Eastenders is 'too white'...

[max_tranmere]

A woman called Diane Coyle, the acting head of the BBC Trust, has made a speech saying that Eastenders is twice as white as the real East End. This has got a lot of media coverage today. So those left-wing, latte-sipping, Guardian reading, media people have got on the case about this. No doubt more changes will be made to Eastenders now, a show that pulls in many less viewers than it used to. I think it is wrong for this woman to say what she does, people from inner-cities who are used to a mix of races would be comfortable with the show becoming more reflective of how inner London looks, but the majority of Eastenders viewers are from around the UK and they would not be used to a multicultural set-p - therefore if they made Eastenders minority white, as this woman seems to want, even more viewers would jump ship. Here is an article about it, one of many that has appeared today:

[spider]

Don't know about too white, I do know that it's just shite.

[Gentleman]

If eastenders reflected the truth you'd find UKIP getting more votes as London would be revealed as the foreign land it has become.

[Arginald Valleywater]

Personally I find a lot of the Muslim channels are rather biased....now will Ofcom or a politician speak against them....errr nope.

[MrTickle]

I used to work as an extra on Eastenders. I know that the agency that supplies the extras was always being pressured to supply more people from ethnic minorities, like a 50/50 ratio.

[cockneygeezer2009]

Typical tabloid trash making a mountain of out of a molehill and bastardising a simple statement.

From the Daily Mail:
She said: 'The Audience Council figures suggested that there are almost twice as many white people living in fictional E20 as in real life E17, while the population of EastEnders tends to be younger than their real life counterparts and more likely to have been born in the UK.' She said it would be 'daft' for the show to be a 'perfect replica' of the real world, but said it was 'important to ask whether the BBC can do more in its popular output to provide an authentic portrayal of life in modern Britain'.

Nothing statement unless you're a bigot who's got their racist knickers in a twist. Who watches Eastenders anyway?

[max_tranmere]

The show is not as good as it was in the very early days, but has got a bit better than it was when it was awful 8 or 10 years back. I still watch it, but I think 4 shows a week is too much. I remember when it was on only twice a week, and I preferred that.

[max_tranmere]

If people look at politics in the real east end, there is a lot of corruption that goes on. Tower Hamlets, that very heavily Bangladeshi area, has had cases of people picketing polling stations saying people shouldn't vote in UK-wide elections, people corruptly fiddling the postal-vote thing where one person submits numerous votes, many for people who don't live in the UK or have died - and they have also elected a local mayor, who stood as a independent, just because he looks like them. Politics there is a farce! I live on the other side of London, thankfully.

[max_tranmere]

I find it very odd that there is a BBC Asians Network. Does that mean that if a highly-skilled and experienced TV presenter who was white, black, or of Greek or Turkish background, applied for a job there they would be turned away? Probably. And no one would say: "racist, racist!". BUT if someone turned down a minority person for a job on a major national network, because of their look, you'd never hear the end of it. Highly inconsistent, and very unfair.

[max_tranmere]

I can well believe that. Eastenders should reflect the UK, not the eastend, and that is because the fans are from all over the UK. If we had regional programming, you could only watch programmes in a particular small region of Britain, and nowhere else, and Eastenders was JUST shown in the eastend (crazy notion, but bare with me) then it would be ok to have the show reflecting the region's make-up and have the show featuring only a small percentange of the cast as white people. But as it has fans nation wide, they want to see it looking like Britain does, namely mostly white with some minority characters too. If they did what these Guardian-reading, nouveau-riche, lefties want then it would not reflect the nation and the show would lose vast amounts of viewers.