Pearson-Shoyama Institute
The Communications and Diversity Network 
(CDN.)

We’ve heard the word diversity a lot in the past two days. Diversity meaning programming that truly reflects the changed cultural make-up of today’s Canada. Among those who’ve raised it are Judy Rebick and Clifton Joseph, both eloquent and passionate advocates. Yesterday Phyllis Platt, who brought so many good programs to the CBC, said it had to happen. And now me. I hope I can advance the debate a touch by outlining how greater diversity might actually make it easier to get programs on the air.

In starting to write this I used an old journalistic trick: give yourself a title and work from there. The first one I thought of was: "Peter Sellers is dead." But it’s not news – Sellers died in 1980 – and it has a negative feel. So it’s gone, replaced by this: "I’d Not Thought of it That Way Before."

That’s a quote from a producer of a new comedy series full of promise. And I promise to get back to him and his hopes in a while. But first I’d like to ask you to consider a question that baffles me: Why, in a rapidly changing Canada, are the millions of minorities so visible on our streets and in shopping malls, our offices and health care centres…so visible everywhere, so IN-visible on our television screens?

It almost seems there are two Canadas: the familiar one we rub shoulders with in our daily lives, and the strange, off-kilter one we tune in for entertainment and drama. The face of Canada started to change in a major way some thirty years ago. Lots of time for our most influential medium to get the picture, don’t you think? But television continues on its blinkered way, limited in vision, hidebound in habit, bent on regurgitation not innovation.

It doesn’t have to be this way. At one time we thought Norman Jewison might join this panel. Now there’s a film-maker who has always been a risk-taker, and whose work shows he cares about justice and humanity, even when he plays it light, as in "Fiddler on the Roof." He does not care for stereotypes: "Moonstruck" was one film about Italians which never mentioned the Mafia or "made guys" but concentrated on passion, complex human relationships, and opera. Back in 1967, at a time of high racial tension in the States, he made a powerful film built on an idea so revolutionary no one else had dared bring it to the screen: that a black man could be the equal of a white authority figure. Years after he made "In the Heat of the Night," he returned to a similar theme with "A Soldier’s Story." Films with a serious message, sure, but first and foremost just darned good films. High art from a risk-taker.

One could argue that adventurous television programmers, like good film-makers and good writers, should be catching the wind of change in society even before the public generally becomes aware of it…not lagging behind. Here’s a quote to illustrate the point:

"The great danger for any broadcaster is to let your audience get ahead of you in ideas and attitudes."

That’s from a public broadcaster, but not in this country. I’m adding a couple more quotes and I’m going to substitute the words CBC and Canada where appropriate:

"We need a new vision, and central to that vision is that the CBC must serve Canada’s broad and diverse population….For young people today Canadian culture is already diverse and heterogeneous, multi-ethnic, multi-everything. For them multi-culturalism is not about political correctness but is simply a part of the furniture of their everyday lives. Yet most broadcast media does not reflect young multiculturalism."

The words come from Greg Dyke, the relatively new director-general of the BBC, talking about Britain, an old country set in its ways and traditions. Would that someone in Canada, a nation of immigrants, a crucible of change, would have Dyke’s determination to alter what shows – or doesn’t show – on our TV screens.

Soon after Robert Rabinovitch took over the CBC he had a well-publicized spat with the CRTC, which wanted to tie CBC licence renewal to more local and regional programming, fewer commercials, less professional sports, increased children’s programming, and greater prominence of visible minorities to reflect Canada’s cultural diversity.

Some journalists, mostly in print, scolded the CRTC for daring to try to manage the CBC. Reflecting cultural diversity – that is, reflecting the reality of Canada today – makes some people uncomfortable, resentful, or plain confused.

But was the CRTC really so far out of court? Since then Mr. Rabinovitch has cut back on commercials; he compromised on his plans to obliterate the regions after public outcry raised blisters on him; he has announced plans to reduce professional sports coverage and improve children’s programs. And diversity? Silence on diversity. I’m told there have been internal debates and committees working on the topic at the CBC but no policy measures actively pursued that I know of.

