passionately discuss the future of media culture. Here are some of our highlights! OFF WITH A BANG! The day’s events quite literally kicked off with a bang. Two confetti canons explosively showering rainbow shreds over the audience, combined with a blasting of Ministry of Sound’s comprehensive sound system, undoubtedly set the strident tone for the day’s events. Today was a day to be loud and proud. This was accompanied by an introductory speech from Soho Media Club co-founders Jaisica Lapsiwala and Tom Witkowski, alongside Be You’s energetic host Muki Kulhan – outlining what the day had in store. Then came ‘Mapping out what’s happening in media right now’, a dynamic deep dive between Maureen Kerr and Claire Tavernier into the macro and micro trends impacting the industry, looking at where money is being spent, the innovations shaking up the space, plus a glimpse into TV, streaming and AI. We picked up a new term from this talk: serial churner. This is used to describe the ways streaming customers cycle through different subscriptions across all the major platforms in order to maximise access to content. It’s apparent there is no barrier to exit in streaming, and so the platforms have started to realise that chasing the serial churners is simply a waste of time and money. Instead, they appear to be focusing their efforts on bundling as a way to get more time with subscribers. For example, Warner Bros, Paramount and Disney are all actively looking to include sports as part of their overall packages. The chat also touched on the industry’s topic of the moment: AI. It concluded that generative AI could be the answer to the content demand problem, but it certainly isn’t there just yet. STRATEGIES AND SCHEMES Next up was the day’s first panel, and it was a lively one, to say the least. When it comes to broadcaster initiatives and cultural change, there seems to be a huge minefield of information out there. Navigating what opportunities exist in the industry, what talent is in demand at the moment, where to go and how to do it can be overwhelming. Cue the ‘Strategies and schemes unwrapped’ panel, bringing DEI representatives from the biggest names in UK television to hash it all out with one another. Oh, and those big names also happen to be direct competitors, which naturally lent some added heat to the conversation. On the panel, we had Sonny Hanley, director of ITV Academy; David Carrigan, group director of diversity and inclusion at Sky; Marcia Williams, executive director of equity and inclusion at Channel 4; and Marcus Ryder, CEO of the Film and TV Charity.
Key points of the discussion included: social mobility and representation of ethnic minorities – and the strategic approach to move the dial – the opportunities in the speakers’ organisations, how young talent can access these opportunities and what data exists to illustrate the impact. It appeared that the latter point would become central to the discussion, with the reliance on data as a whole seeming to be a contentious issue among the speakers. “Stats show that things aren’t getting better,” opened Marcus Ryder. “Over the last ten years, ethnic diversity has gone up from 14% to 17%. We can fool ourselves and say, ‘great, diversity in broadcast has gone up’, but in real terms it hasn’t. We must be critical of what we’re trying to achieve. We need to look at the structure of our industry and be careful not to just observe the numbers but also the solutions.” Marcia Williams countered this by saying it is still important to celebrate the numbers at hand. “More than half (58%) of our workforce are women,” she emphasised, “21% of which are from ethnically diverse backgrounds.” She stressed how the numbers were very much in a good place for Channel 4, so the next step now was to keep them there – and growing. “What we’ve done with our numbers is set a series of floor levels,” she continued. “This means a set of numbers we must never fall under, across the business. We recognise that representation does not itself solve the issue. We’ve had representation schemes throughout the industry for decades. If they’d delivered what they promised, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
STACKING P Munya Chawawa (middle), with 1.3 million Instagram followers, discussed giving a voice to the next generation
REDEFINING THE NORM Panels explored strategies for improving visibility for neurodivergent content creators in the industry
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