• by Wayne Friedman , March 2, 2007

LAS VEGAS -- A panel on diversity at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' media conference concluded there has been insufficient progress--either in staffing at media agencies or with the media itself.

"It's not a social issue--it's a business issue," said Eugene Morris, chairman/CEO of minority-focused marketing agency E. Morris Communications, who was moderating a panel at the conference.

Morris complained that little has changed in terms of executive diversity at media agencies over the years he has been in the business. "If I brought all the people of color together, we couldn't fill up the front row," he said, in reference to the room where the panel was being conducted. "So we have a lot to do."

Johnathan Rodgers, chief executive officer of TV One, a cable network that emphasizes African American programming, said this situation extends to the media itself. "For years, there was only one black channel: BET." But he added that during that time, there were multiple other sports, news and music channels launched. TVOne was launched just a few years ago, hoping to grab the middle-aged African American viewers that BET doesn't attract. Rodgers said the average age of a BET viewer is around 22 years old.

Rodgers said that apart from two African-American-focused shows on CW, there isn't much diversity on air. "The diversity of voice has to start at the top," he added. A couple of years ago Viacom bought out BET; for years, the network had been an African American-owned media business.

Monica Gadsby--CEO of Tapestry, the multicultural media agency of Starcom Mediavest Group--said it wasn't enough just to recruit minorities at colleges and other places, which Tapestry had done. The goal was to offer long-term opportunity to keep executives in the business.

"We focus on recruitment and retention," she said.

Linda Jefferson, senior vice president of integrated-marketing strategy at Burrell Communications Group, said she knows about retention from her own personal experience--especially when she was promoted. "The challenge was who replaced me," she said.

On the multicultural research front, TVOne's Rodgers noted that Spanish-language networks have made big gains, but that media research of African-Americans lagged behind. Gadsby said research has made "tremendous progress, but we are not there yet. But we are also not there in the general [media] space."