TVB has established a DEI Task Force with the following mission:
- Share best practices among TVB member groups
- Foster collaboration between members
- Advocate for industry-wide efforts
What Is Workplace Diversity?
An inclusive workforce consisting of a range of people from various gender, racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds and various lifestyles, experience, and interests, working together in an environment conducive to belonging.
Diverse Voices Video Series
In these short videos, industry leaders from traditionally underrepresented communities share their experiences with professional development, including insights for candidates from diverse backgrounds looking to excel. View all the videos.
Featured speakers include:
- Ron Bartholomew, VP & General Manager, WNDU-TV & Digital, Gray Television
- Kevin Beard, General Sales Manager,
WSIL-TV, Allen Media Group - Rich Espinoza, VP, Syndication Sales, Western Region, Sony Pictures Television
- Michelle Robinson Harper, Vice President & General Manager, WBTV, Gray Television
- Jacques Holbrook, Local Sales Manager, WJRT-TV, Allen Media Group
- Margarita Red-Horse, Region Human Resources Director, Nexstar
- Valerie Russell, VP & General Manager, WTVY-TV, Gray Television
- Omesh Somaru, Director of Sales, Cox Media Group
- Brandin Stewart, SVP & Regional Manager, Nexstar Media Group
DEI Toolkit
The DEI toolkit provides resources to help diversify teams and support acquisition, retention and belonging. Research, case studies, videos and courses demonstrate how diversity drives business outcomes, how to diversify teams, find a diverse pool of candidates and measure efforts.
DEI Industry Initiatives in the News
TV Tech Summit: Expert Advice on Building More Diverse Tech Teams
As TV stations, media and entertainment companies report difficulties in replacing a generation of retiring engineers and technologists, the recent TV Tech Summit featured a session focusing on the importance of building more diverse tech teams that featured experts offering practical advice on finding the next generation of talent.
NAB Leadership Foundation Receives Knight Foundation Grant
The National Association of Broadcasters Leadership Foundation (NABLF) has announced that the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has provided a $250,000 grant for the organization’s broadcast industry recruitment efforts. The grant from the Knight Foundation will enable NABLF to bolster its collegiate programs, provide more internships, increase diversity in the broadcast industry and conduct research to advance the broadcast industry’s career development initiatives.
Nexstar’s Workforce Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Nexstar’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council helps promulgate initiatives designed to focus on inclusion and equity for all. This year Nexstar continues to focus on gender equality, mental health initiatives, bringing in more veterans and ensuring our locations are accessible for all. They are also focused on health and wellness. In the past year, Nextar has increased the number of recognized holidays and personal days. They’ve added parental leave, healthcare coverage for transgender employees, and the addition of MLK Jr. Day off. They are dedicated to making sure that they have community involvement and seek representation at all levels of the organization. Nexstar’s ESG report is located at https://www.nexstar.tv/ under Corporate Social Responsibility.
Univision’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Campaigns
Univision launched a campaign in response to social inequities – aiming to ”unlearn, learn and educate” their colleagues and community. It starts at home – “Comienza En Casa.” The campaign addressed discrimination based on race, sexual orientation and disability. Univision continues to focus on recruiting Hispanic job seekers and has the nation’s largest Spanish language job board. In March they focused on Women’s History Month with Celebración del Mes de la Mujer messaging, reinforcing their commitment by forming the Women’s Leadership Council and partnering with the media and marketing advocacy organization She Runs It.
CMG has implemented several initiatives to help drive their efforts towards creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce. The “Hiring With Diversity In Mind” playbook equips hiring managers with strategies and actions for promoting diverse, equitable, and inclusive recruiting, interviewing, and hiring practices. With an emphasis on underrepresented talent, CMG created a mentoring program for sales leaders and mid-level sales employees, while enrolling high-potential employees in the McKinsey Leadership Academy for Black, Hispanic, and AAPI employees. In 2022, CMG established the Jovita Moore Scholarship Fund and Internship with the National Association of Black Journalists.
CMG is focused on their external approach to DE+I, as well. In 2020, following the senseless murder of George Floyd, CMG launched their “CMG Gets Real” campaign which actively cultivates and airs community-based conversations about race and injustices. CMG understands that DE&I is a collective responsibility; there are DE+I Councils represented within each of CMG’s 15 Markets and an Executive DE+I Council to help design and support all strategic, corporate initiatives.
GroupM Pledges 5% of Spending Will Go to Minority-Owned Media
Media buying agency GroupM said it is pledging to allocate 5% of its spending on media outlets owned by or focused on Black, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islanders and LGBTQ+ Americans.
