Report Shows Slight Progress for Hollywood on Diversity

Report Shows Slight Progress for Hollywood on Diversity
According to the report, two areas that showed substantial progress were minority leads on broadcast television shows, moving to 18.7 percent, up from 5.1 percent during the 2011-2012 season;
and show creators of color delivering scripted series for streaming services, which went to 15.7 percent from 6.2 percent, in large part because of the overall growth of streaming.
The 80-page report, conducted with funding from companies like Disney and the Will & Jada Smith Family Foundation, includes data broken into chapters
that focus on areas like directors, lead actors, talent agency representation and television series creators.
Hollywood executives are likely to pounce on that lag, noting the recent success of the Disney-Marvel superhero film “Black Panther,”
which has become the top-grossing film in history by a black director (Ryan Coogler) and featuring a largely black cast.
“Over the five-year run of the report, areas where women
and people of color saw sustained progress were rare,” Ana-Christina Ramón, an author of the study, said in an interview.
LOS ANGELES — For the past five years, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles,
have hammered Hollywood with annual reports on its exclusion of women and minorities.
As with most studies, it gives a slightly outdated snapshot, examining the top 200 theatrical film releases in 2016
and 1,251 broadcast, cable and digital platform television shows from the 2015-2016 season.