Carol Vorderman: Alternative MacTaggart | Edinburgh TV Festival 2024
Words Spoken by Carol Vorderman at Edinburgh TV Festival 2024
Launched in 1997, the Alternative MacTaggart provokes debate in the industry from different viewpoints. This year’s Alternative MacTaggart was delivered by TV legend, Carol Vorderman. Her 25 minute address was followed by an interview with presenter Charlene White. You can also watch the full session on our YouTube.
Hello everyone, Carol Vorderman reporting for Alternative MacTaggart duty after 42 years on screen hosting for all major TV channels at some point or other, on the first ever show on Channel 4 and about 10,000 shows since then, sacked by the BBC - twice, pain in the arse, lover of parties, post-menopausal, and I stand here in anger and without apology. The subject - very dear to my heart, and my own background is Television, Snobbery and London.
“It’s WHO you know - not WHAT you know” in television.
An industry dominated by nepotism, run by the upper middle class. Not my words but those from Channel 4 News in May when it revealed that just 8% of film and TV workers are from working class backgrounds, the lowest in a decade, yes it’s getting worse. And by the way, most of those who manage to push through into the ranks have to be based in London.
A “shameless” industry? To be discussed.
If there is a ‘we’, then let’s be open about what ‘we’ are. Some data:
According to the first report of its kind by Sage Journals recently, here’s the checklist to get into the creative industries as a whole if you’re from London and you’re born into an upper middle class (managerial) family, and particularly if you’re born with the one thing which grants you greater talent and more insight and creative juices, if you have the one thing above all other things, a PENIS, it means you have more than four times the opportunity of entry (excuse the expression) than all others.
Much as you may not like it, the truth is that being a part of television nowadays is akin to getting on in the Conservative party. The truth is, your family background, where you went to school and if you live and are active in London – these are the three factors which will largely determine whether or not you even get your foot through the door, let alone rise through the ranks. Yes - our industry is an industry of snobbery - regional snobbery, class snobbery and educational snobbery – and don’t even get me started on the political issues.
Really Carol? You’re up there lecturing us on what we think and who we are? Who the hell do you think you are, woman?
Well in this Alternative MacTaggart, I’ll tell you who I am, give you the facts about our industry and most importantly, the responsibility this industry holds, both directly and indirectly, for the state we find our country in, including in part the recent riots. And how the increasing and enormous disconnect between working class people, about half of our population, who find our middle class TV sofas, our discussion shows, and particularly our political programmes awash with views given by those with acceptable accents of received pronunciation, the same faces talking to the same faces in the same conversations.
Those working class people feel they are not represented, their situation is not represented, the lack of opportunities and lack of money and jobs is not represented, and so where do they go - they go to social media in their droves. For the first time ever, a massive quarter of people in the UK are not watching broadcast television on a weekly basis and the annual rate of decline is so large it’s likely that within 5 years, less than half of the UK population will be with us at all.
The disconnect is real. FACT.
We live in a time when people have never felt more out of touch with those in power. Of those who could have registered (not all were registered) and voted in the general election in July, only 52% bothered to do so. And that was with the worst set of politicians in my lifetime, stories of corruption, party-gate, VIP PPE lane, the betting scandal, 3 prime ministers within a matter of months, the lettuce, the billionaire, the Liar in Chief, the tax dodging, the corruption – you would imagine that voters would turn up in their droves. But they didn’t.
Politicians out of touch? You betcha. The Westminster Bubble out of touch? Never more so. Television itself out of touch? We’ll come to the numbers shortly.
Social media – no longer the new kid, more like the badly behaved Uncle, has changed our society and its rules, and it is decimating our industry as we know it. And with good reason. What it gives everyone, in towns and cities outside the wealthy South East, the opportunity to do, is to see and hear views they recognise, in language they recognise. No longer is there the need to go through the filter of a producer, or a commissioning editor, or someone who has never been to my town or my city or my region, who has no idea how people like me live and the worries we have. I’ll go to Facebook or X or Insta or TikTok or the plethora of other platforms and there I will see myself and my life reflected.
I was born into poverty. Last year The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that moving up the social ladder in Britain has become harder than at any point in the last 50 years for children born into poor households.
More using foodbanks. More homeless. More in dire financial help. More more more having less, less, less.
They also found that what is important to upper middles is not important to working class people. I find it extraordinary that most in television think differently to our audience, it’s incomprehensible that there is this lack of true understanding. And it’s coming with a heavy price.
Let’s look at some numbers shall we? I like numbers – they tell us stories - differently perhaps to prose, but stories nonetheless. Television is in a mess. Care to argue? Survive to 2025 anyone? The Ofcom media numbers this year told the story of, not a gentle decline, but of the current decimation of broadcast television. The falling off the cliff. I’ll repeat the stats - at the current rate of decline of around 5-6% a year, it’s probable that within 5 years, before the next general election, only half of people in the UK will be watching broadcast telly at all. The 65+ age group stays firm. But, for 16-24 year olds, already less than half of them watch broadcast telly and the rate of drop off is huge. They use screens but they aren’t watching our output.
It’s an unholy spiral of decline.
