Is the BBC finally coming to terms with its diversity problem?

‘Diversity’ — who today would dare to stand up and declare themselves against it? What, after all, is the alternative? Homogeneity? Uniformity? Indistinguishability? But there is clearly a problem with what that term has come to represent. It will come as no surprise then that June Sarpong, the BBC’s ‘director of creative diversity’, has been forced to admit that the corporation has a problem connecting with a white working-class audience.

That this fact has long been in evidence — the BBC’s own audience research has shown that C2DEs are the social classes least likely to think that the BBC represents the views of ‘people like me’ — does not entirely undermine the value of what Ms Sarpong has done. Let it be clearly said: it is good and necessary that the BBC is at last publicly confessing its failure and acknowledging that it is not reaching parts of the country that other broadcasters cannot reach. Finally, the BBC seems to be waking up to this and is making the right noises about correcting that failure.