Why not? And why tread timorously around this as if diversity is a problem, instead of the glorious opportunity it provides to showcase the wonderful variety of Canadians’ – all Canadians’ – experiences, aspirations and cultural history? Why ignore the riches of the mosaic? It is a tragic waste of the glorious opportunities that a more realistic and faithful representation of Canada’s intriguing cultural complexity has to offer, in terms of creativity and artistic inspiration.

Gwynne Dyer has just written a major article in the Canadian Geographic saying we are now on of the most diverse countries in the world. Diversity is not a drawback it’s a treasure for Canada and Canadians to celebrate. There could be so much more to television and radio programming, and it’s time that broadcasters got the message that reflecting diversity is not a duty, it’s a delight.

More than two decades ago the CBC set out to provide more equal opportunities for women in the corporation. As a mid-level executive or senior producer with CBC news and current affairs, I played a small part in advancing that policy, and again later when the CBC broadened it to include visible and other minorities. CBC’s news service, both on-air and behind the scenes, has made significant progress. You can see that in the number of women and minorities who report and anchor news programs.

The CBC does news and information well. I see and read a lot of news at the School of Journalism, and I know CBC in news is about as good it gets.

But drama and entertainment are also important for the CBC to have a significant voice in this country, and it’s high time for that kind of diversity policy drive to begin in these areas as well.

It makes both business and social sense. For instance, the advertising industry saw the light in the early ’90s, and changed the look of its ads and flyers. Why not the broadcast industry. Why not? There’s an echo from past struggles whose time has come again.

The advertising industry based its policy directives on population projections, which saw visible minorities rising to 30-35% in Canada’s major cities by the year 2000. More recently, the Toronto Star published projections – based on Statistics Canada figures – which show how the ethnic diversity of our major cities has seen remarkable acceleration.

In the City of Toronto – comparable to the old Metro area which included Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York – the percentage of visible minorities has gone from 3% in 1961 to 30% in 1991 and is estimated at 54% in 2001.This kind of increase, though not quite as remarkable, has spread across Canada, even to mid-sized cities.

Maybe I’m missing something, but the present programming schedule has just one continuing series – "Drop The Beat" – that would qualify as reflecting any diversity policy. But it’s on its last few programs, and then goodbye. "Riverdale" is gone. "North of 60" is long gone, except for an occasional movie special. Other CBC programs that did something to correct this dramatic imbalance have also passed into history or, at best, reruns.

When the CBC’s major prime time drama, the excellent and compelling Da Vinci’s Inquest, first aired three seasons ago, a CRTC commissioner lamented that the only visible minorities on it were dead Aboriginal prostitutes. Not quite true, it has a minority actor in a minor continuing role…but that’s in Vancouver, whose cultural make-up is changing perhaps even more rapidly than Toronto’s.

It’s time for me, like so many other speakers in the past couple of days, to cite the BBC as a leader in yet another field. The BBC has the Asian Network, a block of local radio channels based in the East and West Midlands, where there is a concentration of immigrants from South Asia. It has an Afro-Caribbean television programming unit based in Manchester, producing national programs. And it has the Asian Programming Unit based in Birmingham, also producing national television programs.

Both television diversity units have to compete with other BBC production centres. There’s no easy ride. Ideas for series go up against other national programs, with only the most promising chosen for air.

But there’s always another way in for good talent. In 1995 a group of Asian actors and comics pitched an idea for an Asian sketch show to the BBC. Instead of a script they put on a live performance in a BBC studio. They called it "Peter Sellers is Dead," signaling that British comedy no longer needed a white comedian – however brilliant – to sport an artificial tan and imitate an Asian accent. [Now you know where I got the idea for the title I discarded.] They were funny enough to get a radio show called "Goodness Gracious Me." Avid Peter Sellers fans might recognize the reference to the film in which Sellers, doing his Indian shtick, cavorted with Sophia Loren.

