Channel 4, Gritty Talent Team for Diversity Drive

Publish date: 2024-09-08

DIVERSITY

U.K. broadcaster Channel 4 is teaming with TV talent company Gritty Talent to help independent production companies build more diverse senior teams. The move in the wake of the broadcaster’s new commissioning guidelines published in June, which require all the indies it works with to have ethnically diverse as well as disabled off screen talent on production teams, with the new framework coming into play Aug. 1. The requirements are part of the legacy of Channel 4’s Black to Front Project.

Gritty Talent will define where the skills gaps and talent shortages exist across the U.K. in specific genres, and they will then help to identify the suitable talent. Genres under the spotlight first will be news and current affairs, factual entertainment and documentaries. The work will be supported by Channel 4’s strategic training and development initiative 4Skills, which focuses on supporting talent from diverse and disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.

Continuing its Black To Front Project work Channel 4 has set several new commissions including “The Big Breakfast,” “Unapologetic” and “Crazy Rich.”

LABEL

Fremantle‘s Thames is launching factual entertainment label Upstream, with Neale Simpson in the newly created role of creative director. Upstream is designed to allow Thames to diversify its slate and expand its client base as Thames looks to broaden its outreach to other genres. Simpson previously spent a decade at Banijay and was most recently creative director at Fizz and RDF, where he led on development, operations and executive produced series across both labels, with titles including: ITV’s “Tipping Point,” BBC Two’s “Lightning,” E4’s “Shipwrecked,” BBC Three’s “Fight Dirty,” “Craig and Bruno’s Great British Road Trips” for ITV and “The Crystal Maze” for C4 and Nickelodeon in the U.S.

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