Study Reveals TV Networks Fails To Hire Minority and Women Writers

If you are a minority or woman and have dreams of becoming the next big sitcom writer, you may need to think twice about your career choice. A recent study shows that many of the major television networks fare worst when it comes to employing minority and women staff writers. In fact, these networks tend to hire white men who are 40 years old or older.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) says that employment rates took a huge dive in 2013. Instead of embracing diversity in the workplace, women and minorities took a back seat to their white male counterparts. This affected executive-level promotions and staff positions.

Minority writers saw a nearly 7% decline in employment last season, falling screenwriting from 15.6% of the workforce in 2011-12 to 13.7% in 2013-14, while employment of female writers fell 5%, from 30.5% to 29%.

Among the major networks, CBS fared the worst in terms of its employment of minority staff writers. In its report card, the WGA found that minorities accounted for only 11.3% of the writers employed on CBS shows, compared with 16.1% at ABC, 14.2% at NBC and 13.9% at Fox.

Ironically, it’s the guild’s own members – the showrunners and executive producers – who do most of the hiring. But it’s the networks, studios and production companies who hire the showrunners, and the report found that minorities held only 5.5% of those jobs during the 2013-14 season, down from 7.8% two years earlier, an overall decline of nearly 30%. (via Deadline.com)

The lack of diversity in the initial stages of the hiring process affects the end result. As it is done in other industries, whomever is responsible for doing the hiring, will more than likely hire their own kind. We’d like to believe that society has changed, but discrimination still exists. And it is apparent that this is a major issue in the television industry as well. But, what is mind-boggling is, how does CBS, NBC, FOX, and ABC think they will survive without minority or women writers? High-ranked TV shows like “Empire,” “Scandal,” and “How To Get Away With Murder” all are multi-cultural shows. They can’t expect an all-white male writing team to be able to authentically create stories for these characters. Do they?!