Where do people now get their news? In the Reuters Institute report from June this year around three-quarters of people (73%) said they get their news online, compared with 50% for TV and just 14% for print. So why are we still doing the bloody newspaper reviews morning noon and night, and not social media reviews? Interest in news in the UK has almost halved since 2015. Trust in the news has fallen from 51% pre Brexit to just 36% now. The report stated that “those choosing to selectively avoid the news also often do so because they feel “powerless”.
Why?
Well, if I feel that you aren’t talking my language, you aren’t even thinking about me, I’ll go to social media where I can choose my own filter. People feel lost. They feel that the filter of their news, the filter through which they get their information is one which isn’t recognised by them. It’s your filter. And believe me, the filter of the privileged Londoner, particularly in the Westminster Bubble, is very different to that of a working class Northerner or a Welshie. I repeat - About half of Britain considers itself to have a working class background. And yet only 8% of those who get jobs in telly are from the same background. Funny that.
Creative Access published their new report in April this year entitled The Class Ceiling. The Conclusions:
74% within the industry agree it is harder for working-class people to land a role in the creative industries. 88% believe discrimination based on class is an issue across the UK.
Not only that, and herein possibly lies the rub: The upper middle classes, those who fundamentally run our industry, hold widely differing opinions about the situation of those with working class backgrounds, from those who are actually living it - the working class. Who thinks what?
The statement: Social mobility in the UK is easier than ever.
44% of upper middles think it’s true and only 16% of working-class think the same.
The statement: Those from the working class are rewarded equally for their work and contributions.
Only one in three, one third from the working-class say that’s true. But twice that, two thirds, 67% of upper-middles think it’s the case.
Are these opposing views simply made through a lack of understanding or is it deeper, is it that bluntly, television is now an industry of snobs?
Well, what’s the definition of a snob?
noun
1. a person who believes social position or wealth makes one person better than others
By that definition how many snobs are there in this room, is TV operating as a protection of the privileged for the privileged with a crumb thrown to the working class here and there, or is TV a land of equality of class, opportunity for all no matter what your background, an industry where talent alone forges through? What is it?
I would ask for hands up who considers themselves a snob? But of course nobody thinks that they are, just as nobody thinks they’re racist or sexist or fattist or ageist – but snobbery in this industry, as defined by keeping the jobs for the privileged few, is writ loud and clear. And now there is other media to challenge our status quo, the implications are bigger than ever before.
A little of my story:
I grew up in poverty, born in 1960 my parents split when I was 3 weeks old. Single parent family, four of us in a bedroom including my Mum. She had 5 part time jobs to put food on the table. Free school meals kid, absent father, we lived in and out of rented accommodation, mum and I even lived with Billy Smart’s Circus at one point, but there were people helping each other. Good people, as there are today.
From a small comprehensive school in North Wales I got to Cambridge age 17, free school meals kid in the 1970s, first one from my whole area to get to Oxford or Cambridge even as a tourist. I graduated age 20 in engineering – ah yes said the snobs, but you only got a third class degree – oh right. An early lesson for me in the views of the privileged. Absolutely no understanding of comp education, where your choice was so limited you hung on for dear life to every lesson you could. Crack on.
Once I’d graduated, Mum, a secretary, was homeless and living in student digs. I was living out of my car keeping down a job as a junior engineer. I had a boyfriend in Yorkshire, Mum and I found a cheap house in Leeds (she hadn’t been there before and only knew of the city through stories of the Yorkshire Ripper). Weeks later she saw an advert for a new show called Countdown on a brand new channel Channel 4 to be made at Yorkshire Television just a mile or so from where we newly lived in Leeds. Unknown to me, Mum wrote in to the Countdown producer John Meade and forged my signature, then told me what she’d done and the rest as they say.
But they were different times, far better representation of the regions, lots of local shows being made by local people for local people, there were TV powerhouses in the regions Granada, Yorkshire Television, Central, a long list. I was trained up as a researcher and then a producer, worked all over the country on a multitude of shows behind the scenes as well as on camera. With the big move of most of ITV’s output to London 20ish years ago, the shaving of BBC local output, came greater inequality. Of course it did.
In 2024, consider this scenario for a young Carol or David right now, one who is growing up in poverty in the North, and on free school meals. This young person would graduate with massive student debt. Not a chance in hell of buying a house, or even renting. They’re especially bright, but know nobody in television. No lack of talent or intelligence, a raw story, a hunger and a fire in their belly. Compare to a privately educated child who went to the same university as the poor kid, but lives at home in London, speaks the language of the seniors in television with the same voice and accent as you, knows people you know, knows the system you know.
Oh wait, there’s an internship? Who even gets onto the shortlist? How can the poor bright hungry kid even get close? What does this industry do other than throw crumbs to those outside of it?
We talk high mindedly of speaking truth to power, but put down those who do. If you’re posh, you’re courageous. If you aren’t posh, you’re a troublemaker.
We congratulate ourselves for setting some offices outside of London in Bristol and Leeds, woop dee doo. Why isn’t the whole channel based there? What possible reason is there to not level up properly? It’s truly the best thing we could do.
