial diversity.

“It’s clear the increased number of original programs alone has helped grow the share of the pie for minorities and women,” Hunt said.

Among the report’s other findings:

Gains for women and minorities in film and television:

• The number of minority actors with lead roles in films increased from 13.9 percent in 2016 to 19.8 percent in 2017. But that’s a large difference from their share of the overall population, which is about 40 percent minority.
• Women held 32.9 percent of lead acting roles in movies, up from 31.2 percent in 2016, but still far short of their share of 50 percent of the overall population.
• Minorities held 21.3 percent of lead acting roles in scripted digital programming, a significant leap from the 12.9 percent tracked in last year’s report.
• Just 9.4 percent of show creators for scripted broadcast programs were minorities, up from 7.1 percent the prior season.
• The number of minority actors with lead roles in broadcast scripted shows increased to 21.5 percent from 18.7 percent.
• Women’s share of lead roles in broadcast scripted shows increased to 39.7 percent, from 35.7 percent in 2015–16.
• Women were 34.8 percent of the show creators for scripted digital programs, up slightly from 2015–16 at 31.5 percent

GRAPHIC BY UCLA

The status quo:

• The number of minority actors with lead roles in films increased from 13.9 percent in 2016 to 19.8 percent in 2017. But that’s a large difference from their share of the overall population, which is about 40 percent minority.
• Women held 32.9 percent of lead acting roles in movies, up from 31.2 percent in 2016, but still far short of their share of 50 percent of the overall population.
• Minorities held 21.3 percent of lead acting roles in scripted digital programming, a significant leap from the 12.9 percent tracked in last year’s report.
• Just 9.4 percent of show creators for scripted broadcast programs were minorities, up from 7.1 percent the prior season.
• The number of minority actors with lead roles in broadcast scripted shows increased to 21.5 percent from 18.7 percent.
• Women’s share of lead roles in broadcast scripted shows increased to 39.7 percent, from 35.7 percent in 2015–16.
• Women were 34.8 percent of the show creators for scripted digital programs, up slightly from 2015–16 at 31.5 percent.

The status quo:

• Among the directors of the English-language films from the 200 films, 12.6 percent were minorities, unchanged from 2016.
• Just 7.8 percent of the top films were written by minority writers, roughly equal to the 2016 figure.
• Minorities made up 16.5 percent of the creators of digital scripted shows, essentially unchanged.

Future reports from the Hollywood Diversity team at UCLA will focus on how the entertainment industry can adopt practices that are proven to increase inclusion of diverse talent, understand where such practices have been deployed and how they have factored into the creation of diverse content that diverse audiences demand.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Views From the Edge will take a deeper dive into television's diversitiy in a future posting.

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