The UK film industry will come under the microscope at the Screen Film Summit on Thursday 10 December.
The RTS has teamed up with the Summit to offer our members 15% off the standard ticket price to the day-long event at the newly opened Picturehouse Central, in London.
The conference will help attendees discover how filmmakers can access investment and the opportunities available.
Eight months on from the broadcasters announcing new initiatives on diversity, across the industry there’s a sense of a nettle being grasped. On screen, in production offices and in commissioning teams, there are signs of real change. And that’s long before the data is published that will measure it.
Wednesfield High School was declared the winner at the grand finale of Midlands Centre’s schools challenge, during a ceremony hosted by the BBC at its Birmingham headquarters in June.
Ten schools were represented, and the prize for the winning team, which was awarded by BBC Midlands Today presenter Nick Owen, was a VIP tour of BBC Birmingham.
Back to work for a break after a week of bodyboarding, go-karting and Mine-crafting in southern Spain with my kids – Gus, 10, and Fordie, eight. They kept calling me a “nube”.
I’ve no idea what this means, though urbandictionary.com says it is “someone so pitiful and idiotic that they have not even the meagre skills to be titled a noob”.
The second top definition is: “The incorrect spelling of noob or newb. Only noobs spell this word as ‘nube’.” Noof said. Lol. Sorry, Lool.
The cohort all have a rich background in the media. They include former CBBC presenter Marvyn Benoit who is now at Sky factual and Ninder Billing who is working in factual at Channel 5. Billing was previously an Executive Producer for a CBBC programme, which has recently been nominated for an RTS award.
Just back to Sky’s new hot-desking haven, "The Hub", after a Guinness-fuelled weekend in freezing Kilkenny at the Sky Cat Laughs Comedy Festival. Boss Stuart Murphy plonks himself opposite me, which is disastrous for concentration levels.
Tonight, it’s the Sky News party for MPs at the top of the Millbank Tower. I wish Yvette Cooper good luck; she’s wearing a baby-blue jacket – easy to spot in a sea of grey suits.
All TV industry watchers know that, thanks largely to Lenny Henry, diversity remains high on television’s agenda. In the past year or so, the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky have each made big announcements, pledging to improve their on-screen representation of minorities and to do more to nurture and encourage multi-ethnic and diverse workforces.
But has genuine change finally kicked in? That was the question that Sky News reporter Afua Hirsch wanted answering as she chaired a packed and often emotional RTS event provocatively entitled "Diversity: job done?".
On 18 September 2016, Steve November has a problem. At 9:00pm that night, the slot arrives in ITV’s schedule that would normally be filled by the season premiere of Downton Abbey.
As Director of Drama for the ITV network, November has to find a replacement – Downton is ending, with the last ever episode to air this coming Christmas Day. And, given Downton’s blockbuster ratings performance, it’s going to be a fiendishly difficult act to follow.
The economic arguments for diversity came under the microscope at a lively joint RTS/BBC session held at New Broadcasting House last month. The panellists agreed that, following years of inaction, broadcasters are finally making an effort to boost black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) representation in television.
A survey by diversity campaign group The TV Collective has found that 83% of people believe recent diversity initiatives will not make a difference to the industry.
Last year, TV and film in the UK introduced a range of initiatives to improve diversity both on and off screen with broadcasters such as BBC, Sky and ITV implementing new measures.
The purpose of the poll, taken by 170 people, was to investigate the impact the diversity drive had on those from varied backgrounds and highlight problems that may still occur.