Regional snobbery is rife. Our industry is now more heavily weighted to London than ever before? Why? Here come the excuses: “Well, we get the right politicians in the studio, we get the stars… really?” I’m bored to tears of seeing a shot of Big Bloody Ben. The reason trotted out:
“It’s indicative of the seat of power which is in London”, but to most of us outside of London it is a sign of ‘snobbery’ – you might not see it that way, but believe me, many do. A constant reminder of privilege and the corruption of power. The answer to most questions must always be London. Meetings: London. HQ: London. Subject: London and the Tube. Jeez, can nobody think more creatively than that?
Population of Greater London officially stands at 9.75 million people. Guess what? The population of England alone stands at 56 million. So that’s 46 million people in England alone who don’t live in London. We fail within the industry to represent our population. The traditional triumvirate of newspapers, broadcast and politics has been exploded. Audiences are disengaging, they’re going elsewhere, the trust is reducing, so at some point very soon the growing question – why should I pay my BBC licence fee? – will be answered by an unfriendly politician very firmly and then backed by the majority of the public.
Let’s bring it back to this: trust.
Trust in politics is lower than ever; trust in newspapers – even Wikipedia won’t accept many including the Daily Mail as a reliable data source. Trust in broadcast is in doubt.
It would be remiss of me not to mention that trust in the BBC is declining. The 2022 Reuters Institute Digital News Report found that trust in BBC News had fallen 20 percentage points over the 5 years from 2018, and distrust in the BBC had grown from 11% to 26%. But really is it any wonder that is how people feel after so many controversial decisions by BBC Management: the handling of the Huw Edwards affair, the ludicrous and catastrophic suspension of Gary Lineker after referencing a tweet by Suella Braverman, the enormous pension pots, the utter refusal to resign by former BBC Chairman Richard Sharp until he was effectively forced to stand down, the list goes on…
Politics, arrogance, snobbery, disillusionment. They are all inextricably linked.
The rich and powerful corrupting politics. The upper middles taking broadcast for themselves. The increasingly absurd right wing newspaper headlines being promoted by political programmes.
What has this got to do with class? Everything. Literally everything. After 14 years of austerity and lying by the privileged political class, this country is in an absolute mess and the TV industry must accept part of the responsibility for that too, including the riots.
We used to be the message makers, the ones who tried to determine the conversation of the country and how responsible have we been with those messages? Not very, in many ways. In some cases, some might say reckless. A few examples: the normalising of Nigel Farage on I’m A Celebrity, “oh Nigel is just Nigel, nothing to do with me”, what planet is that person on who thinks that?
Who next?
The Tufton Street mob, opaquely funded right wing lobbying groups, appearing as so-called independent voices so many times on BBC political shows they’ve probably got their own dressing rooms, (note that the disgraced BBC Chairman had been a director of the right wing Centre for Policy Studies, address 57 Tufton St. Just saying.). You so often give credibility to those who deserve none at all.
When people feel they have no voice, as disconnected as they do. There is a vacuum. And who floods in to fill the vacuum? The far right?
You cannot be an industry with the power to create the conversation and then claim that nothing is your responsibility – the two simply don’t add up.
I say none of this with malice, I say it all as a woman who has benefited enormously from over 40 years in the television industry, as a workaholic and a grafter who’s played her cards. But 40 years ago there were cards to play in a manner which might seem impossible today.
I’m now an old bird with an iPhone who reached out in the last two years to people who felt they had no political voice. It worked, not through our TV screens, but through social media. The audience wanting political stories that you wouldn’t find on main stream media was huge. Our tactical voting website Stop The Tories, run on no money and all of us volunteers had almost two million postcodes typed in, with millions more listening to that data. All from nothing, it cost nothing, and it was powerful and I’m proud to have been a small part of that change.
But those bad actors who say that the mainstream media is lying, millions now believing the far-right playbook, those bad actors are manipulating the fact that mainstream media may not speak the language of the working class. They are the bad actors in the mess, but we are giving them that gateway. We bear a responsibility for not giving the working class a voice within the industry and that has its knock on effects whether you like it or not.
I hope the whole of this year’s TV Festival will really make you consider your own perceptions and that you ask yourself questions about class and opportunity, and the responsibility you hold in the future of this country. I hope from now you get out more around the UK, not just to Edinburgh once a year, I hope you deliberately hold meetings in different towns around the country – because otherwise, and sadly, this industry will only be heading one way. And for someone who was the first woman to speak on the new Channel 4 all those years ago when hope was huge and our industry expansion was celebrated, I hope that we can reverse the damaging tide of privilege.
Until the next election in 2029 with what will probably be a centrist Labour versus a far-right party, I and others will be fighting till our last breath to save us from a result so bad, it could lead to unimaginable consequences for you and your families. You still have the power to influence that for the betterment of all by treating those from the working class with more respect. I remain unconvinced that the changes needed will happen right now but I hope that they do. Please prove me wrong.
For now, here endeth a career suicide note in verbal form from a working class kid who’d like to thank those who helped her in the past.
Your names are etched on my heart and with gratitude.
As for being menopausal and without apology, cheers to that!
Together we’re stronger.
Thank you.