While white men continue to dominate the ranks of filmmakers, entertainment-industry executives and producers, movies and TV shows with diverse casts continue to sell more tickets, earn higher ratings and generate higher social media activity, according to a UCLA study released Thursday.
It’s the third year in a row the university’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies’ Hollywood Diversity Report has touted the social popularity of diverse programming, along with a continued lack of diversity in front of and behind the camera.
“What we’ve found for three years running now is that audiences prefer content that looks like American,” said UCLA sociology professor Darnell Hunt, lead author of the study and director of the Bunche Center.
The report found that diverse programming generates a significantly higher amount of social media traffic, with the median number of Twitter posts highest for programs that had casts made up of 31 to 40 percent minority performers.
However, minorities had only 12.9 percent of leading roles in 163 films examined for 2014, even though they make uup 40 percent of the population.
Women also continue to struggle to find a foothold in Hollywood. The report found that women directed only 4.3 percent of the top films in 2014, down from 6.3 percent in 2013.
“While minorities fell back a few steps since the last report in six of the 11 industry employment arenas examined and merely held their ground in the other four, women suffered losses in eight of the 11 arenas examined and treaded water in the other three,” according to the report. “Both groups remained under-represented on every industry employment front in 2013-14.”
The report largely echoes the findings of a USC report issued earlier this week, and comes in advance of Sunday’s Academy Awards, which have been under fire in response to the second straight year of all-white acting nominees.
The UCLA report concluded that fixing Hollywood’s diversity problem “will require bold gestures that disrupt industry business as usual, which not only adjust the optics in front of the camera but that also overhaul the creative and executive machinery behind it.”
—City News Service