'Creative diversity’: UK public service broadcasting after multiculturalism

Abstract

Through a critical review of recent literature and policy concepts, this article puts together history and analysis to consider the relationship between race and UK public service broadcasting. Building on earlier work that recognizes a paradigmatic shift from multiculturalism to cultural diversity, this article identifies a third phase, “creative diversity.” Creative diversity provides a further incremental depoliticization of race in public service broadcasting contexts. Here, ideas of quality and creativity are foregrounded over (structural) questions of (in)equality or the positive recognition of social and cultural difference. The article situates the rise of creative diversity alongside parallel developments in the “crisis of multiculturalism,” UK equality legislative frameworks, and creative industries policy. It is argued that creative diversity shifts the paradigm of the multicultural problem (in public service broadcasting), enables the “marketization” of television and multiculture, and ultimately continues to safeguard the interests of public service broadcasting.