Two years later the BBC transferred the show to TV – where it became an instant hit. It was so funny the media celebrated the birth of "Asian comedy" in Britain. The Times of London published a glowing editorial, ranking it alongside "comedy classics such as ‘Yes, Minister’ and ‘Fawlty Towers.’" It won awards, including the British equivalent of an Emmy for Best New Comedy. The cast took the show on a nationwide tour, the kind of tour normally reserved for the venerable "Coronation Street." Mainstream, indeed – eighty per cent of its audience is white, even though its main comedic device is role reversal – ‘taking the mickey’ out of whites. For instance, in one sketch a white office worker tries in vain to get his Indian colleagues to say his long name correctly. Perhaps the best-loved sketch is called "Going Out for an English." That’s a reversal of the British passion for curry, as in "Let’s go out for an Indian." In the sketch drunken Asians go to the so-called Mountbatten restaurant in Bombay, harass the white waiter and demand…the blandest food. The show also mocks South Asians. One sketch pits two mothers escalating their bragging battle about wonderful sons to Olympian heights.

When you can mock both the natives and your own "new immigrant" society and make people love it, that shows how confident South Asians are about their place in British society.

Two other points that tell you what a success it’s been. First, several British police forces have asked for permission to use the show to teach race relations awareness. Far more important, one of the show’s defiant rallying cries echoes daily in playgrounds and offices: "Kiss my chuddies." Translate that as freely as you wish.

On a visit to Britain I talked with Paresh Solanki, who is in charge of the national Asian programming unit. He said initially the unit had to work at establishing itself as more than what the British call "quota programming."

But with their journalism, their documentaries and their drama successes they’re now in demand within the BBC. Solanki says: "Prestigious producers now ask to work with us because they know we’re not a ghetto unit, we have a solid track record. ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ represented a breakthrough for the unit into the mainstream." His group has people from seven or eight racial backgrounds working together and competing against other production units.

So, a risk-taking program, a risk-taking public broadcaster. It can pay off. Back to the BBC’s director-general, Greg Dyke. In the speech I quoted from earlier he also said the BBC’s record on portrayal of minorities is not bad but could be better. Admitting a shortcoming is the first step, and he went much farther.

Dyke said the internal culture of the BBC has still to recognize and fully understand multi-cultural Britain… "a culture that is still rooted in another, earlier Britain." In programming, he said: "We need a new model that reflects today’s world – that sees the valued contribution of all peoples to shaping today’s Britain." Once again I ask you to substitute CBC and Canada.

And here’s Dyke’s major promise: "Change must start from the top and this will be one of the priorities I’ve set for myself and the new management team."

I was hoping Robert Rabinovitch would be here today so I could look right at him and say: "Go ahead, Bob, you’re president. If you say ‘Do it,’ it will be done. If you tell CBC producers and your production partners it must happen, it will. It doesn’t cost a cent, and you know its time has come."

I say it doesn’t cost a cent. Because I’m not advocating the CBC start special production units. I know there’s no budget for that. I’m asking for WILL, clear presidential decree in this case. At the Montreal Gazette and the Toronto Star they said "We must have diversity" and it began, and it’s kept going by just one senior person in each newspaper. So if Bob says "Do it," and that clear message is sent down the line and monitored, it will happen. It doesn’t take a new bureaucracy. It takes WILL.

But one last note. My title: "I’d not thought of it that way before." On day one of this forum we heard from Adrian Blake of McKinsey’s survey of public broadcasters that risk-taking and innovation spur competitors to similarly stretch themselves, with an overall improvement in quality.

‘Goodness Gracious Me’s’ success has already encouraged other channels and other productions to expand their own diversity programming. The Guardian newspaper in Britain calls these efforts ghetto-busting. The successful private Channel 4 in Britain has set aside "not less than three hours a week" of multicultural programming, some of it in peak time.

And appearing on BBC radio already and touted for a transfer to TV is what’s being dubbed the next "Goodness Gracious Me," called "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie." It’s produced by Ash Attalla, who is in a wheelchair but certainly not hampered by it. His program sets out to raise a laugh from disability. Now that’s taking a risk. Apparently, a mix of able-bodied and disabled actors work around themes connected to disability or broadened to not fitting in – being different.

Attalla says it’s intended to be a mainstream show and good comedy in its own right. He says: "I’ve no axe to grind. If any good comes from the series, I hope people will think: ‘I’d not thought of it like that before.’"

Isn’t that the essence of all good drama? To earn the response: "I’d not thought of it that way before."

Think about it…Canadian diversity embraces a gloriously simple message:

There are unheard voices well worth hearing.

There are untold stories well worth telling.

More Canadians will watch if they see people like themselves playing the kind of roles that they live in today’s Canada.