Britain's best-loved television programmes still fall short of representing Asians new research reveals today. Commissioned by the CRE (Commission for Racial Equality), the survey analysed the top ten programmes from each of the five main UK channels by audience size. It examined numbers of visible ethnic minority faces on screen and how they were portrayed.

A total of 204 programmes in main genres were surveyed. This included

• Quiz and Game Shows (17% of programmes) including Who Wants to be a Millionaire? They Think Its All Over and The Weakest Link.
• Documentaries (16% of programmes) included Pet Rescue and Murder Detectives.
• Soap Operas (14% of programmes) included EastEnders and Coronation Street.
• Consumer programmes (9%) included The Antiques Roadshow and Charlie's Wildlife Garden.
• Police and Detective (6%), such as Heartbeat, Comedy (5%) and Contemporary Drama (5%) were the remaining predominant genres. Many of the remaining programmes were films.

This sample must be considered to represent the blockbuster programmes on television: the total combined audience for these 204 programmes was 1,156.54 million viewing experiences.

Researchers found that people of Asian, Chinese and other ethnic minority backgrounds are pitifully sparse in British TV programmes and serials. Black people fared better and appeared on television more than their actual numbers in the population - 3.7% of all participants compared to 2.1% in population statistics.

Asian people (including Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and 'other Asian') were the most under represented. Compared with the real world, where they account for 3.7% of the population, they were almost invisible on television at just 0.9% of UK TV programme participants (or 1% if visitors are included).

Interestingly Mixed parentage people have been estimated at 0.4% of the real world in census updates of Great Britain and appear at the same frequency in UK programming (0.4%).

Ethnic minorities were also eight times less likely to contribute to everyday subjects such as gardening, cookery, hobbies and other lifestyle interests. Apart from the occasional cookery contribution, ethnic minorities were almost invisible in this area despite the fact that curry is acknowledged at the nation's favourite dish

Commenting on the research, CRE Chairman Gurbux Singh said: "Programmes like Eastenders and Coronation Street regularly attract around 17 million viewers each. Yet the appearance of ethnic minority characters during the four weeks sampled was patchy and inconsistent. Considering that one programme is based in London and the other in Manchester, both cities with large ethnic minority populations, it is surprising that their portrayal in storylines is not more consistent. In contrast, Channel 4 Television's Brookside, set in Liverpool, did manage a consistent showing during the four weeks."

Asians consigned to B-rated shows

Other facts to emerge from the research found that ethnic minority participants were far less likely to enjoy major roles, and their appearances were more likely to be through vox-pop sound bites or very brief interviews.

The marginalisation of ethnic minorities suggested by the above is also seen in the subject of contribution to factual programming. In total 167 subjects were coded for ethnic minority participants and 199 for the White base sample. However, more than a quarter (26%) of contributions made by ethnic minority participants were either coded as 'personal experiences' or 'subject too brief/no substance' compared with only 11 per cent of the white base sample.

These figures might be taken to imply trivialisation of ethnic minority contributions. But overall, most measures did not reveal the kind of overt examples of prejudice against ethnic minorities claimed by some. "While there are very encouraging signs that the number of ethnic minority faces on television is rising, there is clearly some way to go. And for some programme makers, a very long way to go before they can call their output truly representative of the British TV audience" added Gurbux Singh.

But there are more of them

The Home Secretary, Jack Straw, recently stated that he would not be surprised if the forthcoming census revealed that 10% of Great Britain's population was now an ethnic minority. He may be premature in this, but the very youthful profile of ethnic minority groups (only 8% are over 60 compared with 21% of White people in Great Britain), indicates that this will certainly be the reality before too long.

The report did not examine the impact of paid digital ethnic channels such as Zee TV, B4U and Star Plus that have seen a phenomenal growth in this country.

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Click here to read the Executive Summary of the Research.
Visit the CRE site to download the full research report.
Prepared for the Commission for Racial Equality by The Communications Research Group