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U.K. culture secretary Lisa Nandy has used her first appearance at the annual Royal Television Society conference to castigate the TV industry for being “centralized” and “exclusive.”
“For all of the efforts made by many of you in this room, it should shame us all that television is one of the most centralised and exclusive industries in the U.K.,” she told the conference, which included TV industry executives including Big Talk CEO Kenton Allen and PACT CEO John McVey. “Because who tells the story determines the story that is told.”
In her speech, Nandy urged executives to commission content “from every part of the country – towns and villages as well as major cities – why not?”
“Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. And if you’ve moved jobs and people and content, but the heads of departments and commissioners are still in an office in London, do something about it.”
Nandy also pointed out the low proportion of working class people in TV, a theme that was also covered at the Edinburgh TV Festival last month in writer James Graham’s keynote speech.
“Frankly, if you don’t know why the film industry is so attracted to the beauty of Sunderland, or why the arts sector is buzzing in Bradford, or the potential to TV of the Welsh Valleys, it is most likely because you’ve never been there,” Nandy said. “And you have no right to call yourself a public service broadcaster.”
Earlier in the conference Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon discussed the difficulty of getting staff to move to Leeds after the broadcaster moved its headquarters there from London in 2020. Mahon said many of the staff had roots in London, making it hard to move their families across the country.
Nandy, who was appointed to the role of culture secretary in July following Labour’s win at the general election, is the twelfth person to have held the role in the past eleven years.
She is the MP for Wigan, in the North of England and has never worked in the media sector, although her mother was a television producer.
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