This week, CBS announced that it will implement new equity targets for reality TV programs starting in 2021. This means that shows like Survivor, The Amazing Race, Love Island, and Big Brother will contain at least 50% contestants who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Steps are also being made behind the camera too, with 25% of CBS’s annual unscripted budget going to projects created by BIPOC producers. Back in June, CBS made a similar announcement about scripted TV, with targets for at least 40% BIPOC writers in every series (CBS Steps Up With New Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives for Unscripted Shows).

Movies too are being looked at differently. Earlier this year, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the group that oversees the Academy Awards (aka the Oscars), announced new inclusion standards for award eligibility. Factors like onscreen representation, creative leadership, story themes and narratives, and industry access and opportunities, will be factored into decisions about which films are eligible to be named the best motion pictures starting in 2024 (The Oscars Will Add a Diversity Requirement for Eligibility).

Critics of these measures say that instituting “quotas” limits authentic diversity and tokenizes individuals of color, while industry leaders point to persistent disparities in representation and longstanding exclusion of BIPOC creators and artists as the need for increased oversight.

What do you think? Why do you suppose inclusion standards like these are being implemented in 2020? What are some benefits this might bring, and what could be some negative effects? Should studios implement such equity targets?