EXCLUSIVE: The BBC smashed its creative diversity targets by £50M ($67M) last year, as the person responsible for ensuring the corporation works with under-represented voices tells us her team is now completely embedded in the commissioning process.
Revealed in its BBC Commissioning Report for the year to March 31 2025, the broadcaster said it spent £132M on shows that qualify for its creative diversity commitment, when its target was to spend around £80M. This figure bested the previous year’s spend by £27M and means the BBC is on its way to comfortably beating its target of spending £240M across the three years to 2027.
Jessica Schibli, the BBC’s Head of Creative Diversity, told us the “whopping increase” is the result of a shift in “mindset perspective” that has seen her team become “integrated and fully woven through every ounce” of the TV commissioning process.
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“We are now involved in greenlight meetings that traditionally took place between the commissioner and the indie,” she said. “That makes us all accessible. It means we’re not just setting targets for indies but the conversation is happening at the point of commission.”
The BBC’s creative diversity commitment was forged during the summer of the Black Lives Matter protests nearly five years back. To qualify, shows must meet two of these three criteria: ‘Diverse stories and on-screen portrayal’, ‘diverse production leadership’ and ‘diverse company leadership’. At that point, the BBC committed to spending £120M across three years on this content, a figure that ended up being way higher at £243M.
Schibli said her six-strong team plus genre-specific creative diversity partners have been aggressive these past 12 months, working closely with producers via a series of webinars and Q&As while updating their commissioning specification document with more detail.
They are more closely advising producers who struggle to find under-represented talent and spent £2.3M on development via a diverse development fund for indies. “We are starting to build a network we want to share with producers,” added Schibli. “If someone comes to us and says they can’t find a disabled director for a production, we can now say, ‘Actually, have you met this person who’s just directed their first block on [BBC soap] EastEnders?’. This is about acknowledging the nuances of various genres.”
Elsewhere, the BBC for the first time revealed its spend on making TV sets more accessible for disabled people, which totalled £1.3M last year. This satisfies one of the key demands of the Jack Thorne-backed TV Access Project, which sprung up at the Edinburgh TV Festival 2021 and is aiming to make television a more accessible industry. “We are making it clear that finance is not a barrier,” said Schibli.
Progress is still required to commission more shows from criteria three, ‘diverse company leadership,’ Schibli added, describing this as “more static but an absolute focus area for us.” On-screen, the team is far more advanced. Schibli tells us the BBC spent a whopping £358M last year on content that solely reaches the criteria around on-screen portrayal.
Best in class examples she floated include double-BAFTA winning drama Mr Loverman, which has just sold to BritBox in the States, A A Dhand adaptation Virdee and comedy series We Might Regret This, which is created by and stars a disabled lead. She is also enthused by the “incidental portrayal” in shows like The Traitors and Strictly Come Dancing, the latter of which was won by blind comedian Chris McCausland, who is now piloting his own BBC primetime quiz show.
Schibli said she has the full-throated backing of new BBC Chief Content Officer Kate Phillips, who she speaks to on an almost daily basis and who “absolutely without a doubt” is as committed to the cause as her predecessor Charlotte Moore. Moore was frequently lavished with praise by indies for her work in the space.
Further progress is expected in the coming years as a separate target for 25% (previously 20%) of people working on each BBC production to be either ethnically diverse, disabled or from a lower socioeconomic background comes into force. Last year, around three-quarters of productions met the previous 20% requirement, although that still leaves room for improvement as the BBC tries to get the figure as close to 100% as possible. Deadline has asked the BBC what measures it is taking to help productions that fail to meet the target.
The BBC is meanwhile facing blowback from staffers on both sides of the Israel-Hamas War debate who have been frustrated with its news output and recent scandals involving the Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone documentary and Bob Vylan’s controversial Glastonbury set. But Schibli said her team shuts out the noise and “the commitment to making sure [diversity] is a priority” is sacrosanct.
“Reflecting and serving all audiences is part of our absolute existential role,” she added. “That is never unchanged.”