Anti-Racism Commitments

Channel 4’s six commitments to anti-racism

1. We committed to being an anti-racist organisation.

• We regularly use our position as a public service broadcaster to inform and raise awareness among our audience about racial discrimination, producing shows for all our platforms, including: How Not to Be a Racist; Black, Female and Invisible; Black History Matters Too; Is Cricket Racist?; Black Maternity Scandal; Empire State of Mind; Race & Medical Experiments: What’s the Truth?; 60 Days with the Gypsies; Jews Don’t Count and, most recently, the Alternative Christmas Message.

2. We pledged to strive for racial equity as an employer.

We exceeded our 2023 representation targets to ensure 20% of our employee population and 20% of our 100 top-paid staff are ethnically diverse. By the end of 2023, our employee population was 22% ethnically diverse, as were 20% of our 100 top-paid staff. We have set floor levels for representation for 2024 onwards and continue to act on insights from internal research on the experiences of ethnically diverse staff. We will continue to focus on the critical and complex issues that affect our staff and create a more inclusive culture when it comes to faith. One of our starting points will be an exploration of an expansion of our network of ERGs to support communities interested in religious and faith identities. We have recruited internal “Safe Space Supporters”, employees who will be trained to give advice and support to anyone experiencing bullying or harassment in the workplace. We are also rolling out “Upstander” training, to empower employees to challenge inappropriate behaviour if they witness it.

3. We committed to commissioning relevant and authentic content.

• In 2022, we launched new Commissioning Diversity Guidelines to enable better on and offscreen representation in all our shows. Each genre now commissions at least one new show with ethnically-diverse talent or stories at its heart each year, with forthcoming examples including Queenie and Defiance.

4. We committed to fair ethnically-diverse representation on screen.

• In 2021, our Black to Front initiative highlighted and celebrated ethnically-diverse talent on and off screen. Data from the Creative Diversity Network’s pan-broadcaster Diamond system showed that in 2023, ethnically-diverse people accounted for 19% of on-screen contributions on Channel 4, a figure that is 1 percentage point higher than the national population estimate of 18%. In 2024, we will launch codes of portrayal for race and ethnicity.

5. We committed to fair ethnically-diverse representation in our supply chain too.

We ringfenced funds for commissions from ethnically-diverse-led independent production companies. We exceeded our planned spend by £4 million, spending £40 million for 2022-23. By 2022, we had increased the proportion of ethnically-diverse suppliers we use to 13% and we are focused on increasing this further. In March 2024, we launched Untapped – a commercial initiative from 4Ventures to invest in entrepreneurs who have traditionally been overlooked by the VC ecosystem.

6. We made significant progress in our commitment to use our influence as an advertiser-funded broadcaster to ensure ethnically-diverse representation in advertising.

As part of the Black in Business initiative, five Black-owned businesses are currently benefiting from advertising worth more than half a million pounds. Separately our Diversity in Advertising Award, which is worth £1 million each year, was won in 2020 by a campaign for EA Sports, celebrating the Midnight Ramadan League and championing British South Asian role models.

While this work demonstrates the strength of our ability to inspire positive change, there is still more we can do to improve racial equity inside and outside our organisation. We remain strongly committed to continuing our efforts to tackle racism and will continue to drive progress and inspire change in the future, within the framework of our new equity strategy.