Gray Media Training Center (GMTC)
This revolutionary media training internship program located in Jackson, MS will prepare students for today’s evolving media environment, while simultaneously improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in media. The center will educate and train students who attend Mississippi colleges and universities, with a focus on Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the state. Students who participate in the Center’s programs will learn today’s best practices for broadcast and digital journalism. They also will receive hands-on training in production, sales, operations, IT, engineering, coding, and marketing. The program runs for 14 weeks.
Allen Media Chooses Daryl v. Atkinson as Winner of Inaugural ‘theGrio Heroes’ Award
Allen Media Group’s news, sports, and entertainment multi-media platform theGrio has chosen its first recipient of its TheGrio Heroes initiative: Daryl V. Atkinson. Atkinson is co-founder and co-director of Forward Justice, a Durham, N.C.-based nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. Atkinson was the first Second Chance Fellow for the U.S. Department of Justice and was recognized by the White House as a “Reentry and Employment Champion of Change.”
Byron Allen: Too Much Talk, Not Enough Action on Advertising Equity
The founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group said two years of talk from big brands and their agencies had yielded little progress on the effort to convince advertisers to devote more of their budgets to Black-owned media companies. He called for more sponsorships to help startups and denounced the practice of shifting spending from Black-targeted programming to Black-owned media.
Hearst Launches Level Up Ventures for Black and Latinx-Led Startups, Modeled on Its Hearstlab Accelerator for Female Founders
Hearst is expanding its early-stage investment strategy with an increased focus on underrepresented founders and entrepreneurs with the launch of Level Up Ventures, a new unit focusing on Black and Latinx-led businesses. Level Up Ventures provides cash investment and services to tech-enabled startups led by Black and Latinx founders in pre-seed or seed funding stages to accelerate their growth as they introduce products and services in a range of market segments.
Diversity and Inclusion in Advertising: A Call to Action at ANA’s Multicultural Summit
Paramount’s newly released “The Industry In Progress Report,” showcased the significant decline in the representation of Black and Hispanic individuals in advertising. Black representation decreased from 16.5% to 14.3%, while Hispanic representation dropped from 9% to 5%. The ANA understands the importance of multicultural advertising and held its twenty-fifth Multicultural Marketing and Diversity Conference in October. This hybrid event served as a platform to explore effective strategies for reaching multicultural markets and to engage in critical discussions about industry challenges.
A Diversity Report for the Advertising/Marketing Industry
This ANA and Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) report reveals that there has been an increase in the ethnic diversity of the marketing teams of ANA member companies — the most significant growth of ethnic diversity in the five-year history of this report. The overall ethnic skew of the marketing/advertising industry is now 32.3% diverse, up from 30.8 % a year ago.
Workers Disappointed by DEI Efforts
Sixty-two percent of employees rate corporations’ anti-racism efforts as “mediocre or worse,” according to a new Edelman report on business and social justice. More women (65%) than men (58%) believe companies are falling short of their commitments, and most people who hold this belief do so because their DEI programs are under- or unfunded.
Group Black & NBCU Partner To Accelerate Inclusive Investment
Group Black, a media company with what it calls the largest collective of Black-owned media, and NBCUniversal have formed an exclusive partnership “aimed to amplify Black-led content.” Through Black Excellence 365, NBCUniversal has “curated a collection of Black-led and diverse content for exclusive marketing and sale by Group Black, growing full-year advertising opportunity and investment in the Black-owned ecosystem.”
Stations Telling Diverse Stories With Sponsored Segments From Burst, Horizon
Horizon Media is working with Burst Premium Network to deliver local stories highlighting diversity, equity and inclusion in crowdsourced segments using user-generated content. The Burst Premium Network segments air three times a week on each station and are designed to line up with commemorations like Black History Month, Pride, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Hispanic Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month.
Contact Us
Complete the contact form selecting inquiry type, ‘DEI Task Force.’
Members
| Name | Title | Organization |
|---|---|---|
| Sharel Bend | Director, Human Resources | Gray Television |
| Andy Carington | Chief Legal Officer | Standard Media |
| Caroline Chambers | Sr. Director, DEI | Graham Media Group |
| Kate Doty | Director, Talent & Team Development | Morgan Murphy Media |
| Mica Hansen | SVP, Director Political Sales, Chair, Locality DEI Committee | Locality |
| Zack Hernandez | SVP & General Sales Manager US Syndication Sales | Sony Pictures Television |
| Tanya Holmes | Director, Human Resources & Talent Development | ABC Owned TV Stations |
| Yasmine Osborn | Diversity & Inclusion Director | Hearst Television |
| Michael Spiesman | VP, Sales & Marketing | Allen Media Group |
| Courtney Williams | Chief Diversity Officer | Nexstar |
| Danyelle S.T. Wright | VP, Employment & Labor Law, Chief Diversity Officer | Scripps |
| Roberto Yanez | Northeast Regional Manager / President, General Manager, Univision New York | Univision |