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Industry execs to gather for Diversity round table

In a rare move CEOs & execs from ABC, Seven, Nine, 10 and SBS will meet on Friday as part of a discussion about improving diversity, inclusion and equity.

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An impressive roll-call of television executives will join an industry-first round table this Friday, for a discussion about improving diversity, inclusion and equity.

Convened by Media Diversity Australia at SBS’s headquarters in Artarmon, the event sees Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland, joined by all eleven MDA members, which include Free to Air public and commercial broadcasters.

Attending are:

  • SBS’s Managing Director James Taylor
  • Nine’s CEO Mike Sneesby
  • 10’s Executive Vice President, Chief Content Officer & Head of Paramount, Beverley McGarvey
  • Seven’s Chief People and Culture Officer Lucinda Gemmell
  • ABC’s Chief Content Officer, Chris Oliver-Taylor

Plus: News Corp Australia’s Chief Financial Officer, Michael Murphy, AAP’s editor Andrew Drummond, The Guardian Australia’s editor Lenore Taylor, Private Media Group’s CEO Will Hayward, The Conversation Group’s CEO Lisa Watts and The Daily Aus Co Founders Zara Seidler and Sam Koslowski.

Also attending are MDA Founder and Chair, Isabel Lo, and executives from Screen Diversity and Inclusion Network, Diversity Arts Australia and Free TV to commit to a path forward to deliver change needed as an industry.

The event will provide a platform for robust discussion about where improvements are most needed in diversity, around barriers to equity and inclusion, the importance of workplaces providing culturally and psychologically safe environments for talent, how to better cater to underserved audiences, opportunities for industry collaboration, and action to drive progress for a more inclusive media that better reflects and serves contemporary Australia.

The group will also discuss uniform measurement and tracking of progress across all parts of the industry, building on current measurement being implemented through MDA as well as organisations like Screen Diversity Inclusion Network for the production sector, to ensure greater accountability as an industry.

Mariam Veiszadeh, CEO of Media Diversity Australia said, “For the first time, these leaders are coming together for an authentic and frank conversation about the issues and ways to tackle the challenges. As individual media organisations and MDA members, each member has the power to have a meaningful impact, but as a collective making a shared commitment to have honest and important discussions and take action, we have the potential to move on from discussions and truly shift the dial on diversity, inclusion and equity in Australian media.

“But it is critical that this is more than a discussion – all MDA members recognise the need for and value of greater diversity, but the pace of industry-wide change is slow and inconsistent. We are coming together to make the strongest commitment yet as an industry. This is a collective call to action for Australia’s media industry and I look forward to sharing the commitments made as we begin this next stage of the journey.

Whilst the event will be conducted under “Chatham House” rules, a press release will outline high-level outcomes.

6 Responses

  1. I suppose this discussion adds to the recent ABC diversity targets topic, but whatever contemporary inclusion and diversity choices are being made by TV executives or movie producers in Australia or elsewhere, the primary business agenda should be about the creative genre choices necessary to keep the TV and movie industry profitable. Some activist aficionados in Hollywood seem to have lost sight of that objective.

  4. The Australian TV is kinda behind on diversity, so it’s great that the appetite is there to fix that and this is a great first step. I hope that whatever comes out of this has some concrete steps and some level of accountability built into it. I also look forward to the day when the list of Network leadership/decision makers is not a bunch of white/European names as well!

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