Seite - 107 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Leen d’Haenens | Whither Cultural Diversity on the Dutch TV Screen? 107 television is classified as “white”, two out of ten as “non-white”. In the latter category we find slightly more people of Mediterranean and Asiatic descent on public channels, whereas commercial channels have a slightly larger percentage of people with a darker skin (“blacks”). The reason for this difference is that commercial channels have a larger number of American films and series, in which African Americans are more numerous. The Diversity Monitor therefore mainly traced the differences between the public and commercial channels at the level of the program genre. Women are underrepresented in sports items mainly, and in other programs they are presented as common citizens, cast in “softer” roles or invited to discuss social themes. The most balanced male/female ratio is found in children’s programs and in entertainment and fiction. The age structure of the Dutch population is best reflected in children’s programs, which are also more “colourful” than other genres. With respect to the representation of black people, fiction has an above-average score, but that is due to fiction programs from the US. Information and children’s programs present an above-average number of people of Mediterranean origin. With respect to ethnicity in the various genres there are few differences between commercial and public channels: the information and educational programs of the public channels are the only ones that are slightly more colourful. An examination of the relation between ethnicity and the appearance of individuals produces a striking finding: More than half of the white people (55.7%) appearing on screen take the floor several times or regularly, while most non-white individuals (56.9%) are given only one chance to speak. Yet, migrants are not more explicitly presented as spokespersons for their ‘own’ group than individuals belonging to the native population. Just like other groups, the non-white group is strongest in subjects related to art, culture and entertainment (18.3%). Apart from these three subjects they are mainly associated with the multicultural society (11.7%) as well as terrorism and war (10.7%). The public-service channel in particular mainly highlights migrants in the context of the multicultural society and integration. The commercial channels, by contrast, present people of colour mainly in programs dealing with art, culture, and entertainment. In fiction programs the main activities of white as well as of non-white characters involve work or are distributed over work and home. Thanks to the combination of our content analysis with continuous audience measurement figures of the programs under study, we were able to assess the demographic composition of the audience in terms of age and gender. A striking example: for non-fiction programs, the composition of the audience (i.e., percentage of women) correlates with the gender of the presenters (i.e., percentage of women in the presenters’ team) as well as with the gender of the other actors figuring in the program (i.e., percentage of